To those of you who have asked, since my appointment to Southern became formal, I decided to decline the Sun Herald's invitation to me to write an editorial column about the situation at USM.  That column may still be written, but by another Coast resident.

I noticed on the board last night and earlier this morning broad-based reaction to my defense of Dr. Thames.  I was somewhat surprised and pleased at the general tone of the responses, many of them conceding most if not all of my points.  This leads me to believe that opposition to Dr. Thames presidency is being orchestrated by a select few senior faculty in the arts and letters.

There are clearly so participants on this board that support Dr. Thames, including myself, Machiavelli, Albert and others.  There are some that I believe are supporters of Dr. Thames from my interpretation of their tone and comments.  I believe these are Mitch, qbert, and a few others.  Finally, I suspect there are others that could be more supportive if the atmosphere on campus were less combative and that these individuals could feel that retribution would not be had against them from the likes of Doty, Beckett, or other internal leaders on campus.

I would close my remarks by objecting to arguments over sound facts.  USM is ranked among the top schools in the nation by the Carnegie rankings.  Posters who objected to that statement I made are spinning their lies.  I was shown the rankings by USM officials two weeks ago in person. 

Thanks for participating last night to those who did.