By now, the swirl of rumors surrounding W.J. Johnson and his post at USM has reached the board community. I heard snippets of a conversation (between two men who are unknown to me...I'm pretty new to USM, having just moved here two years ago from Texas) tonight at the PP Cafe that made my hair stand on end.

First, some background information that was already known to me (through a church connection):

The CoB has a fundraiser assigned to it from the USM Foundation named Emile Dieth. Mr. Dieth came to USM from Tulane, where he served in a similar capacity. Prior to his employment at Tulane, Mr. Dieth was a divisional president for either Gulf Oil or Exxon before the two merged, and he was apparently very successful in his role as the CEO of that area. In fact, his current activity in reportedly just an advocation in retirement. Dieth was instrumental in helping Alvin Williams (Chairman of Marketing and Management??) secure the $1 million gift for the pharmaceutical sales program.

What I heard tonight was that SFT is livid that Harold Doty bucked his authority in the Grimes memo incident and then staged such a media spectacle separate and distinct from SFT's "program." From what I could tell, SFT is considering pulling Dieth back to the main USM Foundation office for a time. Enter W.J. Johnson (whom these two men referred to only as "Johnson"). Johnson will apparently take Dieth's place in the CoB, "helping" raise money and teaching a couple of accounting courses. Apparently, these two men thought that would be a real laugh...Johnson will obviously undermine Doty. Lack of assistance will put pressure on Doty to raise money on his own (i.e., without help from SFT's resources). SFT will make Doty agree to a lofty fundraising goal and then, when Doty falls short, SFT will terminate him as dean and will replace him with Dieth, who has impressed SFT with his extremely strong industry background and ability to "play ball." Johnson will become the associate dean under Dieth, and SFT will have an industry-controlled CoB.

I am still in shock that these people were talking about this at the PP. I told my wife that, if true, our CoB colleagues are about to be in real trouble.