A West Virginia University professor who worked as a consultant for Caterpillar Co. had his students spy on competitors of two Caterpillar dealerships, but a school official says there's no evidence the assignment was made to help the professor's work. ``I think inappropriate things were asked of them. I think they were in an uncomfortable situation and responded in an unfortunate (manner),'' Provost Frank Franz said Tuesday. Two groups of graduate students in Marketing 321 polled competitors of H.O. Penn Machinery Co. in Armonk, N.Y., and Yancey Bros. in Atlanta, both Caterpillar dealers, according to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. The students obtained inventory and sales volume reports and even new product information from competitors and gave the data to the Caterpillar dealerships, according to the report. The aim of the assignment, according to instructor Terry Wilson, was to give students a firsthand taste of the ethical issues involved in industrial espionage. ``They'll be facing these issues every day of their career. They have to learn to deal with them. I tell them to think through the tradeoffs,'' Wilson told the Journal. However, he said his students no longer will be assigned similar projects. Franz said there was no evidence the students' surveys were conducted to help Wilson's consulting work. ``It's not clear from the article that there's any action that professor Wilson took that was inappropriate,'' he said. Wilson won't be disciplined, said Cyril Logar, dean of the College of Business and Economics, because he taught students about the ethical considerations involved in the project, including confidentiality, before the students began their work, although ``they still broke the rules, so to speak.'' ``I thought I was doing them a favor,'' said H.O. Penn Machinery marketing manager Milton Long, who helped direct students about what to ask whom. The students identified themselves only as university students during the surveys, and promised some dealerships that their identities would remain confidential, the Journal said. However, ``there was pressure'' at H.O. Penn for students to name the competing dealerships and that information was provided, one of the students, Mark Wheatley, told the Wall Street Journal. ``It makes me shudder to think about it,'' he said. Long denied obtaining confidential information from the students. Wilson said he told his students to reveal who the information was being gathered for _ but only if those being surveyed asked. And he said students should have known on their own not to divulge confidential information. One of the businessmen surveyed said business owners let their guard down when dealing with college students, allowing them to get information not ordinarily available. ``That's not ethical in my mind,'' said Alan Stith at the Atlanta-based Stith Equipment Co.
