...from concerned faculty member, USM:

Dear Legislator:

As a longtime faculty member at the University of Southern Mississippi I write today to urge you to do what you can to remove the cause of all the trouble at the university in the last several years, i.e., Shelby Thames, who is a bull in a china shop for sure, and whose various actions, well-chronicled elsewhere, have set this state and its higher education back at least a quarter century. I assume, as a legislator, you have many responsibilities to dispatch, and your time is intensely valuable. You need to apply yourself to the pressing issues and let the slightly less pressing issues rest. I am writing today to tell you that the disarray at Southern Mississippi is profound, critical, and as pressing a problem in the state as is imaginable. Thames and his coterie of under-qualified garage mechanics have managed to do what would have seemed unthinkable even five years ago; they have all but destroyed a perfectly good small university that was a credit to higher education in Mississippi, and to the state in general. 

I know Mississippians don't much care to be criticized by outsiders, so on one level being the national higher education donkey makes little difference, but I would contend that the insular, isolated Mississippi of the past is just that--of the past. Nowadays, Mississippi is a rich and valuable asset to the nation, and in this symbiotic relationship, our state must act in a way befitting a full partner in the United States of America. 

A university is, by definition, a hallowed place, a site for the education and betterment of our children, a site for free _expression, and freedom of study, and freedom from the common despotism of the corporate world. If, in the world of business, ethics and morality are shunted aside in favor of victory at almost any cost, in favor of profitability and personal advantage, then that is unfortunate but perhaps business will be business.  To superimpose those ideas on one of the last bastions of integrity and justice and morality in our state, the university, where our children go to learn and grow, to enrich themselves intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, is very like turning a church into a used car dealership--an immoral act on its face.

We certainly want our university to prosper and progress toward total self-sufficiency, and certainly some streamlining and reorganization ought to be considered among the many ideas for accomplishing these goals. But installing a rank amateur who destroys morale, acts whimsically and without measured reflection, agitates unnecessarily, alienates his faculty, acts vindictively, tries to cheat the IHL and the state by intentionally inflating enrollment figures, or going off half-cocked about some coastal hospital adventure--installing such a person to run one of the major institutions of higher learning in our state is an act of sheer foolishness. Perhaps the board did not know what was to come when it installed Shelby Thames as the USM president two years ago (though there was ample warning in his two previous instances of administrative rebuke, one removing him from a post on the Gulf Coast campus, and one removing him from the vice presidency at the Hattiesburg campus, evidence of both occasions of which I gather has mysteriously disappeared), but they should certainly know now, after two solid years of turmoil, mismanagement, unnecessary negative publicity, expensive legal actions (several of which are still pending), crude behavior in public and private, embarrassing public utterances, and just plain, ordinary, dime store incompetence.

The fact is a university is its faculty. Heck, it’s even defined that way in the Oxford English Dictionary, the dictionary on which all others are based.  And it is on the diplomas we hand out every year—the degree is conferred “by the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi,” or some similar styling, just like every other university on the country. You’ll note it doesn’t say, on the diploma, “conferred by several highly-paid administrators at the University of Southern Mississippi,” or anything similar. The university is its faculty, and the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi recently voted 430 to 32 to offer no confidence in President Shelby Thames. Surely you understand that you don’t get numbers like that with a few disgruntled ne’er do wells, a few loudmouth agitators. No, you have a reasonably distinguished faculty here and a very large majority of those people, well-educated and thoughtful and rather reserved, generally speaking, have risen up and in a single voice said to you that Shelby Thames is insufficient, inadequate, unsatisfactory, an administrator in whom they have no confidence, an administrator they do not trust, or believe, or respect, or honor.

If only a small minority of the faculty felt this way I would say forget it.  Everyone in an administrative role knows that a few toes will get stepped on.  It’s inevitable.  Even if there were a sizable minority, I think you could still look the other way in the matter, and hope the trouble might settle out over time. But this is neither a small nor a sizable minority; this is an overwhelming majority of the people with whom we’ve entrusted the education of our children and our loved ones.

Did we make 430 mistakes in hiring them?  Or did we make 1 mistake in hiring Shelby Thames? I ask you to reflect on that in the weeks ahead. Which seems more likely to you?  Which fits most closely with your experience in the business world, or the world of government?

The evidence of Thames’ pitiable “testimony” in the recent Glamser/Stringer case says everything you need to know about this man. He’s like Captain Queeg of the Caine Mutiny (you remember him from the movie, a nervous fellow played by Humphrey Bogart, fond of rolling ball bearings around in his hand, who tried to court martial some sailors whom he accused of stealing a quart of his strawberries); like Queeg, Thames is out of his depth and out of his element, and bordering on the demented. He is the Peter Principle embodied, a man raised beyond his level of competence. He is a continuing threat to the good name and reputation of the University of Southern Mississippi and to the state that supports it. I beg you to take whatever action you can to investigate Thames and to remove him from the presidency of this small university and “return him to his first love” as we say in the academy when we mean someone has made such a mess of things that he or she must be returned to his or her home department to prevent further damage to the institution as a whole. It is a relocation he richly deserves.

With every good wish,

A Concerned Faculty Member

University of Southern Mississippi