stinky cheese man wrote:

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well, since no one has tried to summarize the apology, let me try. Mrs. Cheese was sleeping on it but i gently pried it from her. paragraph 1--he acknowledges his message board response and how it has been interpreted as an attack on the faculty. he says "this is emphatically not the case" and then apologizes for any misunderstanding that might have occurred. paragraph 2--he says he is not critical of the "hundreds of you that work so hard to educate our students and promote the welfare" of USM. he is sorry that his words might have made people think that he diminished the value of our work. paragraph 3--this is a tough one to paraphrase because it's long, and i don't want to do an injustice to what he says. i think he feels that his comments were taken out of context, and he tries to provide the context in which he was making his comments. paragraph 4--he takes ownership for his words-- "the words are mine"-- and he apologizes for "any hurt they might have caused." paragraph 5--he hopes the audience will accept his apology. he appreciates the faculty's labor. he respects the faculty's professionalism. and he is going to support the faculty in "every way possible" to make USM a better university. i hope i have done mr. mclaughlin's apology justice. if not, it is my fault, not his. any misspellings or grammatical errors are mine not his.

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scm,

Thank you for going to the trouble on this.

Robert Campbell

I suppose you could count Toy McLaughlin's letter as a first, since Shelby Thames has never apologized for anything.  Neither have Ken Malone, Angie Dvorak, Jack Hanbury, and on down the line.

But if the letter is as scm described it, McLaughlin hasn't retracted a single false statement he made, either about USM's faculty or about the overall condition of the university.

Nor he had addressed whether it's professional behavior for anyone in his position to say the kinds of things he has said about the faculty of the university that he represents.

Unfortunately, this kind of pseudo-apology has become common in public life.  We get them from politicians, and from CEOs who have gotten into a jam.  Sometimes we even get them from people who have already resigned from their offices, or been booted out.

Here's the problem for the Faculty Senate.  McLaughlin presumably issued the letter so he could continue as President of the USM Foundation.  But who really wants this guy continuing to represent USM in any way, shape, or form?  His crude partisanship for SFT would make him unacceptable to the faculty even if he hadn't made his "high-powered rifle" remark.  What successor to SFT would want him on board, when his loyalty is so obviously to Thames personally, and not to the university?  Plus of course, if McLaughlin makes any further remarks of the "high-powered rifle" variety, the Senate leadership is going to look really foolish for accepting his letter.

A couple of further thoughts.

(1) If McLaughlin does not post his letter of apology on EagleTalk, his failure to do so needs to be pointed out to the media as proof of insincerity. 

(2) Since Dean Doty looks to be facing at least another year under the SFT regime, he could put pressure on McLaughlin's backers and stand up for his college by requesting McLaughlin's removal from the COB's Advisory Board.  This would be a move with no discernible downside, since the worst possible outcomes would be: McLaughlin on the Advisory Board, Thames gunning for the College and for the dean personally... and Grimes gunning for the college and for the dean personally.  Oops, all of those are happening now, aren't they?

Robert Campbell

While I'm sure Toy put his paid apology out there in all sincerity, I've read the thing & it does say that folks should have considered the entire message & group of messages to understand his comment. Well, one has to backtrack from his "shoot from the top of the Dome" post to find his thoughts on "lazy faculty."

And BTW, he didn't make just one slip of the tongue about lazy faculty. It's been pretty common from him for a while & it's even been part of his "sig" on ET. I haven't checked, but he still may be using that sig about university faculty being the only profession without any accountability...