I have been told that the reason the grades are not released earlier is due to what I said. Maybe that is not the case, if not I apologize. I do know that grades could be made available as soon as they are input into the system, if desired.

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Originally posted by: LeavingASAP
"
Correction,
Can you provide evidence that "faculty had requested they not do so the keep them from getting phone calls...”?  I'm on Faculty Senate and never heard of such a request.  Grades are not due in until Monday morning (9am) I believe.  I know faculty who had finals on Friday and will have to grade and average all weekend to be able to input grades by Monday.  Ask the registrar about the problems that arise and need corrections.  If everything goes very smoothly, and no faculty is out of town at a meeting so the chair has to correct some glitch, I'm guessing the data may be ready by Monday afternoon or Tuesday.  Just call the registrar’s office and ask why the policy is grades are not ready until Thursday.  But please, please don't assume faculty are the cause and post it as fact without evidence."

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He is killing it "by himself" because he has empowered people such as Malone et.al who do what they are told. He is supported (for now) by the IHL, so he acts with impunity. A person with sufficient back-up can do a great deal of harm "all by himself"

Oh, YOU used the word "killing" not us.

I really think you're wasting your time here, unless your purpose is to create problems. The answers to all your questions have been posted repeatedly on this board and on its predecessor, over the past year. I am sorry you have not found the answers you seek, but you probably never will. If the Faculty Senate's letter to the IHL doesn't sum it up, I certainly can't.

How exactly have you verified we would cause damage? And to whom? And what damage?

In past days, I have been called out by name and insulted personally on this board (posts removed by the webmaster, as are all slanderous remarks.) I call that pretty damaging, and I'm not even at USM.

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Originally posted by: LeavingASAP
"Readers, does that sound like a question or a statement of an opinion?"

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Opinion. Opinion. Opinion. S.O.B. does not appear to have enough facts to make an informed statement.

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Originally posted by: Son of Bubba
"my quest for truth goes on, and I remain uncommitted in the fight."

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Son of Bubba, when I saw your first post I thought you might be a Mugwump who wanted to fairly assess the facts presented by both sides (i.e., someone with their Mug on one side of the fence and their Mug on the other side). But after seeing your recent posts, I think you might merely be a Wump.

I've had all my questions answered. Thanks.

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Originally posted by: Son of Bubb
"Can any of you answer my question about how can Shelby Thames kill the university by himself?  Can't it only be killed in the classroom?"

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He did an awful lot of damage by ignoring a couple of warning letters from SACS over 2 years--until almost too late to do anything about it.  That had nothing to do with the classroom.

 

SoB is probably just trying to keep his eye on the situation as he ponders the wisdom of his career choices.

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Originally posted by: Son of BUbba
"It appears that two groups have chosen up sides and started a game of hate.  I suspect that the hate is splattering on some good people in the middle--faculty, administration, and alumni alike.   Since I have been back in Mississippi, I have met some of each, and for the most part they are people who don't have axes to grind.  They just enjoy teaching kids, running the university, or supporting their alma mater in whatever way they can.  They don't hate, and they don't deserve criticism even if they happen to disagree with one side or the other.  I'm going to do some more research, but I'm beginning to feel that I'll probably be more comfortable in that camp. I've met Shelby Thames, and I have my own impressions.  I'll keep my opinions to myself, but I'll say that he didn't impress me as powerful enough to run the university down the tubes by himself.  I really think he'd have to have a lot of help from the teachers in the classrooms to do that.   It seems logical to me that either he is not actually "killing" the university, and if it is dying, it is dying in the classroom where faculty has control of what happens.   Where am I wrong?   "

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Son of Bubba,

I've yet to see you address a single thing that Shelby Thames has done.  Plenty of documentation of his activities is available on this board, or on links from it.

Obviously, in the three-year battle between Thames and the vast majority of the USM faculty, emotions have been running high.  But without carefully examining of the underlying issues, you are in no position to judge whether the two sides are at odds over things that matter deeply, or are just playing a "game of hate."

Your impression of Thames' power, or lack thereof, isn't worth much unless you know what university presidents normally do, and how that differs from what Thames has been doing.  Your comment that professors must be ruining the university, because Thames can't do it all by himself, indicates that you don't know what professors actually do, or what presidents actually do, or what administrators other than the president actually do.

How can one man, Shelby Thames, kill an entire university?

As president, Thames has the authority to hire and fire the other top administrators.  He has used this authority to replace most of the top administrators who were in place when he arrived.  In January 2003, Thames fired 9 academic deans and replaced them with 5 new ones.  The 9 deans that he fired were at least moderately competent; some were a good deal more than that.  Some of the 5 deans he put in their place would not be considered for the position by another administration; 4 of the 5 have have failed to objec to decisions that hurt their colleges; only one has dared to defy Thames on any issue.

He has created new administrative positions not found anywhere else, like "Chief Operating Officer" and "Director of Risk Management."  He has put people in these positions who would not be able to get hired as administrators at another university; he does not care whether they know what they are doing, or can work with the faculty, so long as they are loyal to him. Jack Hanbury (who was fired a year ago by the state Attorney General) and Ken Malone (who continues to be the most powerful person at USM besides Thames himself) are good examples  of this type of administrator.

He has gotten rid of people in the administration who might have inconvenient knowledge about the university.  One of his first official acts was to fire the entire Institutional Research Office (director and staff), locking them out of their offices.  By doing this he made it nearly impossible to provide factual information about USM to the media and to the public, or even to USM administrators who wanted to make informed decisions.  But he showed off his authority and gave himself latitude to make up whatever numbers would make him look good as president. (Yes, Thames lies to the public, on a regular basis.  It's not hate speech, it's repeatedly documented fact.)

Since day-to-day academic decisions at bigger universities are made by the Provost (sometimes called Vice-President for Academic Affairs), Thames made sure that the position was occupied by a weak administrator that would do whatever Thames told him to.  And whenever he could, Thames just went around the Provost and gave direct orders to Deans (or used a flunky like Ken Malone to give the orders).  By neutering the Provost, Thames grabbed power for himself that normal university presidents don't have.

He has set bad priorities for the university and enforced them vigorously.  Basically just Polymer Science (his home program) and Economic Development (which he imagines will bring many dollars for him to spend and tons of support from his political sponsors) mean anything to him.  The rest of the university is just there to separate students and their families from tuition dollars.  (It's ironic that you talk about the classroom because Thames doesn't care what happens in the classroom; he despises teaching.  Only grant-funded research and "economic development" are worthy activities for professors, as far as Shelby Thames is concerned.) 

Foe example: By firing the Dean of the College of Nursing, running off more than one director of the program, and doing nothing about the crumbling building in which the School of Nursing is housed, Thames has taken what was the best program in Mississippi and made it the worst.  He has done this, pretty much all by himself, even though he never walks into nursing classes and contradicts what the professor is saying.  How has he done it?  He got rid of the administrators the nursing professors wanted to work for, and replaced them with administrators they didn't trust and didn't want to work for.  He promised to take care of the problems with the building and didn't follow through on his promises.  Then in March 2004 he tried to fire Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer, making false charges of criminal activity in public, whipping up his supporters to write letters to the editor about "lazy, whining" faculty, and convincing professors all over USM that he had no respect for any of them.

So the experienced Nursing professors retired early or got jobs at other universities where they would be treated better by an administration that doesn't despise them; Thames made sure that not enough money was available to replace everyone who left; and most of the replacements were Instructors who were usually more poorly prepared and certainly a lot less experienced than the people they were replacing.  (They were also given inadequate support by an administration that considered them of no value and didn't care whether their program did well or poorly.)  So in the end what happened in the classroom was adversely affected--so adversely that nearly 1 out of 4 graduates of the Nursing program are now failing their board exams--but it was all a consequence of Shelby Thames and his misguided policies.  It's not because any of the Nursing faculty started screwing up on purpose, or departed from their lecture notes each day to conduct anti-Thames rallies.

This is a long story already and I haven't even gotten into the other responsibilities of faculty members.  Research is a key part of what faculty members do (when it is funded by grants, even Thames thinks it's important).  What's called "service" is really management activity--helping to run the department, the college, or the university.  Thames' bad policies, his autocratic, vindictive management style (Thames' supporters don't bother to deny that he seeks to destroy anyone who has ever crossed him), and his corps of incompetent administrators who share his low opinion of professors constantly hamper most USM professors in these aspects of their jobs as well.

On top of which, SACS probation has required a major investment of time by more senior professors in committee work that may fail to get USM out of trouble with SACS, because Thames and his top lieutenants keep acting in ways that threaten accreditation.  (One of the many incidents under Thames that you have failed to address is the Black Friday Memo, which ordered Business professors to quit doing "basic research" and commanded them to implement a pet academic program right away, in a manner that would have gotten their college deaccredited by the AACSB and the entire university deaccredited by SACS.)  Those same professors know that if they succeed in getting the probation lifted, despite being lied to by administrators who fail to support their efforts, Thames will claim all the credit and take the lifting of probation as a license to punish the faculty even more.  How would you like to be in their position?

So, yes, Thames has a lot of power.  He has the usual power of a university president, plus the power he has grabbed by neutering the Provost and making his cronies and flunkies more powerful than the Provost or the Deans.  He isn't restained by the usual rules of shared governance, because when he wants something, he usually just orders it done without going to the departments, or the university committees, or the Faculty Senate, and getting their approval.

When his power has been limited, it has been by the direct intervention of the IHL Board or the IHL Commissioner.  It's generally thought that he had to get rid of Angie Dvorak, his former VP for Research, because the Board considered her a liability and wanted her out.  He had to retract the Black Friday Memo because the IHL Commissioner, seeing how it threatened accreditation, ordered him to retract it and announced the order to the newspapers.

This is still far from the whole picture, but maybe it's enough of the picture that you can begin to understand why the faculty of any university would react with anger and distrust to a president who behaves as outrageously as Shelby Thames.

Robert Campbell

You would have a point if I were trying to defend Thames' actions with that argument, but I'm not. In that context your remark seems to justify my fear.

Actually epicedus used the term "dying campus" yesterday. I don't think that my usage of "killing" is much of a stretch. 

Bravo Robert!  However I sorry you devoted so much effort on the SOB Troll who will just blow it off. 

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Originally posted by: Son of Bubba
"it wouldn't justify condemning innocent people just to get even or to win your fight. "

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Just because one is innocent does not stop some people. Evidently you are unaware of the Glamser & Stringer debacle.

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Originally posted by: Son of Bubba
"If you were right, you could celebrate your hero status"

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I have noticed that being in contact with respected people seems to bother you.