I just went to the EEOC website and found a list of the twelve prohibited personnel practices. Here they are:

1) discriminate against an employee or applicant based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition, marital status, or political affiliation;

(2) solicit or consider employment recommendations based on factors other than personal knowledge or records of job-related abilities or characteristics;

(3) coerce the political activity of any person;

(4) deceive or willfully obstruct anyone from competing for employment;

(5) influence anyone to withdraw from competition for any position so as to improve or injure the employment prospects of any other person;

(6) give an unauthorized preference or advantage to anyone so as to improve or injure the employment prospects of any particular employee or applicant;

(7) engage in nepotism (i.e., hire, promote, or advocate the hiring or promotion of relatives);

(8) engage in reprisal for whistleblowing – i.e., take, fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety (if such disclosure is not barred by law and such information is not specifically required by Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct of foreign affairs – if so restricted by law or Executive Order, the disclosure is only protected if made to the Special Counsel, the Inspector General, or comparable agency official);

(9) take, fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take a personnel action against an employee or applicant for exercising an appeal, complaint, or grievance right; testifying for or assisting another in exercising such a right; cooperating with or disclosing information to the Special Counsel or to an Inspector General; or refusing to obey an order that would require the individual to violate a law;

(10) discriminate based on personal conduct which is not adverse to the on-the-job performance of an employee, applicant, or others; or

(11) take or fail to take, recommend, or approve a personnel action if taking or failing to take such an action would violate a veterans’ preference requirement; and

(12) take or fail to take a personnel action, if taking or failing to take action would violate any law, rule or regulation implementing or directly concerning merit system principles at 5 U.S.C. § 2301.

I don't have the information about the hiring pattern, other than comments on this site, but if they are on target, then it seems there is justification for filing a complaint.

Here is the information about filing a complaint:

Filers must use Form OSC-11 (Complaint of Possible Prohibited Personnel Practice or Other Prohibited Activity) to submit allegations of prohibited personnel practices or other prohibited employment activity to OSC.  Form OSC-11 may be printed from this Web site (see Forms). The OSC will not process a complaint submitted in any format other than a completed Form OSC-11 (except for complaints alleging only a Hatch Act violation).  If a person uses any other format to file a complaint, the material received will be returned to the filer with a blank Form OSC-11 to complete and return to the OSC. The complaint will be considered to be filed on the date on which the OSC receives the completed Form OSC-11.

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Originally posted by: kickstart
"Old thread...thought it was time to bounce it back up and I don't know how to do that "kick" thing!"

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I think maybe this is the direction the Faculty Senate is going with their inquiry and request to see all of the documentation related to the hiring of Dvorak. But I would think there would be the same kinds of questions regarding Hanbury, Dvorak's husband, and any of the other administrative positions. I just don't know when they were hired and if there was any advertising, or I would file a complaint myself.

i think a lot of this discussion depends on what you consider to be a "proper" search and "proper" advertising.  if you go to USM's hr website, you find any number of positions advertised, including faculty lines and administrative positions.  this may be enough to meet the letter of EEOC requirements.  don't know, however. 

a number of times on a variety of posts people claim that there are potential violations of a number of laws/statutes.  i've seen eeoc, weingarten (sp?), whistle-blower, and others, but most of these leads seem to go nowhere.  whistle-blower is interesting, but when I looked at the law it only applies to federal employees.  by my reading, states have to pass a state whistle-blower statute, which i doubt mississippi has. 

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Originally posted by: Flash Gordon
"Mississippi does have a whistle blower statute for public employees who provide information to a "state investigative body." "

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Just Asking -- one of the formal facsen committees is looking into administrative hires and the issues therein including advertising, etc. , I believe. The ad hoc committee feeds in to it on Divorak. You are right -- the senate has really done good work. It has helped to have a former provost and dean in the presidency. But really, all of the members have contributed by being alternately skeptical, probing, and finallyin taking action.

I'm sure the members who see this will be pleased to read your words.

Iddad and Flash Gordon: good job posing the right question and then (presumably) supplying an answer. I think that it is never easy for people to step forward and say what they know in any work situation -- you never really know if you are right or only have part of the story. This situation, in which people have been intimidated, compounds that. I suspect that once the ediface starts to crumble it will all come out in a rush, whatever is there to discover. Let's hope, for the good of our university, that little of it is of major legal consequence.

We need to begin thinking soon about the post Shelby era -- how will the next Presidential search be conducted? But we also need to keep the pressure on because if the President isn't forced out soon we are either in for two years of payback or two years of a lame duck President with little ability to move the institution forward (or maybe even both condiditions at the same time -- the horror!) We have got to get this behind us and move on soon. And move on means a new vision . . .