The festering discontent involved a lot more than complaints about racism, according to http://www.themaneater.com/special-sections/mu-fall-2015/ .
I find Earl Van Dorn’s comments about Serena Williams ridiculous. I’m sorry that she seems to threaten you. I find her body amazing.
When drug testers came to Williams’ home she locked herself in a panic room and refused to come out. She said she thought they were there to attack her. I assume the 911 buttons on her phone were broken.
Back to Mizzou…
Bill targets lack of professional diversity among University of Missouri curators
My first thought was, farmers? Why do you need farmers?
My second was “they all can’t be lawyers”. But looking at the current board, yep, they are all practicing lawyers. Not a single CEO in the bunch. That is a bit off. Looking at other board of Trustees/Curators at state flagship universities/systems, they are dominated by CEO’s and executives, with backgrounds from education to medical to high tech with a small number of practicing lawyers.
Putting aside this being another swipe at Mizzou from the legislature, having nothing but lawyers on your board has to be limiting. Democratic nominated lawyers/curators, have little influence with a republican legislature. A group of Missouri based CEO’s/Executives would have much more influence (no matter the party in power). Not having a President, and having a weaken board, is hurting Mizzou’s relationship with the legislature.
Mizzou needs a President (a system President AND a Columbia campus Chancellor), but first it has to deal with it’s board. With the legislature threating not to fill the 3 empty slots till next January (at the end of the current Governor’s term), we’re not making much progress.
University of Missouri does have a College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, so farmers can be relevant, although farmers are not the only relevant profession in the state and the university (other divisions include academics (arts and sciences), business, education, engineering, health professions, human environmental science, journalism, nursing, public affairs).
State Representative Don Rone is from Portageville which is in southeast Missouri. It is a rural area full of farms and truck stops. Appealing to his constituency most likely was the driving factor behind naming farmers as potential board members.
I didn’t realize Mizzou was a Land Grant university. That explains the pickup truck.
Good luck, Mizzou. Good luck, Dr. Click.
These are internal power struggle between faculty / admins at the University. Students are used as puppets. Overall, looks ugly.
These conversations infuriate me. They want more diversity with an increase in black students yet their protests cause a decrease in black applicants. Counterproductive at best. There are much more positive ways of increasing diversity than all of the negative protests and reports. If anything these students have decreased diversity at Mizzou!!
When a professor becomes controversial at a public university, often the individual legislators receive complaints from the citizens. One of the first cases I worked on involved a controversial political science professor offered a position at a large public university. Press wrote and article and all hell broke loose. The Board of regents, the President’s office, the legislature, the student groups (for and against) all became vocal. Parents of students, potential students, or just followers of the basketball team wrote letters, called offices, claimed they’d never give another dime to the school. They were citizens, they had rights!! Offer was withdrawn and prof sued. What came to light was just how lax the hiring and tenure process was almost across all departments. Schools have procedures, and then don’t follow them. My job was to exam the history of hiring and the tenure process. What I found was that almost every single professor hired/tenured in the prior 5 years or so was missing documents in the file. Some didn’t have the require number of recommendations, published articles, hours of teaching, books, awards. Whatever was required, they just didn’t have it. How hard it is to get 3 recommendations if the hiring standards require 3? Why not just have the committee interview 5 candidates if that’s what the handbook requires?
The legislatures DO think they have a right to investigate and withhold funding, just like a parent thinks he has the right to withhold allowance. The Board of Regents are political, elected or appointed. Who doesn’t want to sit in the President’s box at the big game or ride in a parade? I think all of them care less about doing the budget than about the perks.
This woman reminds me of Ward Churchhill. He couldn’t be hired as an ethics prof, so the school hired him as a communications prof. I think the U of Missouri will end up not offering tenure to Ms. Click. They’ll go through the process, but in the end, something will be missing and she’ll be denied tenure.
Actually, she was fired last week. The Board of Curators held a special meeting and voted 4-2 to fire her.
Sounds like UIUC and Steven Salaita.
That’s what I was thinking…
Either way, you can’t offer tenure to a ticking time bomb.
“Actually, she was fired last week. The Board of Curators held a special meeting and voted 4-2 to fire her.”
I think they should have dragged out the review until the end of the semester, and fired her the week after the students left, just to try to calm things down.
Why hide it @Much2learn ? I think they should have had her drawn and quartered on the quad, laws permitting, of course.
The press is not responsible for the terrible choices made by the Board of curators. They should have told that scumbag football coach that he was fired and immediately pulled every single football scholarship of any player who failed to show up for practice the next day. The school would have had to pay a few million in forfeit fees, but enrollment would have gone through the roof.
Instead the opposite has happened. The press has only reported on what has happened, in a fairly friendly fashion.
@EarlVanDorn “Why hide it @Much2learn ? I think they should have had her drawn and quartered on the quad, laws permitting, of course.”
To keep the students focussed on school and midterms and not getting riled up again. That is the main point, after all.
The UM system president and UM chancellor both resigned, so in essence, the school was leaderless. The faculty leadership (the deans from the school of journalism and communications) did step in the next day, interview Click and then suspend her (and remove her courtesy appointment to the school of journalism).
But I agree with your point, the school was leaderless and that made the situation far worse (even before the president and chancellor resigned, they had both responded weakly to the situation, allowing it to build up and get out of control). The AD should have dealt with the (Football team) situation, but I guess he went into hiding…
@Gator88NE If you scratch into the surface of the Missouri problems, the faculty didn’t like the president because he was imposing financial discipline, which was what the Board of Curators hired him to do. As soon as there was a problem they jumped in and passed a resolution of no confidence. The way these faculty members fanned the flames of racial discord for their own purposes is quite evil when you stop to think about it.
The Board of Curators simply saw that million dollar fine coming in less than a week and panicked, without bothering to think what the long-term consequences would be, which are far greater; and they have endangered the academic integrity of other colleges throughout the nation, as no doubt other football teams may be encouraged to copy this behavior. The lost revenue from falling enrollment and the state’s punitive cuts are going to be far greater than any football loss. And current trends show that applications from both top students and black students are way down; the harm to Mizzou is greater than what can be measured in dollars… By painting a false picture of what campus life was like the 1950 group has scared off the very black students that they insist they want the school to attract!
I do sympathize with the students who have been active in the 1950 group on one thing. I suspect that many of them attended all-black high schools, and when they arrive on a campus that pretty fairly represents the overwhelmingly white demographics of Missouri I’m sure it must be a real culture shock. But there is really no way for a flagship university in an overwhelmingly white state not to have an overwhelmingly white student body. This is especially true when you consider things like the ACT scores, which show that 34 percent of white Missouri high school graduates meet all four college readiness benchmarks versus six percent of black graduates.
Meanwhile, Gary Pinkel remains on the university payroll as a “fundraiser.” Whatever good this man did over the years has been more than wiped out by his decision to encourage his team to force the ouster of the school’s leadership. For the university to keep giving this man money is proof to me that the press isn’t responsible for the school’s problems; the school itself responsible for the school’s problems.
I have been very interested in this thread as my S is probably going to MU next year. We had an awesome visit to campus and were impressed by everything we saw, which included meetings with two different departments. Also, MU has been one of the best, if not the best, in responding to my emails with questions. I have emailed Financial Aid, Res Life and Admissions (no, not a crazed Mom, just ironing out some details as this was a late decision). I have gotten responses within a day, usually within hours. Honestly, I didn’t expect this and throughout this process, no other school has been as good about responding. I just checked an email response to a Fin Aid office for a smaller school in the Northeast and it took a full week to hear back. I don’t know why I’m saying all this except to say that as a prospective parent, I was impressed by the everything Mizzou had to offer and I truly hope that these issues, which are important, are worked out without creating long term damage to the school.