Tag Archives for college presidents

Forget about Killing All the Lawyers; First Let’s Call the Consultants!

What comes to mind when you hear the word “consulting”? The folks at McKinsey who brought you Enron? Bob Shrum, who ignited the dynamite Kerry-Edwards campaign? Or perhaps that unfortunate laid-off fellow next door, who has added “consultant” to his resume in a futile effort to conceal his unemployment.

When I see the words “consulting” or “consultant” I think about PT Barnum’s philosophy of doing business, and how consultants have adopted it with great success to sell their services to higher education. Take Liberal Arts College USA (LAC USA) in the bucolic hamlet of Collegetown USA. The manifold consultants suckling at its budgetary bosoms are sapping the alma right out of this mater.

The national average for consultants at liberal arts colleges is approximately .0005 consultants PSI; at LAC USA that ratio is closer to 1:1. These are important numbers to know, because one of the key assignments that keeps higher ed consultants busy these days is helping colleges develop “metrics” by which they can “measure success” and “demonstrate accountability.” Having a higher than average consultants/per square inch ratio can be read several ways. The positive interpretation is that the institution has buckled down and is calling on outside expertise to identify and provide solutions for the college’s numerous “challenges.” A less positive interpretation might suggest that a campus chock-a-block with consultants is a campus whose administrators lack the requisite skills and experience to do their jobs without the training wheels and steadying hand a personal factotum affords them.

Consultants: Follow their advice and they'll take the hit for you.

So just who are these hired hands, and whatever do they do? Let’s discuss.

One of the first ways you know you’re in trouble is when the college president suggests a review of the office where you are in charge. Such a review is never, ever good news. At LAC, some years ago the president decreed that an office key to the success of the college and his presidency should undergo such an exercise. To make a long and predictable story short, Consultant “A” was hired to do the review, at the conclusion of which the head of the office met with an ignominious end, and was replaced by a highly inexperienced, callow youth. So young and inexperienced that the consultant—who recommended the appointment—urged that the pup be advised by a more mature, experienced coach. And so it came to pass that Consultant “A” has for years been enjoying a fruitful gig as Yoda to the apparently permanently-too-inexperienced head of the office. One could ask if a more sensible recommendation might have been simply to hire a qualified individual to run things. But then Consultant “A” might not have had the opportunity to fly cross country several times a year on LCA’s dime and enjoy 100% return on the recycled advice he shares with the college, advice that has no basis in, and is in fact counter to, the college’s interests.

Consultant “B” doesn’t have to make a transcontinental flight to reach LCA, although he followed a circuitous route to arrive at its ivied halls. Consultant “B” helps the “expert” hired by the president to sort out the various jurisdictions of the campus’s internecine jurisprudence. He is also the expert’s former boss. The expert had served in the faculty senate of a previous institution, so therefore of course not only possessed deep knowledge of this particularly thorny briar patch of college life, but without question also had the requisite street creds to give LCA faculty the reassurance they needed in order to be guided—expertly, of course—to enlightenment. Have you spotted the emerging pattern yet? Time for a pop quiz.

Consultants “C” through “F” are such fixtures at LCA that one of them even has a permanent office on campus and gets invited to official college celebrations. These guys earn their keep, and it’s a good thing, because they are in possession of intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny of LCA as well as licensures nobody on staff can lay claim to. But, wouldn’t you just know it? LCA chooses not to listen to the advice offered by this phalanx of hired hands. Just this spring decades of expensive and remarkably consistent recommendations were blithely ignored because another consultant—one with a negligible relationship to the college, but advising a new “report” to the president—tossed out a suggestion concerning buildings and grounds. The bloodshed from the ensuing mayhem has yet to prove fatal to anyone, but some vital signs are not looking good.

But..but..but...the consultant told me if I built it they would come!

And then, finally, there is the granddaddy of LCA consultants, the president’s own amanuensis. Gramps has been around since the early days of the president’s tenure and provides recommendations almost as fast as he cashes the checks he receives from the college’s capacious and opaque “general administrative” fund. I came to know this graybeard when he offered me advice on a project that comes around every ten years or so on most campuses. It’s a project I had undertaken more than once (I won’t tell you how many times lest you think I am getting long in the tooth) and for which my expertise had been recognized both on and off campus. Let’s just leave it at this: the president was none too happy when I showed him the how-to manual from which the consultant had cribbed his recommendations. Need I add that the displeasure was not directed at the consultant?

What is the take-away here? It’s not that all consultants are charlatans or never offer original advice. And it’s certainly not that all administrators at LCA are sock puppets animated by unseen and unaccountable hands of off-stage consultants. No, it is, rather, the simple suggestion that if the right person is in charge, then consultants count their stays on campus in days or at the most weeks. They do not become long-term “cost-centers” for the college. And Alma Mater does not become their cash cow.

Food for thought? Why not let the consultants decide.

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Hey Faculty! Your Priorities Need Alignment!

In June I wrote a post about Alexander Kemos, who faked his resume, landed a highly remunerative job at Texas A&M, rose quickly to an even more remunerative position, cozied up to the university president, got caught in his lies and was sent packing.

Now comes word that another senior official at A&M has lost his lucrative perch on the administrative ladder, although this time the malfeasance seems to be institutional rather than personal. Or maybe it is personal, because Robert Hash was relieved of his duties as vice dean of the medical school—and demoted to an untenured faculty position—because “he had personality differences with other administrators,” according to A&M mouthpiece/general counsel Andrew Strong.

Of course, if you ask ex-Dean Hash you get another story, one of ethics violations, real estate chicanery, sweetheart deals, and institutional retaliation for whistle-blowing. You can read all about it in the Austin, Texas statesman.com, then decide for yourself if “personality differences” constitutes a demote-able offense. You might even be moved to ask yourself if, in academic workplaces, “personality differences” play a role in getting the brass ring, tenure, the job for life. Or you can simply enjoy the farce of a lawyer saying something supremely stupid.

Dr. Hash got demoted when he wondered if the cost per-square-foot was too high.

I am interested in this all-too-familiar tale because of its similarities to what happened recently at Washburn University. There is a key difference between the two sagas, however, one well worth a few moments’ contemplation. The Washburn whistleblowers, women, were fired outright; ex-Dean Hash, a man, was demoted. For those of you out there who like to think of colleges and universities as bastions of all things enlightened, wake up and smell the sexism. When something ugly happens on a campus, you can bet the farm that punishment will be meted out along gender lines reminiscent of those found in Sharia law.

A long-time colleague of mine, a woman I respect as highly for her professional expertise as I do for her warmth and compassion, was recently given her walking papers at a small liberal arts college located in Collegetown USA. Her “supervisor”—a faculty member put in charge of my colleague’s non-academic division—let her go after subjecting her to a year of petty humiliations.

Since this scenario—a new male boss enters the picture and it’s bye-bye women of a certain age—has been replayed ad nauseum in the last few years at Liberal Arts College USA, my former colleague was not surprised by her dismissal. She, like every other member of the staff and administration, served at the pleasure of the trustees, so unemployment lurks around every corner ready to getcha at a moment’s notice.

But what, you might wonder, had this particular administrator done to incur the trustees’ displeasure? According to her boss, she was “not in alignment” with her fellow administrators. Keep in mind that this is a liberal arts institution, not a school of chiropractic, so her “alignment,” or lack thereof, should not have been an issue at all. But, just like a personality difference, a difference of alignment can be fatal when the stakes are every man for himself.

And that’s pretty much how it is these days at LAC USA: every man for himself. Women are useful so long as their alignments conform to the patriarchy’s specifications, but female administrators are about as welcome on campus as full-need students with C- averages and no claims to victimhood. As a former administrator and a woman still, I scratch my head over how so sorry a situation has come to pass.

If we can't adjust her alignment, she'll be the next to go!

Actually, I don’t. I know exactly why it happened. When former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis ran for president, he evoked what he called an old Greek proverb to describe the Reagan-Bush administration. Fish, the governor said, rot from the head first. Not a pretty image, but a compelling one and applicable today at LCA USA.

The official presidential portrait

The college has been adrift for five years now, when a new president arrived and promptly announced that he had been hired to “clean up the mistakes of the past.” And to his credit, that is what he did. Noticing that the president had to use the same toilet as the rest of the male administrators on his floor, he acted decisively: the very first bricks-and-mortar project he “tasked” the buildings and grounds department with was the installation of a bathroom, complete with shower, for his personal use. After that, construction and renovation pretty much stalled on campus, but one terrible sin of the past had been redressed. The next wrong the president righted was to cut down on the amount of driving that he did. This was not so much a go-green gesture as it was long-overdue recognition that it was absurd to expect a college president would not have a car and driver at his disposal.

The Throne Room: A President's Enduring Legacy

Having addressed his two most pressing priorities first, the president then turned to the meat-and-potatoes of college life, the mission and future of the campus. He penned a think-piece intended to stimulate the faculty and the board to begin strategic planning for the years ahead. The LCA USA, he wrote, needs to “reinvent liberal arts education,” “educate students for a global economy,” “find away to become sustainable.” Are you yawning yet? This tattered list of been-there, done-that shibboleths has floated around every college campus for decades—the only difference being some of those colleges years ago turned their rhetoric into action.

But the president’s approach to planning was two-pronged. For the board he wrote an annual retrospective chronicling his achievements of the past year and his goals for the coming academic year, thus guaranteeing that LCA USA would have an event horizon no further out than the president’s next evaluation and compensation review.

Such an iteration of incremental enhancements year-to-year can accrete to overall improvements in the college. The substitution of short-term projects for long-term aspirations and directions is worse than no planning at all, however, for it presents a convincing illusion that the long-term interests of the college are being served. Here we are five years later still waiting for a strategic planning process to begin.

In the interim, though, the president has continued his bold correction of the “mistakes of the past”: nary a woman in charge of, well, anything on campus five years ago is still present and accounted for on payday. My colleague is simply the most recent in a long line of female former LCA employees joining the queue at the unemployment office. Men who didn’t measure up were given different titles and new offices.

But let’s hold our noses and revisit Governor Dukakis’s decaying flounder. The president also worked his mojo on the LCA USA board of trustees, once a national model of diversity with a heady mix of men and women, blacks and whites, young and old. As a trustee retired (or resigned), chances are if he were a man he was replaced by a man and if she were a woman she was replaced by a man. The president convinced the board that it needed a shake-up, so a game of musical chairs began whereby the heads of various committees were replaced. When the music stopped and the chairs were filled, guess what? With one lone exception, all of the women who had led committees had been relieved of their duties so that a man could take their place. They don’t call them “chairmen” for nothing, after all, and with the men back where they belong—in charge—the president could finally say his board was in alignment with the as-yet unspecified and unplanned-for future goals of the college. Oh, happy day.

The president and his dream team study the campus map to root out the last of the female administrators. (Scene recreated using actors.)

My colleague should wear her premature retirement as a badge of honor. She has joined the ranks of some impressive professionals. More than their ouster, these women share something else: all held non-faculty positions. Their commitment to the college, their contributions, their wisdom all counted for naught, and there was no safety net of tenure to protect them from the caprices of a misogynist president.

And all the while, the faculty stands by and enjoys the show. So sad. By their failure to act, the faculty will get the administrators they deserve. And then it really will be too late.

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A Faculty (Almost) in Revolt: Institutional Loyalty, Acts of Conscience and Votes of No Confidence

When the temperature hovers in the upper 90’s for weeks on end, not much stirs in Collegetown, USA. Most of the underpaid, underappreciated faculty have shipped their kids off to lacrosse or computer camp, or are busy packing for the Vineyard or Prince Edward Island. It’s a tough life.

So I was mildly surprised when I ran into a former faculty colleague coming out of the doctor’s office the other day. After we exchanged languid, semi-sincere pleasantries, she volunteered that she and other faculty were having a terrible summer, and that even the shortest of attempted conversations quickly degenerated into foaming-mouth, expletive-hurling duets of rage-fueled albeit impotent calls for revolution. As a faculty, my friend said, she and her colleagues were scared, angry and disaffected. “We came so close,” she said yearningly, “so close to voting no confidence last fall.”

The faculty cordially request your presence at a pig roast. So read the invitation, but the event was cancelled.

Voting no confidence in their college’s president, to be precise. Alas, misdirected institutional loyalty kept that much-needed vote from taking place. It’s only now, some six months after the aborted insurrection, that the faculty have come to realize that loyalty to ones college is a very different thing than loyalty to ones college president, and that their failure to act when the situation cried out for action has allowed an already fetid and festering wound to continue to eat its way through flesh and bone to the heart of the college they profess to hold dear.

Make no mistake: whistle-blowing is not easy, and its consequences can be terrible. This is a lesson learned the hard way recently by a couple of administrators at Washburn University who were given the heave-ho after answering board member’s questions about university President Jerry Farley’s squirrelly ideas about finances.

According to the Topeka Capitol-Journal Online,

Two former Washburn University administrators allege in a lawsuit filed Thursday [July 8] against the institution, its Board of Regents and president Jerry Farley that they were terminated in retaliation for engaging in protected whistle-blower activities.

Wanda Hill, former treasurer and vice president for administration, was terminated April 1. Robin Bowen, former vice president for academic affairs, was terminated March 30.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Topeka lists three counts for the action: deprivation of the plaintiffs’ Fifth and 14th Amendment rights to due process against all three par ties, breach of contract against Washburn University and the board, and common law retaliatory discharge (whistle-blower) against all three defendants.

Vice Presidents Hill and Bowen were sacked when the president discovered they’d told inquisitive regents that he was cooking enrollment data with no-show students and handing out scholarships to them. So, with phantom students spiriting away $500,000 in grant monies, the trustees were understandably a tad suspicious. And this is where the story gets murky. Were Hill and Bowen duped by board members’ reassurances that their jobs would be safe if they told what they knew, or were they malicious underlings, out to stab their boss in the back?

Freshmen at Washburn U practice the class cheer.

Hard to tell, since Jerry Farley remains ensconced as Washburn’s CEO, and has the “110 percent confidence” of at least regent Dan Lykins, who says President Farley’s “reputation for being honest and upfront is beyond reproach.” On the other hand, the court documents suggest pretty conclusively that there was some sleight of hand in the budgetary cookie jar during Farley’s watch.

What’s of greater interest here, though, is the dangerous game VPs Hill and Bowen entered into with the board of regents. Sure, the regents are their boss’s bosses, but the promise of continued employment was not one that the women should have believed. President Farley had the power to can them, and he did. Unless and until the regents dismiss him, they will not interfere with his presidential prerogatives.

These women were either truly courageous or truly stupid, because they spoke up even though they lacked the protection that tenure would have afforded them. As administrators, they were as expendable, fair game for a vindictive president or a manipulative board. Had they been members of the elect—the faculty, that is—with the guarantee of jobs for life that tenure provides, they could have squealed on their boss with impunity.

Which brings us back to Collegetown, USA, where the faculty’s winter of discontent has given way to a summer of boiling tempers and exploding anxiety. A question gnaws at the faculty’s small, rarely used collective conscience: should we do the right thing? Having given one answer a try and finding it sorely wanting, perhaps now is the time for faculty to stand up for themselves, their students and their college.

Before it is too late.

Remember the princes and do the right thing!

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New England All-Stars: The Best of the Best College Presidents

Earlier this week news crossed my desk that yet another (former) Rocky Mountain College employee had filed a civil suit, for wrongful termination, harassment and intimidation, against embattled President Michael “Mug Shot” Mace. I filed the report, thinking I would use it eventually as the source for another post on Mace’s uniquely hands-on management style.

But even I have my limits. Enough with the bad (OK: alleged bad) apples, I thought. Surely there must be a few good college presidents.

Forget the good ones, there are some great ones. And I didn’t have to look too far to find them, for all of them call New England home. When I despair about the future of higher education, I think about the accomplishments of these gifted men and women and feel a renewed sense of optimism for future classes of undergraduates. Perhaps you will, too.

Lawrence Bacow, President, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. Larry Bacow assumed the presidency of Tufts in 2001, under circumstances that occasioned a bit of a dust-up: never once did he appear on campus for the ritual charade of meeting with faculty and students. The Tufts board conducted the presidential search in complete secrecy, and only at its conclusion did the trustees present Bacow, late of MIT, as fully empowered top dog. For a lesser candidate this could have meant at best a rocky start and at worst a short tenure. Last spring President Bacow announced that this, his tenth year at Tufts, would be his last, keeping a promise of sorts—“ten years feels about right”—he made early on in his administration.

That Tufts has flourished under this remarkable man is no surprise, for he possesses a wisdom that combines rigorous intellect with clear-headed analytics; judgment informed by standards that inspire and elevate; and an understanding kindness that animates his encounters with students and colleagues.

Tuft's mascot Jumbo lights up the room. So does President Bacow.

Two examples will give you a sense of this exemplary president. A couple of years after assuming the presidency, Bacow reported on the state of the university to the Tufts board of trustees. He went on to give the same presentation to various audiences within the Tufts community, eventually putting it all down in writing for the Tufts Magazine in an article entitled “A University Poised.”

From one perspective “A University Poised” is nothing special: it is easy to read, easy to understand. The language Bacow uses is unadorned by Latinate phrases or impenetrable, irrelevant rhetorical complexities. Nor is it larded with personal references to assure readers of Bacow’s smarts. In “A University Poised,” Bacow’s smarts simply are. And from this perspective, it is special indeed. For too many college presidents, the institutional motto becomes “C’est Moi.”

Then there is President Bacow’s kindly concern for students. The Boston Globe recently ran a story on Bacow’s policy of hauling students who have drunk themselves into a visit to the emergency room into his office for a stern talking-to. Even on precious liberal arts campuses far smaller than Tufts, such personal presidential attention to the disturbing, pandemic behavioral problem that campus drinking has become is rare. Hung-over students are usually left to residential staff or counselors to deal with best they can. Bacow’s up close and personal intervention with these students may not convince all of them to change their behavior, but it convinces many and has the even more far-reaching effect of empowering others on campus, including students, to speak up when observing such potentially disastrous conduct.

I hope Larry Bacow enjoys his retirement. But even more I hope that someone in Washington taps him for a big, big job. We should all be as lucky as the folks at Tufts.

Janet Eisner, SND, President, Emmanuel College, Boston, Massachusetts. Sister Janet first came on my radar back in the 1980’s, when as president of Emmanuel she was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education. The regents, as a board, did not last too long in the roiling waters of Massachusetts politics, but Sister Janet was as steady a helmsman as any imperiled craft could hope for. Surrounded by political appointees whose grasp of even fundamental educational issues was flaccid, Sister Janet patiently explained the realities of life in the college classroom. As a young woman hoping to make a career of academic administration, I watched Sister Janet from the public peanut gallery and tried as hard as I could to learn from what she said and how she said it.

Sister Janet Eisner transformed Emmanuel from a fading regional haven for Catholic girls into a co-education college with a conscience. On top of that, she made a smart—really smart—deal with the college’s property holdings to give her institution a previously undreamt-of degree of financial security.

You don't have to be a saint to be a college president, but it sure helps if they're on your side.

This spring President Eisner celebrated her thirtieth year as Emmanuel’s CEO. For a less extraordinary woman and college president, I would say another thirty years is too much to ask for. But in Sister Janet’s case, I am not so sure.

Richard Freeland, President (Emeritus), Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. Richard (never “Dick,” never “Rich,” never “Rick”) Freeland was always the smartest guy in the room—and you didn’t even have to wait for him to tell you to know this was true. You knew it as soon as he started to talk. President Freeland acquired his administrative chops at the University of Massachusetts, where he was a whiz kid in the president’s office, then, eventually, dean of UMass Boston’s College of Arts and Sciences. From there he went south to City University in New York for a spell, returning triumphantly to Boston when in 1996 he was named president of Northeastern University. Somewhere during all of that administering, Freeland wrote the highly readable, meticulously researched Academia’s Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945-1970, a tome that is well worth its $145 price tag.

The Northeastern Huskie: Go, Richard!

Richard Freeland is a planner. He believes in numbers, goals, and accountability. But even more than that, he believes in important ideas and the powerful, beneficial role the university can play in contemporary society. What makes him one of the all-time greatest university presidents, though, is his genius for putting plans into action.

Under his leadership, Northeastern was transformed from “that school where they have a co-op program and don’t let you live on campus,” to a university distinguished for the quality of its professional programs and partnerships with the City of Boston. Northeastern blossomed from a grotty architectural blight on the Green Line to an oasis of thoughtful urban design.

Too many college president botch strategic planning, either passing it on to unqualified underlings, or failing to marshal faculty talent and expertise, or simply talking about it but never getting around to doing it. Others make an earnest stab at planning but allow themselves to be foiled by inadequate budgets or unreasonable goals. A few are successful in carrying out their plans. President Freeland stands above them all.

Charles Longsworth, Adele Simmons, Gregory S. Prince, Jr., presidents emeriti, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts. This improbable trio (businessman, heiress, adventurer) presided over the infancy, childhood and adolescence of a precious liberal arts college of the kind that both delights and infuriates me. Hampshire wears its reputation as an offbeat, off-center institution proudly, and with justification. For just shy of forty years, it has offered students an educational experience unique in American higher education.

By rights, Hampshire shouldn’t exist: its highly individualized educational program, in which each student works with faculty committees of two or three for a solid year is incredibly labor intensive (aka incredibly expensive). Opening its doors in 1970, the college got underway just as the glory years of higher education, fueled by the GI Bill, the National Student Defense Loan Program and a sunny optimism that the baby boom would continue expanding national need for higher education, were coming to an end. Virtually all—as in every single one—of the financial assumptions on which Hampshire was predicated were proven to be untrue almost immediately. The place, examined by cold logic, should have closed before it opened. But it did not. The faculty who swarmed around its intoxicating ideas about pedagogy in turn drew classes of incredibly bright, intellectually ornery students. While they were off doing what teachers and learners do, it was left to Longsworth then Simmons then Prince to do the impossible.

And they did. Each experienced dark days of horrible student tragedies, unfair (perhaps) lampooning in the press, and always, always unrelenting lack of funds. Lesser presidents, those who believe the story of a college is told only by its balance sheets, could not have survived at Hampshire then. Lesser presidents would have performed the kind of budgetary cuts that allows them to declare the operation a success, even as the patient is moribund, sapped of its energy and spirit.

In the face of such daunting odds, and with other avenues open to them, Longsworth, Simmons and Prince chose the harder path of pressing on, feeling the fetid breath of debt ever at their backs, but always making it to the next payroll, always finding new resources or making due in some creative way. Is that any way to run a college? Of course not, and Chuck, Adele, and Greg would tell you that in unison. But they did what they had to do, also making personal financial sacrifices to work at a college that could not afford to pay them what they were worth.

It's not true that Greg Prince taught a class in alchemy...but he could have!

And for their sacrifices, Hampshire can boast of graduates who have won MacArthur Awards and served their country in the Foreign Service, the Marines, and the White House. Graduates who conduct transformational research on autism, artificial limbs, and other persistent health issues. Graduates who write achingly beautiful prose and poetry. Not bad for a young college, and very much a testament to the remarkable abilities of these three presidents to keep the lights on and the water running, even as others might have just handed the keys back to the bank.

So there you have it six—count ‘em, six—college presidents I admire without reservation. For those of you keeping score, that’s double the number whose leadership I have found wanting. Alas, I don’t think that score will remain so lopsided for long.

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Now We Know What Darrel Did! EXPANDED AND ENHANCED EDITION!

Dear Readers: For those of you late to this saga, please check out College “Confidential,” Costa Rican Edition: What Did Darrel Do? for background.

The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle has published the “CARE Team Report,” in its entirety. Late yesterday, a judge lifted the restraining order prohibiting the newspaper from doing its job.

As long as we have the First Amendment, we'll have a reason to be optimistic.

As one might expect, the details of the report do not a tale of illicit sub-tropical romance tell. All in all what happened in Costa Rica, or rather who it happened to, should have stayed in Cheyenne. For those of you who do not care to plod through sixteen pages of highly repetitive verbiage, I’ll summarize: a student with severe psychological problems was a member of the group who traveled to Costa Rica to do field work. The student had medications with her, but apparently took them irregularly. The burden of caring for this student, which included dispensing her medication, taking precautions to keep her from cutting herself or otherwise doing herself harm, comforting her during periods of agitation, and monitoring her behavior 24/7 fell to students and faculty on the trip. The students and faculty member who describe what they had to do to keep the disturbed student glued together for the duration of the trip document extraordinary compassion on the part of individuals neither trained nor compensated to take on such tasks.

President Hammon, in his statement, denies any prior knowledge of the student’s condition, other than that she was taking medication. Fair enough. But after learning that the student was unable or unwilling to take the proper dosage of her medication, after knowing that the student was actively looking for ways to cut herself, after knowing that the student had bashed her head repeatedly against a sink to induce bleeding, after knowing that the student repeatedly stated she heard voices, what does Darrel do? Let him tell you in his own words: “I visited with [her] and discussed her situation. In essence I gave her six items she had to do in order to stay on the trip….after visiting with her I felt that she would complete and adhere to what she and I had talked about.” (See page twelve of the CARE report for the rest of the president’s remarks.)

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Almost as stupid as attempting to block publication of the CARE document. But not as stupid as what Darrel did next. The student wanted to purchase a machete to bring home to her father as a souvenir of la vida loca; unbelievably, President Humminna-humminna-humminna agrees that a big, sharp, lethal blade would make a swell gift for dad, and lets the student make the purchase. The same student who was not allowed to use a butter knife at dinner? The same student who had the desperate urge to cut herself so that the consequent bleeding would make the voices in her head go away? The same student who more than once on the trip stated her desire to kill herself? Yup. That student. Says the president, he authorized the purchase only after “some negotiation, and compromise and against better judgment.”

At this point the sorry tale ends with President Vanilla Clusters telling the student she must return the machete, the student’s running into traffic then taking refuge behind a semi, and a daring rescue effected by “Jose, the tour guide.”

All (sin Jose) make the long trip home to Wyoming in one piece. There the story picks up when alarmed students notify the college that maybe somebody better look into the poor girl’s choice of major: nursing.

This saga is a classic for a case study in higher education administration, and it raises a number of challenging and interesting issues: Did the student fail to make appropriate disclosures? Did the college–as certainly seems the case–fail to set appropriate pre-conditions for allowing students to participate in off-campus programs? What protections, if any, was the student entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act? Quite apart from the student-related issues, there also remains the question of the very poor decision to keep the CARE report confidential. What would have been a one-day story on the local level escalated to a sensational article in the national press, and an opportunity for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle to engage in a crusade on behalf of the First Amendment.

I’ve gotten out of the habit of dispensing advice to college presidents–they rarely listen, anyway–but have two things to say to President Hammon: 1) If you’d come clean in the first place, a sanitized “executive summary” of the report would have probably satisfied even the most puriently curious onlooker. 2) “Negotiation” and “compromise” are concepts the deeply disturbed have difficulty understanding, no matter how hard they may try or dearly they may want to.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

Alas and alack. It's no longer possible to enjoy President Hammon's deep thoughts and poetry. He's locked up his blog so inquiring minds can no longer get to know the inner Darrel and his passion for Honey Bunches of Oats, with Vanilla Clusters.

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Liar, Thief, College President: The Tragic Story of Ben Johnson

Sometimes a college president’s road to malfeasance ends not with a punch line to a bitter joke, but in genuine tragedy. Such is the case of Ben Johnson, the former president of Peru (Nebraska) State College, who offed himself on April 12.

The walls of his handcrafted house of cards were falling down all around him. In 2009, a year after his retirement, he paid a $1200 fine to the state for failing to disclose a deferred compensation deal, to the tune of nearly one-half million dollars, he’d negotiated with Peru State’s foundation. A deal supposedly unreported to the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees.

But the paltry fine was nothing compared to the revelations that came to light in the weeks leading up to his suicide. State auditors had uncovered that Johnson used about $43,400 from a university-related account to pay personal bills. The account was funded by profits from the college’s book store funneled into a “presidential discretionary” account through the same foundation. Apparently, Johnson had access to the account even after his presidency ended. According to the Journal-Star.com, the account remained open until Johnson himself closed it in 2010—two years after his retirement.

Better late than never, though, Nebraskan state officials finally did get around to looking into Johnson’s “discretionary” spending, and found, in addition to the clothes, meals, entertainment and travel Johnson helped himself to, Johnson had other things, of a more indiscrete variety, to keep secret. The Journal-Star.com continues the story:

During the investigation, [State Auditor] Foley’s staff also discovered problems with the resume Johnson used when applying for the Peru State presidency:
* Johnson was found guilty of a felony — making an untrue statement and/or omission to state material facts to investors — in 1989 and spent almost nine months in a California county jail in the early 1990s, according to the audit.
According to Foley, documents show Johnson was found guilty of selling limited partnerships improperly in excess of $100,000.
* Johnson’s Jan. 28, 1999, cover letter seeking the Peru State job was on Thomas College letterhead. Johnson signed the letter as a vice president at the school, but he had been terminated from Thomas College in Thomasville, Ga., two months earlier.
Johnson later filed a civil suit against Thomas College for breach of contract. The school responded that Johnson had misrepresented his qualifications in applying for the job.
A court dismissed that suit in October 1999, four months after Johnson was hired at Peru.

Former Peru State College President Ben Johnson was a serial conman, thief, and liar. As jaundiced a view as I might hold of colleges presidents, most of them, even I will acknowledge, cannot boast of possessing such a resume. It’s probably true that more than a few have a handful of questionable expenses charged to their discretionary accounts, but it is also true that many expenses that look “questionable”—meals, travel, mostly—really are expected and job-related costs an honest college president must incur. No, Ben Johnson is a poster boy for malfeasance in higher education to be sure, but not only presidential malfeasance. This time the rot really and truly started at the top, with the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees who apparently did no diligence, let alone due diligence, in hiring Johnson back in 1999. The rot also permeated the foundation’s board, which did not properly oversee foundation funds, if indeed it exercised any oversight at all.

I am flabbergasted no reference checks undertaken at the time of Johnson’s hiring revealed his termination from Thomas College and the reasons for it. I am stunned that no background checks revealed his conviction as a felon and his time in stir.

With nary a mention of his crimes or his sad demise, the Peru State College web site has nothing but kind words, and many of them, for the late Ben Johnson. Apparently his tenure there helped turn around a failing campus. Too bad there was nobody around to do the same for the people who held the campus and its funds in their trust.

Suggestion for the Nebraska State College Board of Trustees: Use this the next time you check the references of a candidate for a college presidency.

Dear Readers: I would like to explore Johnson’s life and work more; if you knew or worked with him at Peru State, Thomas College or elsewhere, please write to me at callmemiss1@gmail.com. Many thanks.

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College “Confidential,” Costa Rica Edition: What Did Darrel Do?

Dear Readers: Please continue and enjoy this post; then check out Now We Know What Darrel Did! EXPANDED AND ENHANCED EDITION! for the thrilling denouncement and trenchant commentary.

The ides of May have come and gone, so for the next several weekends we’ll be inundated with feel-good stories about college grads so newly commenced that the sheen from their alma maters’ placentae is still visible. I wish those women and men prosperous and happy lives. Amidst all the sweetness and light that envelopes graduation day—a truly joyous moment in the academic calendar—however, it’s business as usual for those the new baccalaureates leave behind.

Consider this juicy item, for instance.

Way out west in Wyoming, Laramie County Community College (LCCC) president, the poetry-writin’, hook-baitin’, cracker barrel philosopher Darrel Hammon, is in hot water. To answer your first question: no. Darrell Hammond is the Saturday Night Live guy. Darrel “One ‘L,’ No ‘D’” Hammon is the college president.

The First Darrell: I'm not a college president, but I played a real president on TV.

To answer your second question, “what’d the other Darrel do?”: I don’t know. It’s all very mysterious. The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reports—and Inside Higher Ed passes on—that LCCC has denied a Freedom of Information request for a report detailing irregularities that took place on a 2008 student trip to Costa Rica, chaperoned by President Hammon. The Tribune-Eagle primly notes that, “Testimony given at a recent employee hearing noted that some of the report was critical of the president.” The comments that follow the story are not so discrete. Says “I Went to Costa Rica”: “I saw first-hand [how] badly Hammon messed-up….”

LCCC, in refusing to comply with the FOI request, cites FERPA (Federal Education Right to Privacy Act, which gives students certain guarantees to keep some information about them confidential) as its reason for withholding the report. This is stonewalling, pure and simple. Even if I didn’t know that FERPA protects students, not college presidents, I would recognize the stonewalling because, I blush to admit, it was a big part of my former life as a college administrator, and I was very, very good at it.

The stonewalling here is not good. Hiding behind FERPA encourages lurid suspicions. “The college can’t release the document,” says the Tribune-Eagle, “because it identifies a student, [college spokeswoman] Hoglund wrote in a letter to Bruce Moats, attorney for the newspaper.” So now, thanks to Loose Lips Hoglund we know that whatever President Hammon did in Costa Rica involved a student. Let’s let our imaginations run wild, shall we?

A rare sighting of the Costa Rican toucan: it uses the scrubber in its beak to whitewash reports.

Methinks President Hammon and his Central American fiasco is a subject I’ll be revisiting once the report is released or leaked, as inevitably it will be. So for now I will leave you with samples of his poetry and his thoughts about the natural world that I gleaned from his blog. Those of you with strong stomachs may also wish to visit his Facebook page.

Here’s an excerpt from “Life Can Be Such a Jab,” his credo in free verse:

I tread on,
like a good trooper,
finally realizing that I control
change, I control my life,
and sometimes it doesn’t go
the way I thought it would,
but it goes
and I go with it.

You have to admire the mind and the ego at work here: I am in charge the poet says, except when I am not, but in that case I will say I am.

Here’s President Hammon musing about the cycle of life:

The entire lawn, in fact, looks like one giant field, now covered in snow. Gone is any semblance that spring might be oozing its way through winter. Even the north window is plastered halfway up with that thick, sticky snow.

But I remember back to this morning as I sat complacently at the breakfast table, eating a blueberry bagel, smothered with strawberry cream cheese, and spooning Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats with vanilla bunches, methodically into my mouth, while watching Mr. Robin, sitting atop the fence.

Ah, the snows may blanket the earth many times before true spring finally throws off the shackles of winter. But I know that spring is here for the robins have returned, and the green things are just biding their time while singing soft lullabies beneath the snow.

Provides 4 grams of fiber for a beleaguered college president's RDA.

I especially like the part where the president placidly masticates Honey Bunches of Oats, and I appreciate his keen eye for the evocative, aromatic detail of the vanilla clusters.

Something is giving off an aroma at LCCC; here’s hoping the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle keeps sniffing to find out what it is.

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When You’re Around This College President, Better Carry Your Mace

Imagine, if you will, the following workplace scenario unfold. You’re on your way to your boss’s office with great news. The fundraising event you planned and executed was a complete success. You not only exceeded last year’s totals, but proceeds smashed right through the ambitious goal you set for this year, despite the chilly recessionary climate. Not one to pat yourself on the back, you are hoping nonetheless that the boss—a college president—will give you a well-deserved thumbs up.

Well, he gives you a finger all right, but it’s not his thumb. No, it’s his index finger viciously pounding the wall of the corner he’s backed you into as he screams invectives at you mere inches from your face. All the money you just raised for your college doesn’t matter to this enraged madman, nor does your exercise of professional judgment as a director of development, judgment affirmed by verifiable facts. All that matters is that you…you…had the audacity to spend more time cultivating Mr. and Mrs. Gotrocks at the fundraising event instead of Mr. and Mrs. Currifavor. Never mind that the Gotrocks have donated hundreds of thousands to your campus and promise to continue giving into the future, and that the Currifavors have given not much at all. How DARE you defy the president’s clear albeit unstated preference for the Currifavors?

If we were in The Twilight Zone, this would be the moment that Rod Serling steps from the shadows to intone, “consider if you will the small town of Billings, Montana, home of the small but scrappy Rocky Mountain College. A college run with an iron fist by a man possessed by demons of desire. Desire to beat up on women.” Rest his soul, Rod Serling’s been gone for years, so cue the do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do music and click here. Read the story. No hurry. I’ll wait.

Don't get me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Appalling, isn’t it? Of course Ms. VanDelinder’s civil suit contending that the aptly named President Michael Mace subjected her to all manner of abuse and intimidation has yet to be proven, but it is fair to point out that President Mace is no stranger to such tactics. In the summer of 2007,

Mace, 55, spent one night in the Hamilton County, Ind., jail after being arrested in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis.

Home builder David Klain told The Gazette that he was sitting in his office in a townhouse development when Mace came in, told him he was angry with Klain and then hit the builder on the left side of his face, knocking him to the floor and breaking his glasses.

After Mace left, Klain called police, who then arrested Mace.

The story has a happy ending, though; in 2008 President Mike “Tyson” Mace beat the rap by

…complet[ing] requirements of a pretrial agreement….[by entering] a pretrial diversion program.

The program for first-time offenders charged with a misdemeanor crime helps resolve cases without going to trial. Defendants are on probation for a year and have to fulfill certain requirements. If they are not charged with another crime and they complete those conditions during that year, charges are dismissed.

Mace was to pay a $305 fee to the prosecutor’s office to pay for the program, continue seeing a counselor to discuss anger management and complete 40 hours of community service by Aug. 1, 2008.

Deputy Hamilton County prosecutor Jamie Campbell said Thursday that Mace met those conditions and that the case against him has been dismissed, but not erased, from his record.

What was erased, apparently, was any reason for the Rocky Mountain trustees to back away from their unwavering support for President Left Hook:

James Almond, chairman of the Rocky board of trustees, said that several trustees met with Mace on Friday morning [after the president’s night in the cooler] to discuss the matter.
….
As more information comes out about the case, trustees will comment further, Almond said.

Almond praised Mace for the work he has done since becoming the college’s leader in October 2005.

“Mike has been the best president we could have had and has done an outstanding job,” Almond said.

What every smart college president negotiates as a rider on his contract.

Careful readers will observe the consistency of the Rocky Mountain trustees by comparing former Chair Almond’s comments with those of the current chair, to whom it fell to explain away Sluggo’s latest contretemps:

Board of Trustees chairman Barbara Skelton said Monday afternoon that she had not seen the court document yet.

“I can’t make a comment until I do,” she said.

But, another happy ending is clearly in sight, for Chair Skelton adds: “the Board of Trustees hopes to move forward with the mission of the College under the leadership of President Mike Mace.”

The executive committee of the board meets to discuss the president's behavior.

In other words, bye-bye Shari VanDerlinder.

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The President and the Professors

Less lugubriousness wouldn’t necessarily buy him a health-care bill. But in the long run, Americans might find it easier to root for or with Obama if he’d show us, despite everything, that he’s happy we hired him.

Above is the concluding paragraph of a fascinating essay, “Obama’s Happiness Deficit,” in Monday’s on-line Washington Post. Its author, Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, spends most of his column musing about the reasons President Obama seems, well, so miserable these days. Until that devastating final paragraph, only almost in passing does Hiatt reference that Obama’s malaise and what the electorate is feeling about the president these days is mutual: “Still, I think Americans want a president who seems, despite everything, to relish the challenge. They don’t want to have to feel grateful to him for taking on the burden.” Hiatt wisely, or unwittingly, leaves that job to readers, who at last count as I write, have logged 992 comments, all of them variations on sample comments from

“Rank1”: “Happy? [President Obama] is simply in way over his head!”

“Jarbo1”: “Obama is just frustrated because the American people are even dumber than he thought. He knows what’s best for us and we just don’t get it.”

And “senatorgoofy”: “A suggestion for [Obama]….RESIGN!
Go write a book, travel, whatever….just do us all a favor and leave.”

To sum up, a Washington Post editorialist suggests the president is unhappy; readers flood the paper’s website to with comments that make three points: 1) the president isn’t up to the demands of his job; 2) the president doesn’t listen to us; and 3) the president should just go away. Virtually none of the commenters expresses sympathy for Hiatt’s point of view or for the president’s sad situation.

Far be it for me to pile it on, but we all know that it’s lonely at the top, so a certain amount of Obama’s ennui is to be expected. And while the biliousness of many of the negative comments about the president, not to mention the sheer volume of them, especially in the resolutely liberal Washington Post, is somewhat surprising, what really grabbed my attention is the commonality the writers’ critiques share with what a faculty might say when it threatens or carries out a “vote of no confidence” in a college president, the kiss of death for an academic CEO.

For all their obsessive inflation of the everyday workplace irritants that the most of us shrug off, because the number of hours we work precludes our having time to indulge in our obsessions, faculty members nevertheless are in the main all bark—vicious yelps, to be sure—and only toothless bite when it comes to going after administrators they don’t like. For many faculty, griping about the administration is a recreational activity, complete with wholesome competition for who can hurl the snidest insult or invent the most lurid rumor. That they get away with these jejeune hi-jinks goes without saying, because they think, erroneously, that academic freedom means never having to keep their mouths shut. Woe to the person who tries to set them straight.

But I digress. Occasionally, on two or three campuses a year, perhaps, faculties will stop playing games long enough to declare that they’ve had it with the president or chancellor who heads their college or university. Much ink will flow at Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education as academics everywhere follow the insurrections with avid attention and scorecards at the ready. If the campus civil war is particularly bloody, the mainstream press might enter the fray, but this generally only happens if the president is stupid enough to spend well upwards of six figures on interior decoration fees for his office or college-owned home, or is brazen enough to put his honey on the payroll. Neither of these examples is made-up, by the way.

So what makes a usually oblivious faculty rise up as one and take notice of a rogue administrator? Sad to say, the number one reason is always and inevitably one of self-interest: the budget is so hopelessly in the red that firing secretaries, custodians and middle managers can no longer stop the bleeding. Keep in mind that in this scenario the library hasn’t made a purchase in two years, and buckets are strategically placed in corridors to catch the drips when it rains. Until this point, the faculty, their raises, and their “development” money have been carefully preserved, for the logical reason of maintaining the product, the academic program.

The head of the Faculty Senate delivers 99 no-confidence votes to the door of the president's office.

But there does come that awful day when the size of the faculty must be trimmed. The first, and usually only, to go are those without tenure. But the howls that will ensue from the anointed ones with jobs-for-life will be blood-curdling, so terrified are they when they have a close brush with the workplace reality of those who labor without the privilege of tenure. So, like threatened pack animals, they plan and execute their attack, which will come in the form of a no-confidence vote accompanied by a somber, sorrowful letter to the board of trustees. The letter will make three points: 1) the president isn’t up to the demands of his job [translation: he isn’t raising enough money]; 2) the president doesn’t listen to us [translation: he doesn’t agree with us]; and 3) the president should just go away [translation: so we can keep our jobs]. Sound familiar?

Portrait of President Hubris, after the faculty's vote of no confidence.

Cheer up, President Obama. So far no one’s complained about how you decorated the Oval Office.

The President and the Professor, Part Two

So “Obamism” feels at worst like a hodgepodge, at best like a to-do list — one that got way too dominated by health care instead of innovation and jobs — and not the least like a big, aspirational project that can bring out America’s still vast potential for greatness. Thomas Friedman, NYT, February 21, 2010.

I may have to reevaluate my knee-jerk animus against New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. His repetitive hectoring that President Obama should be nation-building is chalk-on-blackboard irritating, but to my astonishment, I found myself nodding in agreement with Friedman when I mentally erased “President Obama” and “nation-building” and substituted “College President” and “visionary thinking.”

Over the last several months, Friedman has taken the US president to task for his failure to create and sustain an “overarching narrative” about the direction he hopes to steer the ship of state. Friedman’s earlier and more gentle suggestions about story-telling in the service of nation-building have given way to a harsher critique of the administration’s attempts at leadership as “at worst like a hodgepodge, at best like a to-do list.” If you are Rob Long at The National Review, you would shrug and say what do you expect from a callow politician who has not paid his dues (February 22, 2010, print edition); I, on the other hand, in keeping a promise to the doctor who worries about my blood pressure, think as little as possible about President Obama and instead reflect on Friedman’s stepped-up rhetoric as it applies to academia.

Small liberal arts colleges are like tiny principalities, their presidents the heads of state. The president can be a benevolent dictator, an ideological tyrant, a self-absorbed narcissist, even an actuary. Those are the ones who tend to fail at the job. Those who succeed at this most difficult of endeavors do so because they are first and foremost visionaries. Understanding to be sure of the harsh environmental factors that conspire to bring about the demise of small colleges, they are also clear in their own thinking about the value such institutions provide their students; committed to their institution’s contribution to the preservation, transmission and expansion of knowledge; tough-minded in their expectations of faculty, student, staff and themselves; and talented in the celestial navigation required to stay the course. Such captains are in short supply.

I know exactly why Friedman wrings his hands in despair over the “hodgepodge” that is President Obama’s agenda. On a college campus, a new and often neophyte president more than anything else wants to be seen by the trustees, faculty and anyone else who cares to watch as a can-do leader. This means he or she will immediately, very often with very little thought of the consequences, make sweeping changes. The kind of change you can believe in until the inevitable moment comes when you find yourself wondering to what end a new policy here, an overpaid, over-titled administrator there are all hurtling toward. By this time you hope that a kindly board chair will have a quiet word or two with the president.

Taking a page from Friedman’s play book, the trustee will say something along the lines of, “you know President, you need to let the faculty and students see the same fine mind the trustees saw when we hired you. Why don’t you share your thoughts with them so that they can see and appreciate the full flower of your vision and aspirations for our college?” The president will thank the board chair and get right to work envisioning the college of the future. It will be “diverse.” It will be “international.” It will “exploit technology” in service of teaching “critical thinking skills.” It will develop a “signature program.” Oh, and, lest you forgot for a moment, the college of the future will be “diverse.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And familiar too. Jumping on the diversity/critical thinking catamaran is the journey du jour for a college president seeking to advance a bold vision for his campus. That banshee howl you also hear is the dashing of this sodden vision as it collides with the trimaran of what faculty actually do, what students want and need, and what parents are prepared to subsidize. Could this catastrophe have been adverted? Perhaps, had the president not chosen the one-size-fits-all vision for the campus and instead called for all hands on deck to craft a genuine plan for the college.

This is not to say that faculty do not believe in (or at least pay lip service to) the chimera of “diversity” or what is essentially a vocational school concept, “critical thinking skills”; of course they do. But this shaky common ground of feel-good academic clichés is no foundation for securing the future of an institution whose survival depends on its ability to offer and deliver an education that is transformative for each student, at a minimum enhancing the student’s innate intellectual, moral, and creative capacities and from that base adding significant value to the student’s post-graduate years. “Value” in this sense has many meanings: productive and satisfying employment, extended aesthetic horizons, judgment informed by reasoned analysis and ethical principle; and a consciousness joyfully aware of and eager to participate in an ever-expanding universe of knowledge.

Until and unless the president and the faculty agree that it is in their and the college’s best interest to jettison the hodgepodge of change and the pedantic to-do list and undertake a holistic appraisal of the college, its merits and its flaws, the will for the college to thrive let alone survive will simply not be there. And this is why is it is so fundamentally important that the president be a man or woman of vision. For appraisal is just the beginning. Once an institution has sound knowledge of itself it can begin to chart its future, but it needs the map that only a president’s vision can provide. A wise president will devise this map (or narrative, in Friedman’s terms) drawing from the appraisal and matching the strengths of the faculty with the steps the college must take to become the transformational institution it must be in order to survive. The relationship between the president and faculty must be symbiotic: the big picture is the buck that starts and stops with the president; the fine lines and details belong to the faculty, whose expertise and creativity add color and nuance. If a president lacks vision, or does not possess a vision grounded in the reality of the institution, then all of that expertise and creativity seeps from the canvas and becomes a disorganized, diffuse waste of resources.

The greatest tragedy of all, however, is when for whatever underlying neuroses or shortcoming presidents cannot tear themselves away from the codex that is their to-do list, and so the status quo remains, gradually devolving into a miasma of bickering and malaise. When this happens, if you are President Obama, you blame your predecessor; if you are a college president, you do the same.