USM: Will the Board Save the Thames Regime Once Again?

As he prepares for his appearance before the Mississippi IHL Board tomorrow (today's meetings are for subcommittee work only), Shelby F. Thames is desperate to extend his reign over the University of Southern Mississippi. Whether he still enjoys the sponsorship of a majority of the Trustees is unclear, but observers are pessimistic. The Board has already stuck by him when he committed screwups that would have ended the career of any other university president, and Board President Roy Klumb is continuing to defend him in front of the media.

On Sunday, the Biloxi Sun-Herald reprinted the devastating story of the intervention by interim IHL Commissioner Richard Crofts, who ordered Thames to retract the Black Friday memo to the College of Business. (The Black Friday memo of February 3 ordered the College of Business to start up an MBA program that Thames wanted, even at the cost of its accreditation, and commanded the Business professors to cease all"basic" research. Under Crofts' orders, Thames retracted the memo on February 11.)

By choosing to run this article, the editors of the the Sun-Herald brought a dramatic end to their total news blackout regarding the accreditation crisis. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger, whose editorial page recently called for a search for a new president to replace Thames (albeit when his present term ends in May 2006) picked up the story as well.

And two memos from the USM Academic Council to soon-to-be-ex-Provost Jay Grimes have been released. These reveal that the reorganization in October 2004, which split the Economic Development program in two and shifted it out of the College of Business into two other colleges, was simply ordered from the top and presented to the Board without going through the university's Academic Council and its Graduate Council. The memos provide additional evidence that the Thames administration keeps willfully endangering the university's accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Meanwhile, David Butler, who runs one of the halves of Economic Development on behalf of Thames lieutenant Ken Malone, put a brochure for a study-abroad course in Belize on the USM website. He had to withdraw it after three paragraphs were found to have been plagiarized nearly word-for-word from a travel website. Oh, and is it news to anyone that the course was a little short on substance?

As Thames tries to avoid being fired, or put under such close supervision that he will be a president in name only, his notorious press secretary, Lisa Mader, has suddenly resurfaced. After being very quiet since the accreditation crisis hit in early December, and completely absent during the entire Black Friday episode and its aftermath, Mader is belatedly trying to make Dean Harold Doty the scapegoat for revealing the Black Friday memo to the press.

Southern Miss President Shelby Thames and interim provost Jay Grimes said disagreements about a program and research raised between officials should not have been made public, said university spokeswoman Lisa Mader.

"They believe that we need to move forward and not dwell on one issue that has been played out, unfortunately, in the media where an internal issue should not have been discussed or placed," Mader said Monday."And thus they are moving forward with other issues and events and programs and academic affairs of the institution."

Mader forfeited her credibility a long time ago, but even by her standards this is an unusally weak performance. For if the Black Friday memo had not been publicized, everyone knows that it would still be in force, and Admiral Thames would still have USM squarely on course for the nearest iceberg.

Board president Roy Klumb said the dispute at Southern Miss would be addressed [at the upcoming meeting]...

The Faculty Senate voted earlier this month to send a resolution to the board asking for a search to find a new president.

"This is what you get into when you have opposing forces that seem hell-bent on destructing one another," Klumb said.

Klumb said the College Board wants to wait on starting new programs at Southern Miss until the current SACS probation period is completed.

With his usual knack for the unintentional admission, Klumb is proclaiming what has been obvious to everyone else, that Shelby Thames fully intends to"destruct" the USM faculty.

The Board could, of course, do what Thames is hoping it will do, and blame Doty for spilling the beans while letting Thames out of jail free again. But there are two drawbacks to that course of action.

One is that Doty is keeping high-powered lawyers on retainer, and has absolutely no intention of going quietly if Thames decides to get rid of him.

The other is that if the Board punishes Doty to save Thames, it will also have to punish Crofts, who intervened on Doty's behalf. (As interim commissioner, Crofts is the Board's employee, so it can fire him whenver it wants to.) But the Board can't punish Crofts without implying its approval for Thamesian conduct that, as even Roy Klumb admits, is going to cost USM its accreditation. (If the Board openly announced its desire to end USM's accreditation, then at least those faculty members who are putting in long hours on assessment and report writing could all resign from their committees and reinvest their effort in job hunting.)

There is trepidation in Hattiesburg and Long Beach now. The Board has performed so badly, so often, that it may let Thames off the hook once again. Is the Board ready to bear the cost of summoning a university president to an executive session at every monthly meeting, while his institution collapses around him?

Update: 11:50 AM: The editorial page of today's Hattiesburg American carries a stern rebuke of Shelby Thames and Lisa Mader, for claiming that issues that affect USM's prospects for accreditation should not be publicized. It is the first editorial to mention the economic impact on Hattiesburg if the ongoing collapse of USM is not halted; it is written in terms that the average person who doesn't care about university governance can understand; and, overall, it is the hardest-hitting critique of the Thames administration to appear on the editorial page of a daily newspaper in Mississippi. Let's hope it makes a difference.