I've been playing massive catch-up since I got back to Clemson.  I've barely had time to look at the board...  I know that Amy Young and Mike Forster and Mark Klinedinst and Myron Henry, all of whom contributed to hosting my visit to Hattiesburg, are in the same situation.  (The difference being that a Clemson professor in a smoothly functioning department doesn't deserve hardship pay, and they do.)

But that's how shared governance works.  Faculty members' priorities will always be with teaching and research, not with management.  Yet our role in management is far too vital to be turned over to the kinds of full-time administrators that universities usually end up with.

Making due allowances for the fact that I was on campus during Spring semester crunch time, I came away with the impression that a large and significant group of professors at USM will never give in to Shelby Thames.  They are the main reason why the lights are still on at USM, and,  tired as most of them are after 3 years, they are working to end his misrule with tenacity, resourcefulness, and a commitment to the university's mission that Thames and his operatives can't begin to fathom. 

I also gained a new appreciation, not so much of the viciousness and duplicity of Thames and his crew, but their transcendent incompetence.    For instance, while Gregg Lassen's office has definitely swept some department accounts, it scarcely keeps track of others, and has to be reminded which department they belong to.

I wish I could say that Thames will be swept out of office pronto, because that's what USM needs, and what everyone who has suffered under him deserves.   But I haven't changed my estimate of the most likely outcome--no earlier than the May meeting of the IHL Board, Thames will be declared a lame duck.  It might take longer, if the Board feels it needs more time to assemble the strong-commissioner model that it's been working toward.  Constant vigilance will be needed, against the vindictive actions that everyone knows Thames will attempt during his lame-duckitude, and the messes he and his top operatives will try to leave behind.

But Thames has united the faculty of USM to a degree seldom seen at a university, and if he does spend nearly a year as a president with an expiration date, there will be many opportunities for faculty groups to take the initiative and press for policy changes that will not only reverse some of the damage he has done, but radically reduce the likelihood of future Thamesianism.

Robert Campbell