Attorney for suspended profs seeks confidential hearings; president opposed

By Riva Brown
rvbrown@clarionledger.com

The battle brewing at the University of Southern Mississippi moves to new fronts this week, but the public may be shut out.

The state College Board may go behind closed doors Thursday to discuss USM's discord, said state Higher Education Commissioner David Potter on Monday.

And the attorney for the two professors whose paid suspensions sparked an uproar wants confidential hearings for his clients, a request President Shelby Thames opposes.

Thames has had a tumultuous tenure since becoming president less than two years ago. USM became embroiled in the latest turmoil after Thames suspended sociology professor Frank Glamser and English professor Gary Stringer on March 5 and locked them out of their offices.

The decision ignited student-led protests and faculty no-confidence votes. The USM Faculty Senate voted 40-0 during an emergency meeting March 7. The faculty at the Hattiesburg and Long Beach campuses voted 430-32 Wednesday. USM has about 650 faculty members.

Confidentiality laws prevent Thames from releasing the charges against Glamser and Stringer. But the tenured professors have said Thames, also a tenured professor, is taking steps to fire them because they used university equipment to investigate the credentials of Angeline Dvorak, USM's vice president for research and economic development.

Potter's office on Monday issued a statement on behalf of the College Board in response to concerns about USM's administration.

"Whenever a matter generates such an outpouring of interest, the Board takes it very seriously," the statement said. "Consequently, the Board will discuss this issue this week in a careful and appropriate manner."

Potter said the board will go into executive session only "if we're assured by our attorney that we should be."

The board can "try to ascertain the larger situation in the university community and try to get some understanding about what processes are under way to address the outpouring of concern that we've witnessed," Potter said.

The board cannot "address the dismissals case because it acts essentially as an appellate court on this matter," he said. "It really needs to reserve its participation in the discussion on that matter until the internal process is complete."

The board office has received "several hundred" e-mails and letters about USM's unrest, Potter said.

One of those letters came from Hattiesburg attorney Michael Adelman, who represents Glamser and Stringer. In a Monday letter, Adelman asks the College Board to order that a hearing before the University Advisory Committee be kept confidential. His clients requested the hearing Friday.

Thames wants the hearing open to the news media, videotaped and transcribed by a certified court reporter, with a real-time transcript feed to a designated Web page.

"Dr. Glamser and Dr. Stringer have been in front of the media inciting our students, faculty, staff and alumni for their cause, and in their attempts to impugn the integrity of Dr. Dvorak and myself," Thames said in a Monday telephone conference with the news media. "Now they want to hide behind a privacy shield that has no legal basis."

Adelman disagrees. The USM Faculty Handbook states, "The proceedings of the University Advisory Committee are strictly confidential and are subject to the same policies that govern college and departmental personnel bodies."

But Jack Hanbury, USM's director of risk management, said that provision does not refer to termination proceedings initiated by the president.

"Our current handbook, one of the reasons we're rewriting it, is it doesn't say what the procedure is when the president initiates termination proceedings," Hanbury said.

As a result, USM is following College Board policy, which does not spell out whether the hearing must be confidential, Hanbury said. "That's the only policy that would have any applicability where the president initiates termination proceedings."

Adelman's letter also asks the College Board to allow USM Provost Tim Hudson, not Thames, to be responsible for establishing the hearing procedures.

"Dr. Thames is the accuser in this case. He is now attempting to control and dictate the conditions and procedures under which this hearing will take place," the letter said.

Potter said the hearing is a USM internal matter. "From the board's perspective, we expect the university to provide these faculty members with very deliberate due process," he said.