My vote for best newspaper in the area is the Student Printz. Second place goes to the Independent.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Add myopic to the list
"How short-sighted can one be?  Attacking the local media?  Media memories are long.  The repercussions will be interesting. Thames expressed cynicism about the newspaper's coverage of Southern Miss, saying there was "more accurate coverage in The Clarion Ledger and The Sun Herald than in our own paper." Asked for clarification afterward, Thames said others shared his opinion of the newspaper. "If you talk to business leaders in this community, they'll tell you the same thing - and I don't understand it," Thames said. "I don't understand why the Hattiesburg American appears to always take a negative connotation relative to this institution." "

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SFT is just avoiding addressing the real problems.........When you can't address the problems you attack the messenger.

USM is going to have a much more difficult time climbing out of the bottom of 4th tier cesspool that has been created than it had falling into it. Klumb may be able to snap his fingers and save a million dollars or more , but nobody - not the IHL and not even a new university president - is going to be able to perform that sort of on-the-spot miracle in elevating USM's deteriorated academic standing among its peers nationwide. The really good schools have built their reputations over extended periods of time and with experienced and knowledgable leadership and with support from their governing boards. There is no such thing as an instantaneous fingersnapping miracle in the world of acdemics. Only in athletics do you find that. The walls of your academic cesspool are slimy and slippery - very easy to slide down to the bottom and into the slime  - but very difficult and painstakingly slow to climb up, and even then it must be inch-by-inch with filthy muck under your fingernails. Those that remain are surely in it for the long-haul.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Swan Song
"http://www.aaup-usm.org/2004%20Pages/2004-saucier%20letter.html remember when Saucier tried to warn the community??"

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Swan Song, I think it's important to paste the text of this letter here again:

Thames lacks temperament, skills to lead university

To hear Dave Elliot of WLOX-TV state last Sunday evening that Shelby Thames told him he was hired by the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning to "clean house at USM" amazed me.

Until I heard this assertion, I was laboring under the obvious delusion that USM was a pretty fine university, one at least as good as Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

Now, it seems, we have been harboring an institution in our midst riddled with bad professors and rampant mismanagement. For 23 years I served as a top administrator under USM presidents William McCain and Aubrey Lucas. And while I did not agree with all of their decisions, I saw no evidence of gross mismanagement. I did see a university on the rise, one that was an asset to South Mississippi with the promise, because of its faculty, of becoming even better.

In the late 1970s Shelby Thames was promoted to the position of vice president of regional campuses. Almost immediately he began to put such pressure on his subordinates that he created turmoil and unrest among them.

In spite of this record, Dr. Lucas chose to name him executive vice president of USM. In this larger arena, Shelby's management techniques created even greater unrest and dissension.

Dr. Lucas finally called a special meeting at the Gulf Park campus with his deans and top administrators to consider how the unrest could be ended and peace restored to the university community. Not until the second day -- when Dr. Lucas promised to write a letter stating that he would tolerate no reprisals against any administrator for any comments made and they had a copy of this letter in their hands -- were the deans and other administrators willing to state their true feelings and concerns about Shelby's leadership.

At the close of the discussion Dr. Lucas asked whether they thought Shelby could change enough to become a competent administrator. Of the 15 people who were present, only Dr. Karen Yarbrough, a close associate of Shelby's, voted yes.

Sadly, Shelby was allowed to continue as executive vice president in spite of this overwhelming vote of no confidence until he stepped down following an incident concerning a personnel matter. In spite of the guarantee by Dr. Lucas that Shelby would not be able to take reprisals against us, all of the deans became a target of Shelby's petty vindictiveness.

Some became physically ill as a result; some stepped down and others left the university.

Shelby Thames has neither the temperament nor the people skills necessary to provide leadership to a university community. He is incapable of seeing any way but his as the the right way and, like an elephant, never forgets what he perceives as an injury done to him.

I have known him for nearly 40 years and was instrumental in helping him rise in the university, though I deeply regret that fact. The bottom-liners and power-brokers who put Shelby in as president will, if they do not demand his resignation, live to regret it.

If past history is not a warning, nothing is.

--Gene D. Saucier, a resident of Hattiesburg, is a former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives

We cannot forget what SFT has done to USM's national reputation!  Not now, and not ever!!

NO FRICKIN' QUARTER!