Monday, January 14, 2002

Southern U. System Board Fires Chancellor of New Orleans Campus By PETER SCHMIDT and FLORENCE OLSEN The Southern University System Board of Supervisors voted Friday to fire Joseph Bouie Jr., chancellor of the university's New Orleans campus. The dismissal followed a highly critical audit of the campus and a messy political fight over Mr. Bouie's decision to fire a vice chancellor who is married to a member of Congress. The decision to fire Mr. Bouie, which was made by a 9-2 vote, with one member abstaining, came one month after Mr. Bouie fired his vice chancellor for academic affairs, Andrea G. Jefferson, and just weeks after the state legislative auditor issued an unfavorable report on the campus. Tony M. Clayton, the board member who introduced the motion to fire Mr. Bouie, cited what he said were serious financial-accounting problems contained in the auditor's report. Supporters and Mr. Bouie himself protested the board's decision to dismiss him, calling it political retribution. The Times Picayune newspaper, in New Orleans, reported on Saturday that a group of about two dozen faculty members protested the board's action with Mr. Bouie on Friday evening in a building lobby, praying, singing "We Shall Overcome," and shouting, "We aren't going for that!" Ms. Jefferson, whom Mr. Bouie fired with the board's unanimous approval, is a former member of Southern University's governing board and is married to U.S. Rep. William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat. She reportedly is planning a lawsuit to reclaim her job as vice chancellor. Mr. Bouie has said he sought Ms. Jefferson's removal so that he could install his own "administrative team." She has said her firing was retaliation for her having raised complaints about unprofessional and unethical behavior by university staff members -- complaints which she said the chancellor refused to act on. This month, the state legislative auditor, Daniel G. Kyle, issued a report that faulted the university for a host of different problems in its accounting system. On Friday, Mr. Kyle said that the irregularities uncovered by the audit were not connected to Ms. Jefferson's complaints, but that he planned to look into her allegations as well. The legislative audit, covering the fiscal year that ended June 2001, found that the university could not properly account for all of the checks that it had written, and had failed to adequately track students' tuition payments and money distributed to students for financial aid or for work performed for the university. The university had overstated its tuition and fee revenues by about $191,000 as a result of its failure to remove from its records students who had begun to register for classes without following through and enrolling, the audit found. The audit also found that the university had written more than $58,000 in checks for student aid that had never been cashed, indicating that students may have never received the funds. Meanwhile, many students were overcharged tuition or were issued tuition refunds in error. The auditor's examination of the time sheets of students who were on the university's payroll found that many of them had been paid for more hours than they had actually worked, or had been working when they were supposed to be in class, in violation of university policy. Mr. Bouie has maintained that a large share of the university's accounting problems were present when he became chancellor in March 2000, and that he has taken steps to clear them up. But, on Friday, Mr. Kyle said: "I didn't question that he inherited a lot of problems. I questioned that he has done anything about them." Mr. Kyle described Mr. Bouie's efforts to remedy the problems cited by the audit as "very superficial," and said, "We were not satisfied with them at all." Leon Tarver, president of the three-campus Southern University System, is expected to appoint someone from the system office as a temporary replacement. Mr. Bouie became chancellor in March 2000. As a tenured faculty member, he can return to teaching in the university's School of Social Work. Background articles from The Chronicle: Southern U. Chancellor to Oust Administrator (1/11/2002) Fight Brews Over Southern U. Chancellor's Drive to Oust Top Aide, the Wife of a Congressman (11/16/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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