The story of the "decline" of MSU is a story of faculty and administrative complicity. The president, Shelby Thames, is a puffed-up and Putin-style despot whose action against two tenured professors earlier this year assures him of a place in the administrative rogues' gallery. But such creatures remain in office only through faculty complicity. The same faculty who cry and moan in the public forum shut up pretty fast when a "deal" is rigged and they are comfortably cashiered. That is the other side of the story at MSU, and the situation will never change, there or anyplace else, until faculty develop some backbone and refuse to be bribed.

Joe Cliburn - 9/26/2004

... when you refer to Shelby Thames as the president of MSU. Last time I checked, he was president at USM (Southern Mississippi) & not at MSU (Mississippi State). Of course, some members of the IHL board (state college board) persist in calling USM "Mississippi Southern," a name that it hasn't used routinely since the early 1960s.