The University of Southern Mississippi Is Under a News Blackout

You would think that with several campus controversies raging simultaneously, and an accreditation consultant who is still unpacking her bags, the University of Southern Mississippi would be getting nearly daily attention from the in-state media.

Instead, there is a creepy silence. All of a sudden the only news about USM is appearing on the sports pages.

The last print-media reference to the accreditation crisis was the Hattiesburg American's happy-talk editorial of January 17. The American signaled its change of editorial policy toward the Thames regime on January 9, when it ran an op-ed by Amy Young, the president of USM's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, in its print edition but (in an extraordinary move) kept it out of the online edition. If you want to read Young's hard-hitting op-ed online, you'll have to do it here or on her AAUP chapter's message board.

One reason for the media silence: Kevin Walters, by far the American's best reporter, and the only one with genuine investigative instincts, is no longer on the story. Reporters who stay on any kind of story about a university are rare. Those who are willing to delve into a university's finances (which Walters did on several occasions, with mixed success) are displaying uncommon valor. With other reporters on the story, the American is unlikely to provide quality coverage of events at USM, and the Jackson and Biloxi newspapers, which rely on the American for much of their material on Southern Mississippi, won't be doing so either. And with no reporters on the story...

The other reason, according to sources at or around USM, is that Thames is well- connected politically, and some of his backers in southern Mississippi have been leaning on the American's editorial board. Since everyone in Mississippi politics up to and including Governor Haley Barbour rhetorically endorses"economic development," and USM's notorious graduate progams in Economic Development are scheduled for occupancy in a building called the Trent Lott Center (which, if you reside anywhere in the USA, represents your income taxes at work), there are several heavyweights available to do the leaning.

In any event, nothing negative about Thames' pet program has appeared in print since October. At the present time I very much doubt that a letter to the editor criticizing Thames' performance, or the Mississippi IHL Board's apparent motives for keeping him in office, could be published in any of the three Mississippi newspapers that normally cover happenings at USM.

The only good thing about the wall of silence: it means that Thames and his political backers no longer feel they can rely on his public relations machine. But it is going to take extraordinary effort to crack the wall. Only resolutions of no confidence by the USM faculty, or protest demonstrations on campus, have any chance of getting through to the readers of the Hattiesburg American, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, or the Biloxi Sun-Herald.

Tomorrow the beleaguered Faculty Senate of USM will be holding an emergency meeting (after the regularly scheduled meeting on January 14 ran 4 hours without completing its agenda). It is to be hoped that the Senate will take up a renewed resolution of no confidence in Shelby Thames. And that when the Senators are done with that one, that they vote on resolutions of no confidence in his chief remaining enforcers (Gregg Lassen, the Chief Financial Officer, and Ken Malone, the Chair of Economic Development, Chief Operating Officer-Gulf Coast, and, according to recent reports, Director of Continuing Education). When they are done with those two, maybe the Faculty Senate will deem it timely to vote no confidence in Roy Klumb, Thames' most vocal backer on the state College Board.

Meanwhile, Thames has been forced to delay his plans to create an Executive MBA program (the accreditation consultant deems it"inadvisable" to start any new academic programs while USM is under probation) but he continues to harbor obvious designs on the Gulf Park library building.

While Thames is making a tactical retreat on one front, rumors are flying on campus that he intends to spin the entire College of Business off to Mississippi State University (which has one of its own already...). Such a"news of the weird" item would normally be fodder for guffaws, but under Shelby Thames any cockamamie scheme has a chance of being implemented. What's uncontested by any knowledgeable source is Thames' fury at the College of Business for trying to keep its accreditation with the AACSB and consequently refusing to embrace his Economic Development program. Besides, if Thames could be rid of the present, accredited College of Business, he could replace it with an unaccredited College of Economic Development run by Ken Malone or Gregg Lassen (who, in addition to being the Chief Financial Officer is a graduate student in... International Development). And he would no longer have to pay the going rate for professors of Marketing or Finance. Business professors in AACSB-accredited programs draw salaries that Thames believes must be reserved to administrators--or to Polymer Science researchers.

The IHL Board is due to evaluate Thames' performance at its April meeting. Either we'll be hearing a lot more noise out of the Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses over the next couple of months, or we'll be preparing for the end of USM as a national university.

Updates 8:30 PM January 27th and 10:25 AM January 28th: This entry has been revised to remove an incorrect statement about Kevin Walters taking a job elsewhere. I apologize for not verifying this statement with Mr. Walters before posting.