USM: Klumb Fails, Thames Thrashes
The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees has yet to decide the fate of Shelby Thames, the now infamous President of the University of Southern Mississippi. At a special closed meeting last Friday, the Board may or may not have heard the detailed report on Thames' performance painstakingly compiled over the last two or three months by IHL Commissioner Richard Crofts. (One would hope the Board saw it, but the published accounts of the meeting don't confirm that it was presented.) But clearly Roy Klumb, whose term as Board President effectively ended with the special meeting, was making one last attempt to rally support for Thames and keep him in office after his current contract expires in March 2006.
The meeting ended with no action being taken.
"The board felt we should sit down and talk about the issues at the University of Southern Mississippi," Klumb said."It was a work session, a talk session, no action was taken."
Not quite. Since Klumb as President controlled the agenda, one may be sure that he permitted no motions to fire Thames, or relegate him to lame-duckitude. We can also be sure that a vote for extending Thames' contract would have been permissible. If the matter did not come to a vote, it's because Klumb knew he didn't have the numbers.
Klumb acknowledged that the closed meeting - which began with a private catered lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and peach cobbler - was heated at times.
"You've got 12 pretty bright people, people with strong opinions," he said."Sometimes they raise their voices. You shouldn't read anything into that."
Klumb's delivery doesn't come through in print, but when he appeared on the evening news on WDAM TV making similar comments, he looked as though his dog had been run over.
So what are the prospects? Thames is not on the agenda for the next regular Board meeting on May 19, the first to be presided over by his outspoken critic Virginia Shanteau Newton. Crofts has had the Interim dropped from his title, and his successor is not expected to be named until December. It may be that no action will be taken against Thames until the strong-commissioner system is fully in place (pieces of it will be voted on next week) and Crofts begins wielding the expanded powers of his office (most likely, after July 1). Klumb's pro-Thames faction probably now consists of himself, his long-time accomplices Scott Ross and Tom Colbert, and Stacy Davidson, who obligingly put in a plug for Thames before the special meeting. That gives him 5 if Robin Robinson, who joined the Board last year, is still supporting Thames (her initial public utterances showed tremendous bias in his favor; more recently she has gone silent).
Most likely, then, a slender majority of 7-5 now opposes Thames. Considering that Thames was chosen in 2002 by a 7-5 margin (the 11-1 vote was subsequently taken to reassure the public), it's downright frightening how much damage Thames has had to do just to lose two votes on the Board. But nothing is open to Klumb and the rest of the Thames boosters now except delay. Since Thames has averaged one boneheaded action per month since he was enthroned in May 2002, and he has no credibility remaining with the local newspapers (the Jackson Clarion-Ledger ran another editorial last Friday calling for his retirement), it does not appear that putting off the decision will assuage the other Board members' exasperation and get Klumb and crew 4 more years for Thames.
While the uncertainty remains, though, more faculty and staff are pouring out of USM. And as the entire state university system faces sharp budget cuts, Thames and what's left of his henchbunch ("Chief Operating Officer" Ken Malone, Chief Financial Officer Gregg Lassen, Special Assistant Joan Exline, and Associate Provost Cynthia Moore) will be using the cuts to punish their manifold enemies.
Now that Klumb has taken his best shot, Thames is relying on a a newly released brochure titled A Work in Progress to preserve his presidency. Printing and circulating the hard copies has cost the univesity nearly $14,000. Many of the contents were leaked by Thames' local boosters, the Paving Company Putschists, when they bought their full-page ad in the Hattiesburg American in March. In any event, a full analysis of the claims made in the brochure will have to wait for another post. But it's worth noting that at the meeting of Thames' President's Council, on Tuesday May 10, his obsessional assertions of increased enrollment were picked apart:
Mathematics professor Myron Henry said data in the document reflecting student enrollment is misleading.
While the document shows enrollment increasing by 7.1 percent in the past three years, Henry said the total number of credit hours students have enrolled in - and the accompanying tuition revenue - have not increased.
"Fall enrollment counting is not as accurate as three-term credit hour counting, which says we're completely even over a three-year period," he said.
But Joe Paul, vice-president of student affairs, said the increase in students is accurate and reflects an increasing number of part-time students.
"The 10-day head count we used is often referred to as a 'bragging number,'" he said."There's no doubt a lot of our growth has been in part-time students at the Gulf Coast campus."
Not highlighted by Paul was an actual decline in the number of full-time students at the main Hattiesburg campus.
Meanwhile, a comment by a student government official indicates definite potential for a post in the Thames administration:
But Student Government Association representative Lyndsey Jalvia said she sees the information [in A Work in Progress] as appropriate for public relations.
"In the long run this does benefit the university," she said."Balanced information is always the most accurate, but when it comes to the community, balanced information isn't always the best way solely from a (public relations) standpoint."
While many state university administrators believe it is necessary to lie to the public about the condition of the university, it is most unusual for them to admit this in front of reporters.
Because the Jackson and Hattiesburg newspapers have long since quit being compliant, Thames is placing press releases in such publications as The Wayne County News, which quotes extensively from a speech he made last Thursday. To the usual lies and half-truths, the speech adds a couple of wild fabrications. One pertains to extramural funding via grants and contracts:
"Because of those type of decisions and other moves made, Southern Miss now generates more external dollars than Texas A&M. We're currently No. 12 in the nation in external dollars generated while Texas A&M is No. 18."
Within the same state, Mississippi State brings in more grant and contract bucks than USM does...
Another is about freshman retention rate:
And our retention rate of first year students was 98 percent in 2004-2005.
I haven't the foggiest how Thames or anyone else could know how many of USM's current freshmen will return for the next academic year before August, when it begins.
Now that he has lost his private spokesperson (Lisa Mader has defected to a local hospital system), Thames is reduced to retailing desperate whoppers. These may not alienate any of his current backers on the IHL Board--but they seem even less likely to change the minds of those who have grown sick of him.