July 21, 2008

Ousted Alabama A&M U. President Sues Trustees and Former State Official

The ugly split between Alabama A&M University’s Board of Trustees and its former president, Robert R. Jennings, just got uglier. The board fired Mr. Jennings in March after investigating perks received by his former executive assistant. Now Mr. Jennings is suing trustees for allegedly conspiring against him, according to The Huntsville Times.

The lawsuit, filed last week, asserts that a trustee and a former state official began an “orchestrated effort” to fire Mr. Jennings months before his actual ouster. Mr. Jennings also says that the official, Malcolm Thomas, a former director of the Governor’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, pressured him to hire a specific contractor for a dormitory-renovation project and promised him a kickback.

Mr. Thomas denied the charge, calling it a “first-class lie,” according to the newspaper. The board’s lawyer said none of the lawsuit’s assertions about Mr. Thomas’s conduct have “any relevance or meaningful connection” to actions taken by trustees. —Paul Fain

Comments

1. Timmy, crackerjack fundraising skills would be a help, and growing up with the Governor as a best friend would be very advisable.

   — Al    Jul 21, 03:39 PM    #

2. Timmy, always remember that faculty and staff are interchangeable cogs, easily replaced, and with no human needs or emotions. They are not deserving of respect or honesty. They are merely raw material that you may manipulate at will to achieve your own career objectives.

   — Noreen    Jul 21, 05:24 PM    #

3. Timmy,You can survive for quite a long time as a president by surrendering all your integrity at the moment of your appointment; afterwhich you fully meet every wish, desire, whim, of your trustees whether legal or not; and vow to be the fall guy when any one or more of the trustees are caught with their pants down or their bank accounts unjustifiably up.

   — Bill    Jul 21, 10:00 PM    #

4. Yeh if you could have your own statewide lottery program you could be a great fundraiser….However, Virginia will not let Penelope have her own at Radford but she spends like she has one. She wants to eliminate half of the full time faculty positions and hire adjuncts which are in plentiful supply in Radford, Va. The governor thinks that is great for it will be like raising a $200 million endownment. But those nasty accreditors don’t like it.
   Who knows if she keeps hiring lottery officials to run the university there will be no use for faculty at all. Students can play the lottery all day and the winners…whoopee.

   — Fred D.    Jul 22, 07:23 AM    #

5. Timmy,The best teacher for a college president would be Kern Wildenthal in Dallas at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.He can trade some VIP medical care complete with an on call doctor 24/7 for donations.Then he can take the donations buy expensive wine have a party and raise more money.Then he takes the money goes to Europe and buys expensive gifts for donors.He uses donations to buy his way into high society and gets more donations.Best racket in town.

   — Jeff    Jul 22, 07:37 AM    #

6. Another attribute: Continually boast to the press and in presentations how great you are as a president. It matters not whether your “walk matches your talk.” However, you will probably have to change jobs every few years because the truth eventually comes out that your “walk and talk” are mismatched. But you will likely be able to find another school who will hire you because it will initially be very impressed with your “talk.”

   — Zack    Jul 22, 09:22 AM    #

7. Timmy, make sure you always publicly ask for campus guidance before making a decision—then do whatever you want without paying the least bit of attention to the advice you were given. Also, talk all the time, listen almost never. Keeps the game always in your court. And once you hire someone, NEVER admit it was a mistake. No matter how incompetent the person is, they will always be loyal to you, and tell you what you want to hear vs. the truth. Oh, and seclude yourself in your office—getting out on campus might lead to those awkward moments of finding out the truth, which your minions are carefully hiding from you.

   — learned the hard way    Jul 22, 10:01 AM    #

8. Have we all descended into madness? It seems everywhere you turn there is all manner of foolishness going on. It started far away from academia in the corporate arena but alas, it has finally made it into the hallowed halls of higher education. Where are the chancellors, presidents and professors of years past that my parents still speak of fondly? What is happening to our society and when do we wake up and take notice that something is gravely wrong instead of continuing to joke about it. I am so fearful of what kind of society my grade school children are going to encounter in the coming years when they seek higher education opportunities. Has it always been this bad or has the internet and age of instant information made us all weary and cynical? Somebody please help us..

   — Concerned    Jul 22, 11:10 AM    #

9. Time for a reality check. There are over 3,000 college presidents. Very few are dishonest or incompetent. They have highly political jobs and sometimes when the wheels turn you get crushed through no fault of your own. Other times you get credit for successes you had nothing to do with. I know — I was a president for 20 years. I only met one incompetent/ corrupt president in all my years in higher education.
   Let me suggest to my colleagues who wrote above — be a bit less cynical. Or at least be constructive. Anybody can go for the cheap shot – most of you did.
   Your positions are as foolish as those who say that all business persons are dishonest and crooks. It just isn’t so.

   — Gustavo Mellander    Jul 22, 11:47 AM    #

10. “There are over 3,000 college presidents. Very few are dishonest or incompetent.”

    And you just dropped in from which star system? Check out Bernie Machen at Florida, making between half a million and a million per year at a place where he just recommended dropping Ph.D. programs in French, German, and philosophy.

    Taking a voluntary pay cut would be the responsible thing to do in these troubled times. Will it happen? Don’t hold your breath.

    (Bernie, could you survive on $300,000 a year, while saving three essential Ph.D. programs?)

    I remember seeing Dallas Bailey at Salem (WV) College in the 1970s, riding a mower around campus to cut the grass—and it was not for show.

    What do we have now? Bernie came to Gainesville with two motorcycles, one a Harley and the other a BMW. He passed on staying in the presidential mansion and bought his own house some distance from campus.

    What happened to academia? I blinked and it disappeared, at least as I knew it.

    Landrum Kelly

    — Landrum Kelly    Jul 22, 12:58 PM    #

11. President Mellander, with all do respect, there may not have been any weasels in the academy hen house when you were a president but that particular breed of vermin is well represented now. There is the state-wide uproar in the Alabama community college system in which several college presidents have been charged with everything from financial aid fraud to hiring wives, daughters, sons, husbands, etc. as expensive consultants.

    And then there is the Priscilla Slade mess over at Texas Southern in Houston. Former president Slade was accused of using university funds to furnish her mansion. Her shopping spree included landscaping her home, a security system, a pair of life-size Nubian warrior sculptures, a $9000 bed and a $20,000 couch. Her justification was that such things were needed for fund raising. All at a time when the dorms were all but falling down around students’ heads. The VP of finance is in jail for his role and a plea bargain was just reached with Slade. Of interest is the fact that Slade was an accounting professor so her claims that she was “misinformed” by the VP of finance are hard to swallow.

    Perhaps those of us who aspire to be presidents should be less cynical but it is hard in light of such breathtaking examples of self-serving greed and gross incompetence, all at the expense of the communities these individuals were hired to serve.

    — lc    Jul 23, 07:45 AM    #

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