my favorte mccain quote when ask by a student what the plans for more on campus parking

"i never promised you a parking space, only an education"

 

last time i saw general mccain, he was at pine belt airport, he and a friend girl were headed to london to do some "research"

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Originally posted by: lddad
"after I read the book i asked former dean harper and bill scarborough (sp?) whether the book was accurate.  They said the book understated how bad things were.  for those of us who have been at usm a long time, we see usm returning to those exit 13 days."

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I asked Neil McMillen how the current crisis compares to the McCain years.  He replied that the Thames administration is "much worse....MUCH worse."

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Originally posted by: truth4usm/AH
"I do know that Faculty Senate was created under Aubrey Lucas' administration.  Neil McMillen talked about it at the Faculty Convocation for the first no confidence vote (you can hear a recording of this event on the WUSM website--go to www.usm.edu and search for "WSUM")."

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I recall Dr Charles Brent standing up in University Council to tell Dr. Lucas how unhappy the faculty were under Dr. McCain. Dr Mormon, who was "Dean of the University" under McCain, express his shock by Dr. Brent's characterization of McCain's administration. They had never asked for input and so could act as if everyone was part of a big happy family. It was just after this event, and discussions with McMillen and Brent, that Lucas allowed the formation of "Faculty Council".

I should mention that at that time administrators ran all councils. As a member of Academic Council (AC), my dean would sit next to others and me and tell us how we should vote "for the good of the college". AC didn't even elect officers and was presided over by the Dean of the University, Dr. Mormon.

It would bring back fond memories for someone from an eastern European communist country.

Not sure what the relationship was between McCain and Thames.  It was in the McCain years that Thames was allowed to break away from the Chemistry Department and start Polymer Science.  It could have coincided with McCain's son and his years at Miss State when the Petroleum Engineering Department was formed.  Not really sure of those dates.  McCain's son wrote an excellent book on petroleum fluids that has been used at several universities for years.

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Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"
Here's a quote from Dean Moorman (1971) that sticks in my mind:
"A Career University...has little use for the Liberal Arts or the Pure Sciences as such...It will be charged, of course, that I am attempting to turn a university into a vocational school.  Right. So I am.  The reason is that I went to one." (Exit 13, p. 66)
Robert Campbell"

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Ah, the "career university"... <SIGH> The best thing about the "career university" was the trimester system -- quarter-length terms with semester hour credit. If a person had "real" semester hours to convert, there was a terrific payoff. I finished my BS in 3 years that way...

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Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Otherside,
This would be Charles Moorman, yes?
Here's a quote from Dean Moorman (1971) that sticks in my mind:
"A Career University...has little use for the Liberal Arts or the Pure Sciences as such...It will be charged, of course, that I am attempting to turn a university into a vocational school.  Right. So I am.  The reason is that I went to one." (Exit 13, p. 66)
Robert Campbell"

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Robert, thanks for correcting my spelling. Yes, it was Dean Moorman.

I lost my Exit 13 because I had to loan it out so many times over the years to convince people what really went on before Lucas. Now I can just say it was like now, but not as bad. We had never tasted freedom before McCain. Having had "openness" under Lucas etc. and going back to McCain's methods makes it much worst.

The "Career University" always reminded me that, way down deep, the majority of the people in Mississippi do not want an education --they really don't trust intellectuals who make their children think and question-- but rather a good paying job.

"If faculty would just shut up and TRAIN my child for a job, we could all just get along."

The KEY word they use to describe all of this conflict is "LIBERAL". Thank goodness they change the name of that college to "Arts & Letters".

Thames & McCain:

Birds of a feather...

SHelby had a reason to go to McCain and ask to start the Polymer department. The Chemistry Department had finally had enough of the little tyrant and his violent temper. The Chemistry faculty voted Shelby out of the  department. They told Shelby that he was no longer a member of the department. He could not use their labs, he would not teach any courses and he was barred from all Chemistry majors. WHile he had tenure, they did not have to put up with his bad behavior and his temper tandrums.

What to do, what to do? Well, he had worked his way through his BS and MS in Chemistry at USM working for the Tunge Oil research group that had a lab in the back of George Hurst (yes, where ROTC is currently located).

SHelby went to McCain and asked to start his little program. McCain's only comment when he gave him permission we Shelby had better never embarass Dr. McCain for allowing Shelby to start his program.

Guess what, Shelby is not living up to his agreement with Dr. McCain.

As I am old, sometimes the past is more real than the present. But when Dr. McCain was the president he deeply cared for this university. HE was mean and tough, but he never lied and he was alway true to his word.

When he bacame presinent of Miss. Southern College the IHL Board specifically told him he (Dr. McCain) was NOT to even try to make that college a university.  Well, he spent the rest of his life working to the goal of making it a very good university.

While his methods were autocratic, we would still be a college if he had not become president.  And the other universities would still most likely be colleges as well. Once USM became a university, the other 5 colleges started working to the goal of university status.

McCain head a lot of power with the IHL Board. What he wanted, he got.

McCain, for all of his autocratic policies, was deeply comitted to USM. That often gets overlooked.

I am not apologizing for McCain, but he did have a lot of good ideas and a strong drive for the university. He did not care to become popular. He did want the university to become an excellent university.

AK came in to put oil on troubled waters.

The comparisons between SFT and Gen. McCain were not missed in the search process to replace Dr. Fleming.  The night that Dr. Thames met with the 36 person presdential search committee (faculty, staff, and community members) some community leaders commented after his speech that we needed a president for USM who would run the university the way Gen. McCain did.  Well, we got one.

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Originally posted by: Otherside
" Outward Bound reminds me that this action by McCain is viewed by some to be the event that caused all of the problems. Mississippi didn't, and doesn't now, have the resources for so many "Universities". The "real" universities had to fight, through the IHL BOARD, to remain universities and so the "war" began to keep the "upstart " "universities" in their place. The alternative was (and is) to have all mediocre institutions without any major benefit to the state. We would all end up equally poor, NOT equally rich. "

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As I read these threads and particularly this one in which Outward Bound's memories are so evocative I am saddened that as folks like Outward Bound leave they are taking with them  a whole history that will be forgotten unless it somehow gets recorded. The great thing about our older faculty and emeritus faculty is not only what they remember, but that time has given them a perspective that helps us and future generations of academics to place our own timein some kind of context. But beyond that is the sense that the people who inhabit a space -- especially an academic space -- are complex and often contradictory, and that there is often a great distance between the private person and the public person which the memories of our older faculty members can help us to understand and sort out.

The other thing is the importance of incoming faculty having access to histories in which things were either worse or comparable (McCain) or better (Lucas). How our faculty institutions evolved, why they have the characteristics that distinguish them from other institutions -- these are important in order to keep alive a FACULTY viewpoint for those times when the faculty is under stress or even attack.

I'm awed when I read these thoughts and accounts from past generations of faculty -- it reminds me that we have a lineage here. All of us come here with lineages of our own -- but then we connect to the lineage that is here. To the degree that we can somehow bring those lines together . . . that probably defines the degree to which we as individuals contribute to the university's passage through its history.

Thank you, older faculty, for sharing your history with those of us who are new(er) to USM, or new to academia.

 

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Originally posted by: LVN
"Does Mississippi need a statewide university system?  I will not argue for or against, and I doubt it would ever happen, but what do the rest of you think?"

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It will never happen, but I've often wondered about this. The rub is that a single system would either put all faculty & staff on the same salary schedules or it would be even more blatantly unfair than it is presently.

Try to throw the 2-year colleges into the mix & you'd really have chaos, since the CC's have local boards of trustees, with a state board function that is bureaucratic rather than policy-making.

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Originally posted by: Eagle
"
I believe Thames is connected to the Thames family of Hattiesburg, Thames Elementary."

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I believe you are correct.

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I’m not sure if the original Thames was in education or on the School Board or what connection."

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On page 14 of the William Carey College Undergraduate Catalog, we find that "the legendary South Mississippi educator" W.I. Thames was the president of one of Carey's antecedents, South Mississippi College, founded in 1906. After it burned & the Tatum family donated property, the college reopened (1911) as Mississippi Woman's College, with a new president.

I've always heard that W.I. Thames was superintendent of the H'burg public schools, but I've never verified it. I've also always assumed that W.I. Thames was Shelby's grandfather, although I've never verified that either.

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Also, I think the George Hurst School was closed as a demonstration school in the late 60’s."

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I believe you are correct.

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A small aside - When Thames school was opened in Fall 1963 I think there was one store on the south side of Hardy Street between Elam Arms and I-59, a Quick Stop at 40th Ave."

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Once you crossed I-59, you were in the sticks!

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Originally posted by: Invictus
"In the interest of orienting those who are confused by all the "history" in the last couple of posts, here's a map of Hattiesburg I saw linked at EagleTalk. They have a lot of discussions besides those related to Shelby Thames & antique illustrations of the Hub City are linked regularly by a few posters. Notice where Hwy 49 was located "way back then"..."

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I'm curioius (and I refuse to go back over to Eagle Talk on principle!)...why are they linking to old illustrations of H'burg?  An interest in history?  Just curious...