letter by Glenn Harper - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Mar 12, 2005

letter by Glenn Harper

Date: Mar 12, 2005

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050312%20/OPINION03/503120335/1014/OPINION

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Thanks, Dean Harper!

Amy Young

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Yes, a dean who tells it like it is - Harper will always be dean in my mind.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Green Hornet
"http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050312/OPINION03/503120335/1014/OPINION If not hot, please make it so................."

Excellent letter Dr Harper. Thanks. Sorry I didn't see your post Green Hornet. Maybe the site manage will remove my duplication.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Thank you, Dean Harper. Your words are heartening--and remind us all over again of how much has been lost in the last two-plus years.

Ellen Weinauer

Date: Mar 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Rporter
"Excellent letter Dr Harper. Thanks. Sorry I didn't see your post Green Hornet. Maybe the site manage will remove my duplication. "

Reporter, no harm, no foul.
I like your insightful posts. Keep up the good job!
GH

Date: Mar 12, 2005

The loss of Dean Harper put, in tangible form, the symbolic loss the university felt when Shelby Freland Thames became president. Dr. Harper was (and still is) a man of the highest integrity who earned the respect of all who served with him. USM was a university where each individual was respected and each individual's contribution to the university was appreciated.

Under Thames, each of us became expendable; displeasing Shelby (often unknowingly) resulted in castigation, demotion or firing. Loyalty and devotion to the institution were supplanted by the need to survive. Banners proclaiming "freeing the power of the individual" became a cruel joke, reminding us that we were not viewed by Thames as individuals, but rather as cogs in a very inefficient machine.

Deans like Terry Harper, Jane Boudreau and Carl Martray squeezed the best out of their faculty and staff.... not through fear and intimidation but through leadership, encouragement and support. Dr. Harper always commented on a job well-done and a few words of praise from him were worth much, much more than midas-tainted money from a morally bankrupt president.

Thank you, Dean Harper, for the years of devoted service to our university and for your successful efforts to build one of the best Colleges of Liberal Arts in the country. Its too bad Shelby Thames isn't half the leader, half the intellectual and half the man that you are.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Excellent post, 1/USMTTT.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Wow. This is a wonderful letter, but also very sad. Imagine spending many years of your life helping to build a fine school, only to have an incompetent wreck, in just a few years, much of what you struggled to construct. My hat (Metaphor Alert!, since I don't wear a hat) is off to Dean Harper.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: USM Sympathizer
"Wow. This is a wonderful letter, but also very sad. Imagine spending many years of your life helping to build a fine school, only to have an incompetent wreck, in just a few years, much of what you struggled to construct. My hat (Metaphor Alert!, since I don't wear a hat) is off to Dean Harper."

Dean Harper:

We have never really met but I have seen you at various places around town. Every time I think of the great Dean massacre you are one of those of whom I think of most. All of us know how the game of change should be played in a university: with grace, style, and always concern for those who are the victims of change. That an incoming President wanted to change his Deans would not have been a suprise to anyone. That Deans would be summoned to breakfast, summarily and simultaneously handed their heads on a platter and then having that event recast less than an hour later in a public forum in which the university and members of the community and press are present must have been humiliating. To not have the opporunity to receive the public thanks that you were due after your long service was criminal and inhumane and utterly outside the acceptable conventions of behavior that we expect at a university. That breach of etiquette and of compassion is something that to this day continues to fuel my anger against this administration which seems to take its lesson from the worshippers of Moloch.

I'm going to make sure to introduce myself next time I see you -- thank you so much for your letter. I don't know about anyone else, but even though it makes me a little sad, it also gives me more courage to keep up the struggle -- and to try to do it with the same class that you and all the Deans have maintained ever since that day.

Thank you

Date: Mar 12, 2005

Superb letter by a stong man! I agree with others that I'll always refer to him as Dean Harper. I did, however, find the following rather ironic for this board:

"Building on a strong foundation laid during the tenure of President McCain, USM had, by the mid 1980s and certainly by the 1990s, become an institution of which faculty and students were justly proud."

The reason? Because McCain always gets slammed on ths board.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: McCain and Able
"Superb letter by a stong man! I agree with others that I'll always refer to him as Dean Harper. I did, however, find the following rather ironic for this board: "Building on a strong foundation laid during the tenure of President McCain, USM had, by the mid 1980s and certainly by the 1990s, become an institution of which faculty and students were justly proud." The reason? Because McCain always gets slammed on ths board."

Well, maybe some of us are hypocrits, some of us actually admired Dr. McCain, and some of us just know when to be polite and diplomatic. You'll have to pick us out of a lineup.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: McCain and Able
"...:"

BTW, absolutely love the nom.

Date: Mar 12, 2005

kick

Date: Mar 13, 2005

kick