In my inbox this morning:

 

May 5, 2004

 

 

Friends of Mississippi:

 

I am writing you tonight because our state is under attack from within. Somehow, a very narrow-minded man with little taste for the core American values of democracy and shared governance has been allowed to hold the reins at the University of Southern Mississippi, and has, in two short years, almost undone the fine work of prior presidents and administrators. This man, Shelby Thames, has been promoted to his level of incompetence, and has likewise lined his cabinet not with the good and decent faculty gathered at Southern Miss over the years under many administrations, but with a handful of under-trained and ill-educated individuals with little or no experience in higher education, and he has subsequently gone on a rampage the like of which I’ve never seen in Mississippi public life. 

 

He has fired senior administrators without so much as a consultation or the grace of a personal note or call; he has forced an obviously ill-fitting combination of academic disciplines into five colleges in order to say he’s “streamlining” the university; for every penny he has saved by downsizing faculty he has lost two by hiring unnecessary and overpaid administrators; he has tried to fire two perfectly fine professors who did nothing more than question the credentials of a senior administrator who, it must be acknowledged, either knowingly or unknowingly slightly falsified her credentials on her resume; he has reneged on the agreements of his predecessor with regard to certain faculty members; he has brought several (many?) law suits upon himself and our previously quiet, stable university; he has empowered his “risk management” lawyer to instruct the deans to illegally refuse to respond to one or more Freedom of Information Act requests; he has made an agreement with a representative of the IHL regarding the settlement of the Glamser/Stringer matter, and promptly broken that (legally binding) agreement by speaking in public and continuing to assert the illegality of the professors’ actions, even though no such illegality was ever demonstrated or adjudicated; he has, without proper notification to faculty and staff, illegally read and publicized private e-mails of individuals (faculty and students) not under investigation for, or even suspected of, any illegal act; he has, whether by design or accident we do not know, reported grossly inflated enrollment figures to the College Board and others, and clearly scapegoated a mid-level administrator when the untruth was revealed; he has attempted to impose a ridiculously oppressive drug and alcohol policy that was broadly rejected by even his supporters among USM administrators; he has mobilized the faculty in a remarkable show of unanimity to offer him a 430 to 32 vote of No Confidence; he has made the administration at Southern Miss a remarkable bastion of cronyism and nepotism and personal favoritism, recalling the darkest days of our state’s history; he has reserved raises for his friends and supporters among the faculty (giving his own daughter the largest percentage raise of any person on the USM campus!), and he has attempted to hide both the process and the product of these so-called “stealth” raises—the list of Shelby Thames’ affronts to good management and good sense is nearly endless.

 

This is a role call of incompetent and inadequate leadership, a demonstration of how not to run a university, which is, after all, supposed to be the heart of the best minds of a community, a state, a country. A university is not, by nature, a profit making organization, and I find it hard to believe that the IHL board, as much as it might want to belt-tighten, meant to give carte-blanche to a rash, impulsive, self-centered, vindictive, untested, fledgling administrator such as Thames. Perhaps the board was not fully aware of Thames’ record in administration (twice removed, I believe, from high administrative posts at the University of Southern Mississippi), and perhaps the board, like so many of us, simply has too much on its plate to be constantly vigilant with regard the inner workings of the institutions of higher learning in our state. 

 

But now, after two solid years of travail from the top, after two years of trouble brought upon the university and the state by a single individual, now perhaps the College Board can take this opportunity to reflect on what it might want out of its college presidents, on what kinds of men and women are best suited for these roles, on what are the responsibilities of the colleges and universities themselves and how these might best be dispatched, on what a college or university is in fact, how it fits into the political and social fabric of the society which it serves.

 

I offer this definition--in the simplest possible terms, a university is its faculty. It is the faculty that go day in and day out into the classrooms with our sons and daughters, the faculty that have the expertise, earned the hard way at other fine institutions around the nation, to pass along to our families and children, the faculty that finally confer the degrees awarded to the graduates.  I urge you to look at your diploma, hanging on your wall, or in a closet at your home, and note that it likely says “the faculty at” your college or university confers upon you the degree of . . . etc. It does not say the “administrators” confer the degree, and for very good reason. From the time in distant history when the idea of a university first took shape, the notion of it being comprised of its faculty was central; indeed, a colleague reminds me that the Oxford English Dictionary, that dean of all dictionaries, as well as most other dictionaries, first define “university” as “the body of faculty and students at a university.”

 

The University of Southern Mississippi is on the ropes as a consequence of being in the hands of this president. It is possible that he means well, that his intentions are immaculate, that he is devoted to Southern Miss as he says, but it is simply not possible that this is a passing phase in an ultimately successful transformation of the school. Shelby Thames is burning down the house right in front of your eyes, with the whole state, and certainly the whole of higher education nationwide watching in horror. I plead with you now to see to it that this extraordinarily damaging and violent episode in the history of the University of Southern Mississippi be put to an end as soon as possible. You have it in your hands, and in the hands of your friends and powerful acquaintances, to rescue this university from a despotic reign, to stop the plunder and the pillage, to set us again on the path toward quality education, and I beg you act now, act quickly, before it is too late.

 

With every good wish,

 

 

(as) Jean Tawdry

The University of Southern Mississippi

quote:

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Originally posted by: USM Symopathizer
"WOW!  Jean Tawdry's letter is one of THE best things I have read on this board, and that is saying a LOT!  Way to go, Jean!  Your letter reminded me very much of our country's Declaration of Independence.  May I forward copies of this the legislators and governor?  Thanks again for saying all this so well!"

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Jean submitted this for publication on the website (I will update this evening). Since it is now in the public domain, I am sure it is ok to forward to the parties you mentioned.  It will be on the webpage tonight, where 15,000 people (more, lately) each week will see it. 

Members of the College Board,

Please meet before Sat (May 8, 2004) and remove Shelby Thames from the Presidency of USM. Nothing was accomplished by the hearing and the ensuing settlement. Many faculty and staff are leaving at the end of the academic year. There are many more looking. There is a true feeling of hopelessness on campus among all sectors - staff, faculty, students. The Hattiesburg community is also watching the crumbling of USM before its very eyes. You must take a courageous stand and do something about this situation. The poor performance by Shelby Thames would get him fired in any organization in America. Please find a true leader to serve as an interim president, followed by a search for someone who can restore this formerly outstanding institution.

Ann H. Beardshall, PhD
MS, Community Health, 1980 USM
PHD, Psychology, 1986 USM
USM Staff since 1976
Hattiesburg Resident since 1976

Open Letter to IHL Board Members released to the FireShelby website:

Like so many others, I am writing to express my concern about the continued unrest at the University of Southern Mississippi. My perspective may be different from other individuals who have written to you as I am not a professor, not a student and, most definitely, not a liberal. My message, however, is the same. This is a failed administration and you have an obligation to intervene.

I am a former CEO, an executive with much experience in growth industries. I am an avid supporter of economic development. I believe that Southern Mississippi will provide the economic engine to propel the rest of state out of its fiscal woes. I support the educational programs in Casino and Resort Management; I think that Richard Giannini is doing a fine job with the sports program; I like the Southern Miss and Go Gold branding campaigns; and I also enjoy the Honors College Lectures, USM Symphony, University Theatre, and Art College exhibits. I want to see successful building projects on the campus because I am a friend to the university. In short, I think Hattiesburg is a wonderful college town and I applaud attempts to integrate the university and community.

I was initially a supporter of the Thames presidency. I believed in the message and felt that Shelby Thames had the vision to see it through. I have become terribly disillusioned. At the heart of the matter is his abysmal management style and sycophantic administrative team. An autocrat, with poor management skills, can surround himself with good people and be effective. Shelby Thames has not done that. Let’s look at each of the team members individually:

• Dr. Dvorak started the current maelstrom with her resume. Viewed from any perspective in academia or industry, it was, at a minimum, misleading. Dr. Dvorak may have the potential to do good work in the grant writing area but she should not be involved in the academic operations of the university. In the corporate world, we would call her position a staff role. In a university, technology transfer and grant administration should also be staff roles. Her influence upon the president is much too significant. In addition to her staff function, she has clearly stepped into a university operations role as evidenced by her control over extensive university funds, faculty listing as an Associate Professor, involvement in tenure and promotion decisions, oversight of I-Tech functions, and involvement in the hiring and reassignment of individuals. More bothersome, is the apparent nepotism with her husband and husband’s law partner also in positions of power and control. Even when benign, that is too much control for three people of like mind to be exerting on a single top executive. It would never be allowed in a corporation with which I was associated.

• Drs. Hudson and Grimes were originally promoted into roles of co-Provosts, one responsible for each of USM’s campuses. Some time last fall, they switched positions and I have never received a clear indication of why. Dr. Grimes appears to have fallen off the face of the earth and I cannot say that he even holds the Provost title anymore; he certainly does not seem to be exerting any influence on the president nor providing any leadership for the faculty. Dr. Hudson is more disconcerting. I had expected to see his resignation after Professors Glamser and Stringer were suspended, apparently without his knowledge. What I have seen instead is cowardice, not leadership. As I have asked about him, I have not received a single positive endorsement – not one – after dozens of conversations with individuals on and off campus. Rather, I have repeatedly heard concern about questionable ethics, personal vendettas, and low quality standards. I am troubled by ongoing discussion that he was at the heart of the inflated enrollment numbers, the Dvorak resume leak, and the the mis-managed interim raises.  The chief academic officer for a university must have impeccable academic credentials and demonstrated commitment to academic programs of the highest quality. Otherwise, how can best practices work their way into individual colleges and departments. The Provost should have the most important operational role on campus. There is a seriously disfunctional relationship between both the President and the Provost and the Provost and the Faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. Either disfunction might be acceptable but both are clearly not.  It is a shame that the most obvious role to ascend to the presidency is deemed completely unsuitable in this case.

• Mr. Jack Hanbury may be the biggest embarrassment to the Thames administration and the greatest liability to the university. His heavy-handedness throughout the entire Glamser and Stringer affair was abhorrent. The most recent correspondence with the deans of the five colleges on campus was outrageous. His contempt for them and for local counsel is insulting. My biggest concern is that he is giving bad advice to the President and he is going to get the University embroiled in more and more legal quagmires. There seems to be a growing track record on his part for offering poor counsel. Examples include the alcohol policy, the faculty handbook changes, the e-mail surveillance issues, the Veteran’s Hospital, the tenured faculty suspensions, the accusations of criminal behavior without notice to criminal authorities, the non-compliance with the State’s Open Records Act, and the thinly veiled threats to the deans. He must go and you, as IHL members, must get to the bottom of why the true University Counsel has been silenced.

I could continue to discuss members of the president’s inner circle. Persistent rumors about two of the ladies continue to circulate – perhaps it is unfair but it is destructive to their credibility and to that of their boss – again too much influence exerted by too few. Joe Paul’s near exodus would have been a great loss – that he considered a move after his long and successful career at USM speaks volumes. Dr. Malone, the ex-graduate student parading as COO of the Gulf Park Campus (what a foolish and presumptuous title for a university administrator’s role, by the way) seems to create foment with everything he touches. The bottom line is that this is a failed administration.

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that there is no competent senior administrator to step up because the upper ranks of university administration have been decimated, you may feel that Shelby Thames needs to stay in office for a time. If so, then, at the very least, you must demand that this president gets his house in order. There must be an administrative team that protects Shelby Thames from himself – reduces his role to that of figurehead and fundraiser and restores quality and integrity to the University of Southern Mississippi. The faculty and students must be re-engaged. A good faith effort on your part would go a long way. It is time to bring in competent university administrators, identified through national searches, who can work with all the constituents on campus and in the university community. Shared governance is not a far out approach; it is the mandate for operating a university.

My name will remain confidential because who I am would become more of an issue than what I have had to say.

quote:

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Originally posted by: FormerExecutive
" Open Letter to IHL Board Members released to the FireShelby website: (snipped for brevity) "

---

Thank you so much for posting this letter.  My hopes is that your very cogent statements will fall on receptive ears of IHL Board members.  Please encourage others (liberals and conservatives alike) to write similar letters outlining the problems of the Thames administration.  There is strength in numbers.

Could someone re-post the email addresses of IHL Board members (or links to them)?  Thanks!

Well worth another read by all. It's amazing that someone on the outside could arrive at such a cogent analysis of the situation.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: FormerExecutive
"
Open Letter to IHL Board Members released to the FireShelby website:
Like so many others, I am writing to express my concern about the continued unrest at the University of Southern Mississippi. My perspective may be different from other individuals who have written to you as I am not a professor, not a student and, most definitely, not a liberal. My message, however, is the same. This is a failed administration and you have an obligation to intervene.
I am a former CEO, an executive with much experience in growth industries. I am an avid supporter of economic development. I believe that Southern Mississippi will provide the economic engine to propel the rest of state out of its fiscal woes. I support the educational programs in Casino and Resort Management; I think that Richard Giannini is doing a fine job with the sports program; I like the Southern Miss and Go Gold branding campaigns; and I also enjoy the Honors College Lectures, USM Symphony, University Theatre, and Art College exhibits. I want to see successful building projects on the campus because I am a friend to the university. In short, I think Hattiesburg is a wonderful college town and I applaud attempts to integrate the university and community.
I was initially a supporter of the Thames presidency. I believed in the message and felt that Shelby Thames had the vision to see it through. I have become terribly disillusioned. At the heart of the matter is his abysmal management style and sycophantic administrative team. An autocrat, with poor management skills, can surround himself with good people and be effective. Shelby Thames has not done that. Let’s look at each of the team members individually:


Dr. Dvorak started the current maelstrom with her resume. Viewed from any perspective in academia or industry, it was, at a minimum, misleading. Dr. Dvorak may have the potential to do good work in the grant writing area but she should not be involved in the academic operations of the university. In the corporate world, we would call her position a staff role. In a university, technology transfer and grant administration should also be staff roles. Her influence upon the president is much too significant. In addition to her staff function, she has clearly stepped into a university operations role as evidenced by her control over extensive university funds, faculty listing as an Associate Professor, involvement in tenure and promotion decisions, oversight of I-Tech functions, and involvement in the hiring and reassignment of individuals. More bothersome, is the apparent nepotism with her husband and husband’s law partner also in positions of power and control. Even when benign, that is too much control for three people of like mind to be exerting on a single top executive. It would never be allowed in a corporation with which I was associated.


Drs. Hudson and Grimes were originally promoted into roles of co-Provosts, one responsible for each of USM’s campuses. Some time last fall, they switched positions and I have never received a clear indication of why. Dr. Grimes appears to have fallen off the face of the earth and I cannot say that he even holds the Provost title anymore; he certainly does not seem to be exerting any influence on the president nor providing any leadership for the faculty. Dr. Hudson is more disconcerting. I had expected to see his resignation after Professors Glamser and Stringer were suspended, apparently without his knowledge. What I have seen instead is cowardice, not leadership. As I have asked about him, I have not received a single positive endorsement – not one – after dozens of conversations with individuals on and off campus. Rather, I have repeatedly heard concern about questionable ethics, personal vendettas, and low quality standards. I am troubled by ongoing discussion that he was at the heart of the inflated enrollment numbers, the Dvorak resume leak, and the the mis-managed interim raises.  The chief academic officer for a university must have impeccable academic credentials and demonstrated commitment to academic programs of the highest quality. Otherwise, how can best practices work their way into individual colleges and departments. The Provost should have the most important operational role on campus. There is a seriously disfunctional relationship between both the President and the Provost and the Provost and the Faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. Either disfunction might be acceptable but both are clearly not.  It is a shame that the most obvious role to ascend to the presidency is deemed completely unsuitable in this case.


Mr. Jack Hanbury may be the biggest embarrassment to the Thames administration and the greatest liability to the university. His heavy-handedness throughout the entire Glamser and Stringer affair was abhorrent. The most recent correspondence with the deans of the five colleges on campus was outrageous. His contempt for them and for local counsel is insulting. My biggest concern is that he is giving bad advice to the President and he is going to get the University embroiled in more and more legal quagmires. There seems to be a growing track record on his part for offering poor counsel. Examples include the alcohol policy, the faculty handbook changes, the e-mail surveillance issues, the Veteran’s Hospital, the tenured faculty suspensions, the accusations of criminal behavior without notice to criminal authorities, the non-compliance with the State’s Open Records Act, and the thinly veiled threats to the deans. He must go and you, as IHL members, must get to the bottom of why the true University Counsel has been silenced.
I could continue to discuss members of the president’s inner circle. Persistent rumors about two of the ladies continue to circulate – perhaps it is unfair but it is destructive to their credibility and to that of their boss – again too much influence exerted by too few. Joe Paul’s near exodus would have been a great loss – that he considered a move after his long and successful career at USM speaks volumes. Dr. Malone, the ex-graduate student parading as COO of the Gulf Park Campus (what a foolish and presumptuous title for a university administrator’s role, by the way) seems to create foment with everything he touches. The bottom line is that this is a failed administration.
For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that there is no competent senior administrator to step up because the upper ranks of university administration have been decimated, you may feel that Shelby Thames needs to stay in office for a time. If so, then, at the very least, you must demand that this president gets his house in order. There must be an administrative team that protects Shelby Thames from himself – reduces his role to that of figurehead and fundraiser and restores quality and integrity to the University of Southern Mississippi. The faculty and students must be re-engaged. A good faith effort on your part would go a long way. It is time to bring in competent university administrators, identified through national searches, who can work with all the constituents on campus and in the university community. Shared governance is not a far out approach; it is the mandate for operating a university.
My name will remain confidential because who I am would become more of an issue than what I have had to say. "

---

 

Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning

3825 Ridgewood Rd.

Jackson, MS 39211

 

 

Honorable Members of the IHL Board:

 

I have been a college instructor since 1984 and a professor at USM since 1992. Like most of my colleagues, I am quite convinced that President Thames’ administration has placed the future of USM severely at risk. However, my purpose here is less to review the Thames record than it is to inform Board members, especially the newest Board members, about what it is college professors actually do, about the unique environment in which we work and especially about the way our work, especially the university service we perform outside of the classroom, is vital to the well being of the university. I feel this is useful because the recent flurry of letters-to-the-editor, TV interviews and op-ed pieces, indicates that the public at large suffers from a number of misperceptions about the work and role of a university faculty, and about the nature of universities generally. It is understandable that such public misperceptions exist, but they also seem to also exist among the highest administration at USM. The crisis at Southern simply cannot be understood except in light of this fact.

 

Foremost among these misperceptions is that college professors discharge their responsibilities to the university solely in the classroom and have no legitimate role in the administration of the university. People who accept this premise, a false premise, come readily to certain conclusions that are demonstrably flawed:  for instance, that Professors Glamser and Stringer overstepped their authority in their investigation of VP Dvorak’s credentials; or that in their conflict with President Thames the insurgent USM professors are meddling in administrative matters that are none of their concern. The reason these conclusions are flawed is because of the traditional expectation that university professors will be responsible for safeguarding the reputation and effectiveness of their institution.

 

This responsibility, usually termed “service” is equal in importance to teaching and research in evaluating a professor’s value to the university and community.  All first rate universities consider service to one’s university, profession, and community to be an absolutely vital part of a professor’s work. It is through what is called “university service” in particular that professors exercise a certain stewardship over the university at which they work. This stewardship is effected in any number of venues. Professors work on committees that determine the shape and content of the undergraduate and graduate curriculums, for instance. They evaluate and interview applicants for all positions: everything from secretaries to professors, deans and provosts to presidents. The USM faculty, for instance, advise the Deans through individual College Councils, and the President through the University Council and Faculty Senate. Professors serve on department personnel committees that evaluate and rate department faculty. Innumerable other examples could be given.

 

It is absolutely necessary that professors shoulder this work; first, since their professional careers and credentials are so intimately tied to their institution; but more importantly because of the very complexity and importance of the university’s mission.  To engage in the vital, difficult work of higher education, the university must fully utilize the professional expertise of its faculty. Without the input of his/her faculty—input rendered freely, openly, without fear of reprisal—an administrator is flying blind. Eventually such an administrator will crash; sometimes the institution will too.

 

Tenure, then, exists not only because it protect professors but also because it protects the university itself.  Tenure certainly guarantees freedom to pursue controversial research and teaching—as many detractors of the USM professors seem to recognize—but also it guarantees that the vital professional expertise and advice of a university faculty will be offered freely. “Intellectual freedom”, in other words, refers to the responsibility, paradoxically enough, of a university faculty to guide and protect the university from all threats to its existence.

 

Many, many more arguments for the value of professor’s university service work could be given, so many that the point can be made that professors’ role in the university is always inherently administrative.  This administrative role is so pronounced that courts ruling on the legality of college professor unions have often held that university professors don’t fall under Federal labor law protections since they are, because of the very nature of their work, management not labor.

 

A prime reason behind the crisis at USM is that President Thames has repeatedly seemed not to recognize these principles of university life and work. In fact, Dr. Thames has sometimes seemed to hold them in utter disdain. It is not that Dr. Thames disagrees with us; rather he ignores us. Time and time again he has either neglected or outright refused to accept our help, our input, our guidance. This sort of shortcoming, I fear, is simply not going to be “healed” or “gotten beyond.”  For it threatens the entire mission, purpose and tradition of the university.

 

Dr. Thames, then, has stirred up controversy not because he has run afoul of a few supposedly malcontent academics—as is widely assumed--but rather because he has run roughshod over one of the most basic, cherished principles of university life, the tradition of shared governance whereby professors and administrators engage in a collegial, cooperative stewardship of the university they jointly guide. Worse, it could be argued that Dr. Thames has acted as if this tradition simply did not exist. Although Dr. Thames’ presents himself as an innovator who is reforming USM so that it may be “run like a business” and hence become more “competitive”, the end result of those supposed reforms may well end up being that USM ceases to be a university at all, at least as such are recognized by the rest of the world.

 

Members of the Board, I beseech you: halt USM’s slide;  protect this fine institution; protect higher education in Mississippi. Dr. Thames must relinquish his stranglehold on academic freedom and shared governance at USM. For the good of all these things, for the good of all of us, Dr. Thames must either resign or be relieved of his authority at USM.

 

Yours, in Service to the People of the State of Mississippi,

 

Will Watson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English

USM

Several great letters on this thread now!

I missed the contribution from FormerExecutive when it first appeared. FE's analysis of management woes at USM is so acute that the letter needs no updating to take the Bobby Chain charges into account.

Robert Campbell