The recent HA mention of that $500K cost of digging out from under the SACS axe made me start thinking about the extraordinary  (or more properly, unnecessary) costs associated with the Thames presidency,  to wit:

1. Sunk costs such as the salaries of Angie D,  Mark D,  and Hanbury,  who did essentially nothing for their fat salaries while occupying questionable, manufactured positions as lackeys in the Thames court.  Oh yeah,  include Malone in that bunch too.

2. The cost of Thames'  firing of Glamser and Stringer,  including the legal expenses to USM plus the cost of paying Frank and Gary to go away and remain silent,  plus the redundant cost of paying other faculty members to teach the classes they would normally have taken during their two year payout.

3. The economic cost to USM of losing Gary's John Donne Variorum project.

4. The $500K (+ probably more that we don't know of) devoted to remedying our SACS mess.

These four big ticket items came to me with only 50% of neurons firing,  and I'd guess others of you could easily think of additional costly SFT snafus.  It seems to me that even if one grants Thames his questionable claim of saving a zillion bucks from the great university reorganization,  he's still pi$$ed away a staggering amount of the meager resources of an already poor university.  The public should be reminded of this disgraceful aspect of his stewardship.  I'd urge anyone who can recall the dollar amounts associated with these and other boondoggles compile a list and call it to the attention of Reuben Mees at the HA.