H.A. 3/22/05 - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Feb 22, 2005

H.A. 3/22/05

Date: Feb 22, 2005

Interesting profile... but it does raise a question.

Will the USM Faculty Senate ever consider a resolution of no confidence in Ken Malone, while Beckett is president?

Robert Campbell

Date: Feb 22, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Interesting profile... but it does raise a question.
Will the USM Faculty Senate ever consider a resolution of no confidence in Ken Malone, while Beckett is president?
Robert Campbell"

Sounds highly unlikely...who is incoming FS president for next year? Have officers been elected yet?

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: truth4usm/AH
"

Sounds highly unlikely...who is incoming FS president for next year? Have officers been elected yet?"

Let's not jump to conclusions! Beckett's OK.

Bill Powell is president-elect.

Amy Young

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Amy Young
"

Let's not jump to conclusions! Beckett's OK.

Bill Powell is president-elect.

Amy Young"

Let me clarifiy...I think it seems highly unlikely that a no-confidence vote will be called for Ken Malone by the Faculty Senate. That's not mutually exclusive with Beckett being a good guy! Believe me, I know how Faculty Senates work, and it depends as much (if not more!) on the individual senators as the President to get support for any initiative.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Having a No Confidence vote on the president was hard enough. I can't imagine having a no confidence vote for staff who is just following orders. What is the history on this? Has any university faculty senate held a no confidence vote for a staff member?

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Lisa Mader is staff. Ken Malone in his 10% new business recruiting position is staff, that leaves him 90% operations.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

A staff person? Reporter, are you kidding? Malone is an upper administrator.

In fact, though this not reflected on the org chart, the Provost reports to Malone, who in turn reports to the President. Only Lassen wields comparable power at USM, and even he may not be able to give direct orders to the Provost.

What's more, Malone is just as representative of the institutional culture that Thames has foisted on USM as Angie Dvorak was.

The Senate's recent resolutions have gone to an IHL Board that is at best too divided to take swift action, at worst still controlled by anti-USM actors who are keeping their heads down for a while until the bad publicity quits flying. The Board has not even formally acknowledged receiving anything that the Senate sent it.

And Ken Malone's initiatives have directly threatened USM's accreditation. Does anyone need to be reminded that he was at the January 21st meeting that led to the Black Friday memo?

Forget about the FS President for a minute (though anyone who knows faculty senates knows how much power the FS president has to shape the agenda). Why would any Senator at USM (other than the 2 who are carrying water for Thames) not want to consider a resolution of no confidence in Ken Malone? Why would he or she not regard it as of the greatest urgency?

When I hear people worrying out loud that there is no precedent for a vote of confidance in a 45% Chief Operating Officer of a satellite campus/ 45% Department Chair / 10% miscellaneous administrator, so it's not even worth thinking about doing something like that, I become really afraid that G. W.'s Strategic Advisor is right, and that Shelby Thames, despite his never-ending supply of foolishness, will keep right on eating the faculty's lunch until there's nothing left to eat.

Robert Campbell

Date: Feb 23, 2005

"having a No Confidence vote on the president was hard enough. I can't imagine having a no confidence vote for staff who is just following orders."

I wouldn't put anything past the facutly senate, stringer, and campbell. If you want to start targeting staff, faculty, and students who support thames, these are the people who you need to get to do it.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Forget about the FS President for a minute (though anyone who knows faculty senates knows how much power the FS president has to shape the agenda). "

Robert, a minor point, but while I agree that a Faculty Senate chair can shape an agenda, s/he will go nowhere without major support from the senators. It just won't happen.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: yearight
"If you want to start targeting staff, faculty, and students who support thames, these are the people who you need to get to do it."

What's the point of "targeting" that small of a group? Isn't it nonsporting? Kinda like hunting an endangered species?

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: truth4usm/AH
" Let me clarifiy...I think it seems highly unlikely that a no-confidence vote will be called for Ken Malone by the Faculty Senate. That's not mutually exclusive with Beckett being a good guy! Believe me, I know how Faculty Senates work, and it depends as much (if not more!) on the individual senators as the President to get support for any initiative."

As a faculty senator I agree here with truth.

I think this is a strategic issue rather than an issue of agreement/disaggrement vis a vis Malone's qualities. To me a vote on Malone seems anti-climactic, to tell you the truth. Almost petty. We have pretty much indicated in almost all of our correspondence that our lack on cofindence is not simply in Shelby but in his administration. I think it is pretty clear what that means so I'm not sure what a vote on Malone really gains us.

In addition, many senators are not as much in the loop on the various Malone scams (it isn;t easy to keep up). So getting everyone up to speed would be a pretty major effort and frankly I think we have other issues on the plate we need to deal with as well. Don't forget we are still conducting business here -- life at the university goes on. Our current necessary precoccupation with watchdogging the administration has meant there are many things a faculty senate normally attends to that are going undone.

I'm not against a Malone vote per se -- I just don;t know that I feel it worth the effort under the curcumstances. Please weight that in your criticisms -- from a distance it may not look like Fac Sen is doing anything when we aren;t creating votes of no confidence. In fact -- we are still trying to keep the senate business running.

Dave is a good guy. I don't always agree with him. But he is a white hat who may be more sensitve than I might be to trying to maintain a level of apparent cooperation between facsen and the administration. But that is an honest point of view. He does not hide it and it is one of the reasons we elected him.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: yearight
""having a No Confidence vote on the president was hard enough. I can't imagine having a no confidence vote for staff who is just following orders."
I wouldn't put anything past the facutly senate, stringer, and campbell. If you want to start targeting staff, faculty, and students who support thames, these are the people who you need to get to do it."

Faculty senate represents the whole faculty. Stringer is busy at another school. Campbell is busy at another school. So what was your point??

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Don't worry, Monique! Given the poor grammar of the post to which you're responding, I suspect it's just Albert pretending to be someone else. And we all know that we can disregard Albert because he hasn't been "red-blooded male" enough to accept the challenge to explain why he defends Shelby.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Stephen,

Sorry... that was supposed to be vote of no confidence in my final paragraph, above.

Of course the USM Faculty Senate has plenty of other things to do. But if Thames remains in power long enough to get USM deaccredited, there won't be any routine business left for the Senate to conduct. (And if Thames somehow got what he wanted while dodging deaccreditation, there would be business to conduct--but no Faculty Senate to conduct it.)

Perhaps the Faculty Senate leadership is privy to information about the Board's intentions that no one else has. But barring such special access, it's prudent to assume that the anti-USM, pro-Thames faction on the Board is still very powerful (we can only hope, in fact, that it isn't so powerful as to be able to assure Thames another four years in office). It's not prudent to wait for the anti-Thames Board members to announce in April or May or whenever that his contract will not be renewed in 2006.

Why allow Thames any quiet period of time in which he can continue to pursue his destructive agenda with minimal publicity? If his supporters on the Board are trying to keep their heads down now, a quiet period may be all they need to raise their profile again, get rid of impediments like Richard Crofts, and extend their guy's reign at USM.

The strategic issue, then, isn't who is more important. Does anyone who reads this Board regularly think that any other President of USM would have hired Ken Malone? Or that anyone who replaces Shelby Thames as President won't rather quickly get rid of him?

The strategic issue is how you keep the heat on the Thames administration, and on the IHL Board, until the Board gets sick of the adverse publicity once and for all, and gets rid of the burden that Thames has come to represent.

Putting the spotlight on Malone is one way to keep heat on the Thames administration. Is it any pettier than putting the spotlight on Angie Dvorak was, less than a year ago? Didn't the departure of Angie Dvorak diminish Thames' ability to project his power? Wouldn't the departure of Ken Malone weaken Thames further?

And... Why shouldn't claims to faculty status by an administrator who has no faculty appointment, and has no qualifications to teach the course that he teaches, be getting publicity? Has the Faculty Senate's outrage threshold been raised so high, after nearly three years of Shelby Thames, that most Senators no longer care about this kind of crap?

Robert Campbell

PS. Aren't the various "Malone scams," as you call them, among the most important things that every Faculty Senator should be up to date on?

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"it's prudent to assume that the anti-USM, pro-Thames faction on the Board is still very powerful (we can only hope, in fact, that it isn't so powerful as to be able to assure Thames another four years in office). "

While I don't know if a no-confidence vote in any member of the Thames administration, including Shelby, is the right thing, I do believe that Shelby keeps putting human shields out in front to protect himself. Jay Grimes was the most recent one - taking the public humiliation for writing a letter that was clearly off the Thames agenda. First, Grimes got beat up in the Doty rebuttal. Then, Shelby publicly apologized for the letter and backpaddled from it at the order of the commissioner, further embarassing Grimes. Next, Shelby became emboldened after the IHL failed to act regarding his disastrous presidency last Thursday. Finally, Shelby discussed first in the HA, then in his letter to the faculty how disappointed he was that these matters were being discussed in the media when the fact is that his own provost Jay Grimes gave the letter to the media and granted the first interview, undoubtedly with Shelby's complete knowledge and support. Point is that Shelby will throw anyone to the wolves to save his own hide -- anyone.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Crawfishin',

There is a difference between Grimes and Malone, however.

Grimes has been effective in other roles at USM (or so I'm told) but doesn't seem to have been cut out to be Provost. Besides, Thames won't let anyone exercise the genuine authority of a Provost, because that would weaken his iron control of the university.

Malone has no history of positive contributions to USM. He was hired in a "Thames job search" to be Thames' point man ("Thames-by-proxy," as some call him). He doesn't have to be ordered to do what he does; he just follows his mentor's example.

Of the two, Malone is by far the more dangerous.

Robert Campbell

Date: Feb 23, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Of the two, Malone is by far the more dangerous. Robert Campbell"

No doubt about it, I was not disagreeing. My point was that Shelby will use one after another of his inner circle to shield himself. Anything that gets done to point out the weaknesses in his administrative team must be linked to his ineptitude as a university president so that he can't continue to deflect blame.

Date: Feb 23, 2005

Dangerous?

With a face like this?

Come on, Dr. Campbell, I'm sure he's sweet as sugar - don't let the people he's crushed along with SFT tell you any different....

Date: Feb 24, 2005

kick jr. sez: Malone must go!

Date: Feb 24, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Monique de Guerre
" Faculty senate represents the whole faculty. Stringer is busy at another school. Campbell is busy at another school. So what was your point??"

Stringer didn't do anything when he was here, so why would he be busy anywhere else?

As for Campbell, he can't be busy. He spends all his time pontificating on this board. He needs a real job!

Date: Feb 24, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Machiavelli
" Stringer didn't do anything when he was here, so why would he be busy anywhere else? As for Campbell, he can't be busy. He spends all his time pontificating on this board. He needs a real job!"

TROLL ALERT. Remember, don't feed the trolls.

Date: Feb 24, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Machiavelli
" Stringer didn't do anything when he was here, so why would he be busy anywhere else? As for Campbell, he can't be busy. He spends all his time pontificating on this board. He needs a real job!"

Mach,

Gary Stringer happens to be the guy who conceived of, organized, and oversaw one of the most complicated -- and most important -- works of literary scholarship of our era. The books he and his team have produced (and are still producing) will be read and valued long after you (and I, for that matter) are in the grave. By the way, what major accomplishment have you achieved in YOUR life?

Date: Feb 24, 2005

You feed us with every post, especially when you resort to the time honored tactic of... name calling! Sticks and stones...

Date: Feb 24, 2005

Mach,

No answer? What will YOU be remembered for, especially in view of the fact that even Shelby has admitted that Gary Stringer was a first-class (and highly productive) scholar?