Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> College Board Meeting
Post Info TOPIC: College Board Meeting
dismayed

Date:
College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

Are there any expectations about what might happen at this week's college board meeting? Are any faculty representatives planning to attend?

__________________
Otherside

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: dismayed
"Are there any expectations about what might happen at this week's college board meeting? Are any faculty representatives planning to attend?"


I believe Myron Henry and a few other Senators may attend the meeting. Nothing definite as to how many will attend.

__________________
cockeyedoptimjist

Date:
Permalink Closed

Cards and letters-emails-phone calls-let them know it isn't going to get better until it gets better----    

__________________
RealityCheck

Date:
Permalink Closed

Nothing much will happen. SFT will present his "healing" evidence, and the board will rally around him. Virgina will be alone, for the most part, unable to do anthing to stop the corruption, enrichement of croinies, and the eventual downgrading of academic standing at USM, and believe me they are rejoicing in the Delta right now.

We have lost.

I understand that Klumb was in PP Friday night with a certain SFT higher up, askng Klumb "is there anything I can do to help you........"

I think many will continue the fight, but the fight is lost. USM's colleges are mostly downgraded now.

Our GRE and ACT scores will fall and we will silently become a "open university" where 4 course loads of large classes will become commonplace and no tenure and promotion or pay raises will be awarded for proper scholarship in most colleges.

The mold is cast. Commercialization is in and the COAL, the traditional Business school, and others, will be basically left to founder. I predict programs will lose accrediation unless desperate efforts are made to stave it off. The loyal and unproductive will be highly rewarded, while the gut core will be eliminated and ignored.

Scholars will not come here, and we will turn to more adjuncts, assistant profs (denied tenure when they come up) and instructors will be cobbled together to get classes taught in arts, letters, health, business, etc.

Science and technology will be built into a juggernaut we will all be envious of and a few of them in the "cabal" will get very wealthy.

Thames supporters will become much more vocal.

Fire Shelby will dismantle in perhaps 6 months or so as we are worn down.

Then, with the help of Klumb, SFT will conduct a "purge" the likes of which college education will never have seen, and the Chronicle seems rather distant now. They will stand by and watch it happen.

USM will be more and more "on line", not needing research professors, but using low paid "on line" teachers.

Just watch. We lost.


__________________
LVN

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"Nothing much will happen. , , ", not needing research professors, but using low paid "on line" teachers. Just watch. We lost. "
Good God a'mighty.  What gloom and doom.  Is your other name "Wormtongue"?  Just cut the heart right out of everybody. That's really helpful.  BTW would you have predicted Saucier's letter today?  You never know what may happen.

__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"Nothing much will happen. SFT will present his "healing" evidence, and the board will rally around him. Virgina will be alone, for the most part, unable to do anthing to stop the corruption, enrichement of croinies, and the eventual downgrading of academic standing at USM, and believe me they are rejoicing in the Delta right now. We have lost. I understand that Klumb was in PP Friday night with a certain SFT higher up, askng Klumb "is there anything I can do to help you........" I think many will continue the fight, but the fight is lost. USM's colleges are mostly downgraded now. Our GRE and ACT scores will fall and we will silently become a "open university" where 4 course loads of large classes will become commonplace and no tenure and promotion or pay raises will be awarded for proper scholarship in most colleges. The mold is cast. Commercialization is in and the COAL, the traditional Business school, and others, will be basically left to founder. I predict programs will lose accrediation unless desperate efforts are made to stave it off. The loyal and unproductive will be highly rewarded, while the gut core will be eliminated and ignored. Scholars will not come here, and we will turn to more adjuncts, assistant profs (denied tenure when they come up) and instructors will be cobbled together to get classes taught in arts, letters, health, business, etc. Science and technology will be built into a juggernaut we will all be envious of and a few of them in the "cabal" will get very wealthy. Thames supporters will become much more vocal. Fire Shelby will dismantle in perhaps 6 months or so as we are worn down. Then, with the help of Klumb, SFT will conduct a "purge" the likes of which college education will never have seen, and the Chronicle seems rather distant now. They will stand by and watch it happen. USM will be more and more "on line", not needing research professors, but using low paid "on line" teachers. Just watch. We lost. "

Reality Check - I don't know who you are or how engaged you have been in this. If you have been very engaged then suck it up. Did you really think this was going to be easy? Our opponent isn't a man -- it is a system that is corrupt from top to bottom. In a way I'm glad Shelby isn't so easy to push off the moutain -- the longer he lasts the clearer it is that the problem is bigger and more pervasive.


We have a lot of people in the university, the state, our region and even the country who are looking for us not to fail and not to give up. The victories we have won have been unprecedented in state education. The ideas that have taken root and grown because of the oppression will become the philisophical underpinning for a university that will be able to at least aspire to greatness, once we are liberated.


If you haven't been out front at the protests and the hearing . . . if you haven't been visible and lending your voice to the crowd, then you don't deserve to be discouraged. If you have been out there, then go ahead and acknowledge your discouragement but either go back to work or walk -- those of us who are in this for the long haul don't need our morale sucked down when there is much to do.


Learn to distinguish between a low point in visible activity and a low point in emotion. Now, more than ever is a time to go back to work and continue to keep the cause alive. If we have a quiet summer the it isn't because we are giving up -- the work goes on.


Vive the Free University of Southern Mississippi.


No Quarter.



__________________
RealityCheck

Date:
I appologize for speaking the truth
Permalink Closed

LVN

Sorry, I lurk and post infrequently

I hate to be that way.

Yes, Saucier's letter is another in an avalanche of such letters, proven past SFT misdeeds and mismanagement, the most lopsided no confidence vote in history, repeated evidence of wrongdoing as evidence by the lack of hearing evidence, and so on and on and on..........

Roy Klumb rules the roost of an IHL board that has demonstrated that there is really no detectible level of chaos that will make them intervene in any way but prop up SFT for the next two years, and if he behaves, himself, you can rest assured SFT will be here SIX more years

Words, brilliant letters from men like Saucier (that is not new, it was all said in quantity before SFT was "coronated" against the will of almost all faculty) and history of STF's past failed administrative stints, ........and not enough to really make a dint in this IHL.

Yes, if it were Ole Miss or Mississippi State, they would have stepping in long ago to force SFT out, but we are Hardy High. AFter all those years of gaining equality with them, and surpassing them in many areas academic and athletic, it is all going backwards the other way now.

Give me four good reasons we are not marching backward and SFT will be forced out by midsummer?

There are none. None at all.

And TH is still sitting high in the saddle to ruin more programs and good scholars, where SFT is not too interested. Look at nursing, CoAL, business, etc. They are gutted, decimated, and demoralized with NO hope whatsoever for a future.

__________________
LVN

Date:
RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

RC. I can't speak any further as to events on campus, as I am not there now.  However, I will say this.  My life has been one long series of suprises (someone once called me "God's beta-tester").  I have learned not to assume, not to preducit.  I hardly even plan anymore.  Every signficant thing that has happened to me has been a bolt out of the blue (I'm dealing with one right now, in fact.)  This is not to say I live for the moment -- I take reasonable precautions.  But I do not give up hope and I do not surrender, although I have had to retreat once or twice.  If we do nothing and give up, defeat is assured.  If we persevere, victory is not assured, but it at least is possible.


A Bible verse:  "In due season we shall reap, if we faint not."  One of my life-markers.


BTW, Wormtongue is a character in Lord of the Rings who seems to be a friend while actually serving as a demoralizer and a spy.



__________________
present proffessor

Date:
RE: I appologize for speaking the truth
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"LVN Sorry, I lurk and post infrequently I hate to be that way.  . . . . Look at nursing, CoAL, business, etc. They are gutted, decimated, and demoralized with NO hope whatsoever for a future."

Yep -- we're a pretty devastated bunch. It'll take quite a while to rebuild -- even if Shelby left tomorrow.


All the more reason for not giving up.


Generations of people that came before us built this university. They don't deserve our giving up.


Our students are getting ripped off right and left. They don't deserve our giving up.


Gary and Frank have been exiled from campus for speaking the truth. The don't deserve our giving up.


People on this campus -- staff and faculty -- live in fear. They don't deserve our giving up.


And if there are no good positive reason for continuing this struggle -- then there is another. And that is to revenge the damage done -- not by Shelby, who is just doing what it is in his nature to do like some poor dumb carnivore let loose in the hen house.


Our motivation needs to be reform at a larger level -- the Board is corrupt. It is way too opaque and it doesn't have any connection to the way univerisities really run. If there is any fault for where we are it is the Board and its stubborness, the small group of Shelby activists on the board who pushed him down our throats even though most folks knew what was going to happen. 


Surely, if small groups can overthrow governments, we can make chnages in higher education in the state.


This is precisely the time when battles like this are lost or won. Who can hang on the longest? Who cares the most? Who has the most to lose?


I'm betting that we have the stamina. We definitely have the intellectual weight. We have the moral authority. We have the support of colleagues across the country.


No Quarter.



__________________
Patti

Date:
RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

Dumb question of the day, doesn't this help?

Linda McFall, Vice President for Financial Affairs (IHL Board) taken from Babb's list.

It would seem to me, that having a former prof on the IHL board would give just one more voice with Virginia Newtons to sound out against Thames. I could be wrong.

__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Patti
"Dumb question of the day, doesn't this help? Linda McFall, Vice President for Financial Affairs (IHL Board) taken from Babb's list. It would seem to me, that having a former prof on the IHL board would give just one more voice with Virginia Newtons to sound out against Thames. I could be wrong."
And word was she left unhappy . . . .

__________________
RealityCheck

Date:
Permalink Closed

I am not a wormtongue. Things happen to me too out of the blue.

I know things about USM.

I will post no more.

__________________
Invictus

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Patti
"Dumb question of the day, doesn't this help?

Linda McFall, Vice President for Financial Affairs (IHL Board) taken from Babb's list.

It would seem to me, that having a former prof on the IHL board would give just one more voice with Virginia Newtons to sound out against Thames. I could be wrong."


Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but she's not on the IHL board. She is on the IHL staff. Major distinction.

__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"I am not a wormtongue. Things happen to me too out of the blue. I know things about USM. I will post no more."

 


I know things about USM.


RC: that is hardly a fair note to leave on.


If you are an ally you need to share. If what you know is so devastating it discourages you -- then those of us who are in the trenches need to know.


 



__________________
Cleansweep

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"I am not a wormtongue. Things happen to me too out of the blue. I know things about USM. I will post no more."
RC, That would be a shame - I share many of your views if not your ultimate conclusion.  LVN, we have all had bad and discouraging days lately.  Be a little patient and supportive, please. Part of the value of this website has been people coming from different perspectives for a common goal.  93% of the voting faculty - an unheard of number!  It would be a shame if posters on the website started only saying what each other wanted to hear.  It ain't over 'til it's over. 

__________________
lddad

Date:
Permalink Closed

i'm cooking right now but i've read this thread and will come back later.  but not to make light of what is going on at usm, i found this statement on another discussion board that might predict what we are or will be doing in the future.  possibly a mission/vision statement. 


"We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.  We have done so much for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."


 



__________________
USM Sympathizer

Date:
Permalink Closed

Reality Check,


In most cases I would be sorry to see anyone leave the board, but I do hope you won't post again the kind of message that began this thread.  Even if you are ultimately proved right (and I think there is some good reason to think you will ultimately be proved wrong), the only real effect such postings can have is to help create the very outcome they claim to dread.  By discouraging people, you make it less likely that they will resist and prevail.  Please read Truth4USM's posting at the very top of the board; it reviews all the victories that have occurred in the past few weeks.  Would you have predicted any of these?  I suspect not.  No wonder LVN had her suspicions about your motives, even if those suspicions were not true.  The effect of such messages as yours is basically negative, so it is probably be best, if we are to have any hope at all of prevailing, that no more such messages be posted (or that they not be taken too seriously if they are posted).



__________________
RealityCheck--last time

Date:
truth
Permalink Closed

I said I will post no more.

Good luck in the checkmate within a checkmate within a checkmate, all going on with all due visciousness as I type.

This game is a much higher stakes game than anyone on this board realizes.

I am very sorry for making some of you feel uncomfortable, and I wish you total success.

__________________
present professor

Date:
RE: RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: lddad
"i'm cooking right now but i've read this thread and will come back later.  but not to make light of what is going on at usm, i found this statement on another discussion board that might predict what we are or will be doing in the future.  possibly a mission/vision statement.  "We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.  We have done so much for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."  "

Iddad:


That quote made me laugh -- and it needs to be on a T-shirt.


Sort of the usm academic/staff equivilent of "Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime." And very appropos for us on this Board.


Thanks.



__________________
present professor

Date:
RE: truth
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck--last time
"I said I will post no more. Good luck in the checkmate within a checkmate within a checkmate, all going on with all due visciousness as I type. This game is a much higher stakes game than anyone on this board realizes. I am very sorry for making some of you feel uncomfortable, and I wish you total success."

Dammit RC:


You are either f***ing with our heads or????  What the hell is the alternative?


If the stakes are so high and you care you ought to be more forthcoming. Otherwise I really have to regard you as someone who is content for whatever reason to sow disocord and doubt by throwing out these ambigious statements as though you have some kind of inside track on the "deeper" game.


If you are going to play then make it worth the stakes.


 



__________________
USM Sympathizer

Date:
RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

Present Professor,


There have been a couple of posters to the board who delight in making these kinds of ambiguous statements, often couched in the language of chess.  I agree with you: they are either almost sadistically delighting in flaunting (without revealing) their own "insider" knowledge, or are playing headgames with the rest of us, or are sowing disinformation.  I hope RC answers your challenge.  At the very least s/he can make his/her purpose clear.  Quo bono?



__________________
Robert Campbell

Date:
RE: I appologize for speaking the truth
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: RealityCheck
"Give me four good reasons we are not marching backward and SFT will be forced out by midsummer? There are none. None at all. "

RealityCheck,


If Thames and Klumb are omnipotent, why was Hanbury fired?


Was it a cruel trick to instill false hope in Thames' opponents?


Why is the Hat Am running editorials that express skepticism about the Thames administration, when normally a Gannett newspaper in a town of 50,000 would be kissing up to the Board and printing whatever Thames wanted it to print?


Is that carefully plotted misdirection?


When was the last time that the IHL Board got negative publicity on a regular basis?


We are talking about some bad people who wield too much power.  But the last time I checked they weren't in charge of the universe.


Robert Campbell



__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
" RealityCheck, If Thames and Klumb are omnipotent, why was Hanbury fired? . Robert Campbell"

USM SYMP and Bob Campbell:


Good posts and thanks for the help.



__________________
Robert Campbell

Date:
RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

RealityCheck,


You also say that that Thames, once his hold on power is reaffirmed, will conduct an unprecedented purge at USM.


You mean, a bigger purge than the infamous Governor Bilbo conducted, back in June 1930?


Bilbo gave marching orders to the College Board (the same body that mismanages state universities in Mississippi today) that resulted in 179 faculty members and administrators at 5 colleges in the state system being fired. One of them was the predecessor institution of USM.


Bilbo's sole purpose in conducting the purge was to reward his political allies with jobs in the state college system.


SACS (which existed back then, too) yanked accreditation from all 5 colleges.  Bilbo didn't care.


Bad as Haley Barbour's attitude seems to be, do you think he's going to do what Bilbo did?


Robert Campbell



__________________
Topplethetop

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: present professor
"And word was she left unhappy . . . . "

Left unhappy and with a good deal of knowledge about where the financial problems are hidden.  The financial angle is the ONLY one that will "topple the top" - the only one that has the potential to take them ALL out.  Until then, we're trying to eliminate or neutralize them one at a time, we're diverting focus, keeping them on the defensive, and minimizing the damage they can wreak.  All the things that are happening - the letter-writing, the communication with IHL, the press, the faculty senate resolutions, the Open Documents requests, etc. are like flies swarming around their heads.  These things won't make THE difference but they keep the pressure turned up while the financial angle is, hopefully, being pursued and while, in a variety of areas, the faculty is acting to reclaim some control through its elected bodies.  Ultimately, it will be a matter of outlasting until the powers that be have had enough. 


 



__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"RealityCheck, You also say that that Thames, once his hold on power is reaffirmed, will conduct an unprecedented purge at USM. You mean, a bigger purge than the infamous Governor Bilbo conducted, back in June 1930? Bilbo gave marching orders to the College Board (the same body that mismanages state universities in Mississippi today) that resulted in 179 faculty members and administrators at 5 colleges in the state system being fired. One of them was the predecessor institution of USM. Bilbo's sole purpose in conducting the purge was to reward his political allies with jobs in the state college system. SACS (which existed back then, too) yanked accreditation from all 5 colleges.  Bilbo didn't care. Bad as Haley Barbour's attitude seems to be, do you think he's going to do what Bilbo did? Robert Campbell"
Actually Bob, I think Ol' Miss was the first university to be censured by the AAUP . . . .

__________________
present professor

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Topplethetop
" Left unhappy and with a good deal of knowledge about where the financial problems are hidden.   . . . .  some control through its elected bodies.  Ultimately, it will be a matter of outlasting until the powers that be have had enough.   "
Incidently, I believe in the last HA articvle about the Board (or maybe two articles ago, there was a one sentence blurb that indicated that the auditor had been given permission to get involved (but they hadn't yet gotten the Senate's officially). Did anyone else see this?

__________________
Jameela Lares

Date:
Cheer up, folks
Permalink Closed

Hey, cheer up, y'all!  What's with this imagining that our own fallible, variable, changeable human emotions are any true test of reality? 


Here's a bracing quatrain for you from Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Concord Hymn"):






BY the rude bridge that arched the flood,
 

  Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
 

Here once the embattled farmers stood,
 

  And fired the shot heard round the world.


And here's some bracing prose from C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair:


Friends, when once a man is launched on such an adventure as this, he must bid farewell to hopes and fears, otherwise death or deliverance will both come too late to save his honor and reason.


If we only do things with an assurance of victory, we will surely fail.  If, however, we do things because they are right, then we have already won the greatest victory.


Take it to the bank.



__________________
Bay Rat

Date:
RE: College Board Meeting
Permalink Closed

The poster "Reality Check" may be engaging in an overindulgence of gloom and doom. They haven't turned off the lights at USM, yet.

However, any young, talented, ambitious faculty member would be a fool if he contemplated continuing his or her career at USM.

This year's exodus of faculty will look like small potatoes compared to what will happen in the next two years. The Glamser and Stringer firings came after the job season. No longer are people waiting for positions at so-called "better institutions". They will be applying anywhere and everywhere. Nationally, the economy is picking up, and next year's job season should be more favorable as universities engage in catch-up hiring. Don't think that a speedy removal of president Thames will change this, either. USM's problems are too deep and many have already made the decision to leave.

Even with the tough job market in many fields, it is still difficult to pursuade faculty to relocate here. USM had for many years the advantage of being a pleasant place to work with fine colleagues to counter the low pay, isolation, and lack of quality public services in Hattiesburg. That is no longer true. Of course, USM will continue to make hires. We won't get people from Yale, Vanderbilt, UNC-Chapel Hill, and their ilk. We'll recruit from the second and third tier southern institutions with whom we once successfully competed in prestige and quality.

The thing to look for is not so much numbers as specific highly-talented individuals; its always the best who head for the door first. I expect Business and the better COAL departments to disintegrate first. In the former, hiring markets are tight; the latter have a large number of young, productive well-credentialed faculty approaching promotion-- ripe for the picking.

For South Mississippians and USM Alums, the institution is worth fighting for. This is your home and your college. Good luck. For the faculty, we only get one life, and this place no longer is not an attactive setting to spend it.


__________________
elliott

Date:
Permalink Closed

Bay Rat ----


Yours is one of the best posts I've seen on this whole board.  It is the best as far as this particular subject (faculty flight, etc.) is concerned.



__________________
Doug Chambers

Date:
Permalink Closed

Just checking in - grades finally done!  Of course, BR is right, though I do know a couple of people who have in fact turned down other possible jobs (though not teaching ones), in part to stay and fight.  Believe it or not.  The next year will certainly be determinative.  If the exodus continues, and especially those of us at that "picking ripe" point, as in fact there is a whole cadre of youngish people who are just hitting our strides research-wise, then the die may be cast.  Still, this apparently is always how SFT has won - wear them down, count on people being rational and getting the he*l out.  I think he is supremely vulnerable, and given his remarkable incompetence I think we can count on some further stoopid decision/act soon.  Perhaps I am an optimist?

__________________
USM Sympathizer

Date:
Permalink Closed

quote:
Originally posted by: Doug Chambers
"I think he is supremely vulnerable, and given his remarkable incompetence I think we can count on some further stoopid decision/act soon.  Perhaps I am an optimist?"

 


Dear Doug (if I may),


No, I think you are doing what any good historian does -- examining the solid record of the past in order to understand the immediate future.  SFT seems extremely inept; each week brings a new blunder, and there now seems to be a good chance that his PUC may get entirely out of his control.  I hope this happens before the next IHL so SFT may have to squash the PUC publicly, thereby demonstrate how shallow is his commitment to real dialogue.


Meanwhile, let me just say that you have acted the part of a real hero in all of this, and if you yourself ever have to leave USM, it will be with the tremendous admiration (and practical support) of many people both on and off campus.



__________________
LVN

Date:
Permalink Closed

Sympathizer, apparently YOU stay up too late too.  I've been thinking about your invitation.  Get three character references and tell me that A. you're a man and B. you're not a lawyer (well, tax law is maybe ok)


FS just think, if all goes keplooyey, you can keep the board up as a dating service for serious thinkers!



__________________
Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.
Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> College Board Meeting
Tweet this page Post to Digg Post to Del.icio.us


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse 		Powered by ActiveBoard