Another Uneasy Stalemate at USM
A week ago it looked as though the Mississippi IHL Board, which controls the University of Southern Mississippi along with 7 other four-year institutions in the state, was going keep one of the worst university presidents in the history of American higher education around, as long as he was"having fun."
Now you should realize that I am not promoting cockeyed optimism. This is the same Board that made Shelby Thames President of USM despite a disastrous record that had kept him out of administration for 16 years, and has maintained him in place despite an unending series of embarrassing and destructive acts. Most recently, the Board took no action even though Richard Crofts, the interim IHL Commissioner, had had to intervene to prevent Thames from sending USM's College of Business to its doom and eradicating any chance that USM would keep its accreditation. There can be little doubt that some Board members would much rather get rid of Crofts than face the implications of their continued support for Thames.
Still, in light of the last few days' events, it looks as though the Board may be deadlocked over extending Thames' contract. Or at least as though the anti-Thames forces can no longer be bulldozed by Board President Roy Klumb and the Thames supporters for whom he has been acting as public spokesman.
For one thing, the Roy Klumb who made a few rather cagey public comments on WDAM TV last Thursday evening was distinctly short on bluster and swagger. He looked tired and beaten down and reluctant to face the camera. (I'd have had no notion of this without seeing video clips that I was fortunate to obtain from a participant on the AAUP-USM message board.)
Klumb, if he got his way, would fire Richard Crofts or order him to shut up, squelch public discussion of USM's problems with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and keep giving Shelby Thames and his henchcrew the green light. Obviously he isn't getting his way.
Klumb would like to have the Board evaluate Thames in April, while he will still be Board President, and he thinks he can rig the outcome. Instead he had to say that it hadn't been decided when Thames would be evaluated. At the May meeting, Virginia Shanteau Newton, the only Board member to vote on the record against hiring Thames, will take over as President.
Klumb hates the adverse publicity that the Board has gotten because USM was put on probation by SACS, and would like to make it go away. But he has not been successful. Instead he has made a profession of ignorance about accreditation that, most other places, would bring a quick end to the career of a Board president:
Klumb said it was not clear to him if [Provost] Grimes' instructions [in the Black Friday memo] would have affected Southern Miss' accreditation. He called SACS regulations about the matter"very technical stuff."
"We don't feel like that it's really something that ought to be played out even as a lay board member, we feel like that those issues ought to be left to the professionals and that rests down on the campus or in the staff to handle those matters," Klumb said.
Meanwhile, Richard Crofts, whose knowledge of that"very technical stuff" gets so little respect from Roy Klumb, has been quiet since the Board meeting. And Thames and his chief enforcer Ken Malone are patently furious at Harold Doty, the Dean of the College of Business, for publicly exposing the Black Friday memo, which demanded a halt to all"theoretical/basic research" in the College, and ordered the immediate creation of a"hybrid" MBA program to Malone's specifications while the SACS consultant was advising against starting new programs. But they have not been able to take action against him so far.
At 2 pm today, Thames and a bunch of his political buddies accompanied a Senator who once expressed too much admiration for Strom Thurmond's run for President at the ground-breaking for the Trent Lott Center. When completed in 2007, this monument to Congressional"earmarking"--which taxpayers across the United States are going to be paying for for a little while--will be surrounded by a campus full of deteriorating buildings. One of the most dilapidated now houses the College of Business.
Thames should enjoy it while he can. Tomorrow he meets with SACS officials, who will be less inclined to believe his press releases.
Triumphal notes were sounded yesterday by none other than Ken Malone, whose Department of Economic Development (Or is that Economic and Workforce Development? It keeps changing) is slated to be the TLC's sole occupant.
Malone said Tuesday he expects 15 full-time faculty members, 40 students attending classes in Hattiesburg and"several hundred" students getting degrees through hybrid delivery by 2015. The goals could be achieved earlier.
Does Malone really imagine that he will still be at USM in 2015? Would any president besides Shelby Thames want Malone in an upper administrative post? Would any dean who had a say in the matter want him as a faculty member?
"I'm not that patient," Malone said.
We know that already, from his incursion into a Gulf Park classroom in October--and from the Black Friday memo.
By the way, the article lists one degree that USM was not previously known to offer, an executive Master of Science in Economic Development. Perhaps it was introduced just in time for the interview.
And, using language that rings in the ears of anyone who has read the Black Friday memo, Malone presented his indictment of the College of Business:
"Their business model is to run their operation off tuition dollars," Malone said."They don't do grants, they don't do a significant number of contracts, they pretty much teach and publish basic research but very seldom does anybody pay (the college) to do the research."
Now you would think that the Faculty Senate at USM would be extremely concerned about Malone, who is supposed to be a Department Chair but is actually more powerful than the Provost.
What's more, Malone may or may not actually be a faculty member (no one seems to know), and may or may not have been promoted from Assistant to Full Professor during his 2 and 1/2 years at Southern Miss (if he has, no one can provide the documentation, and his department's website has given him the Professor title, taken it away, and given it back, all within the last six weeks).
Malone was waved through by the Graduate Council as a graduate faculty member in 2003, on the basis of statements that the council members trusted, because they had not yet learned what the Thames administration was capable of. It is to be hoped that the Graduate Council will review and reverse its previous decision; the Graduate Council's decision not to approve former VP Angie Dvorak's application for graduate faculty status sped her departure from USM.
Yet it gives the observer pause to note that the current Faculty Senate President, David Beckett, is a friend of Malone's. Beckett and the Faculty Senate have distinguished themselves since the mid-fall of 2004, and are uncompromsing in their opposition to the Thames administration. But observers say that Faculty Senate action against Malone specifically is unlikely to happen. If Thames' contract is not renewed this May, or Crofts is sent in to replace him then, Malone's days will be numbered and it won't matter what position the Senate has taken in his regard. If the struggle is drawn out further, however, it could matter a lot.
On Monday, the IHL Board, which has been too preoccupied with USM to get around to hiring a permanent commissioner, held a one-day retreat to get back on track. The Board heard from Thomas Meredith, the chancellor of the Georgia state university system. The Clarion-Ledger reporter included a quotation from Meredith of more than passing relevance:
In Georgia, presidents report to the chancellor, the same as a commissioner. The chancellor evaluates presidents, who have one-year contracts, Meredith said.
"If they're not any good, part of my job is to get rid of the president," he said.
The Board could be interested in replacing Crofts soon, so they can get rid of him, or in replacing Crofts soon, so they can remove Thames and put Crofts in his place. Which view is going to prevail?
It turns out that back in January, Crofts requested the authority to require regular reports about the accreditation status of every university in the Mississippi state system. The item was yanked from the agenda at the last minute (see pp. 4-5). Obviously some Board members want the Commissioner to have that authority, and others just as emphatically do not.
On Sunday, a second regular columnist for the Clarion-Ledger joined the editorialists calling on Thames to resign. Pretty clear message there. The Thames regime has now been repeatedly condemned on the editorial pages of both the Hattiesburg newspaper and the Jackson paper.
What has been unrolling for the past week is reminiscent of the uneasy stalemate that I wrote about in May of last year. Back then, the Board had also kept Thames in power after a disaster, but he had sustained more damage than was immediately apparent. And it took several weeks for the damage to become fully visible. Thames had been ordered to get rid of two of his top enforcers, but the dismissal of one of them could not be confirmed in mid-May, and no one suspected that the other would be getting eased out.
In particular, the stalemate of May 2004 led to massive outbreaks of trolling, along with more sophisticated disinformation campaigns on the AAUP-USM message board. And for the past week, the trolls have returned to the board in force. Some of Thames' allies are afraid their guy is in trouble. If only we knew what the extent of the trouble was... and could be sure that Klumb and the other anti-USM trustees will not be able to regroup, give Thames four more years, and complete the destruction of the university.