A few minutes later, in a question-and-answer session, Gee referred to the problem of coordinating 18 divisions such as independent schools and colleges.
"When we had these 18 colleges all kind of floating around, they were kind of like PT Boats, they were shooting each other," Gee said. "It was kind of like the Polish army or something. I have no idea what it was."
As nervous laughter arose in the audience of a couple hundred listeners at a Columbus Metropolitan Club monthly forum, Gee said, "Oh, never mind, who did I embarrass now?" A moment later he said: "I'll have to raise money for Poland now."
Gee did not apologize afterward, and stumbled a bit in responding to questions about the propriety of the remark.
"Now if you're going to say I was saying something bad about Poland, I'm not," he said. "I could have used some other term, I guess, then."
