here's another old one from the HA, linked on the AAUP front page:

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