Guest Author
Finally, the Florida A&M University Board of Trustees has lost its credibility.
Its credibility as a governing body. Its credibility as a professional organ. Its credibility as a guardian of the best interests of FAMU.
Its credibility in its ongoing dispute with FAMU President Elmira Mangum, which reached a point of high camp at a meeting arranged to address audit findings on extravagant (curiously, also undocumented) expenses accrued remodeling the president’s house and bonuses for high-ranking administrators paid on the state dime (a violation of Florida statutes).
FAMU trustees lost credibility because the proceeding itself was hastily arranged on dubious evidentiary grounds. Finally, trustees lost credibility because no persuasive case has been made for firing the university president for cause (audit, etc.), or even for no cause. (They hate Mangum.)
Bad personal relations can be part of any motive for firing a university president, of course; but not without, say, an attendant example of malfeasance.
In the case of Elmira Mangum, that’s not a point that has been established. She has made a case — an effective case, in a rebuttal memorandum that was sent through the wires, that FAMU trustees have created the worst place for a president to work. Or, plainly, are the worst bosses ever.
And besides, as she notes, the remodeling for the president’s house commenced two months before she arrived and the staff bonuses were a clerical error that has since been corrected.
Her tactical use of legalese, though — for example, “a hostile workplace” or “defamatory” — against the background of this latest ruse to fire her presents FAMU’s trustees with a fresh set of problems.
Those problems are both political and legal.
On the political side, the squabbling is effectively building the case that FAMU’s leaders cannot effectively govern: An institution in constant crisis and its leaders engaged in sustained public bickering do not inspire legislative confidence.
With a bunch of initiatives on its plate — its Strategic Plan and its Florida Board of Governors’ Work Plan to improve student graduations within a reasonable four-year period — FAMU cannot afford instability at the highest level when those initiatives require greater public investment in the institution itself.
Already, legislators like state Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, for instance, have said disapproving things about how FAMU trustees (Rufus Montgomery, chairman of the board, for one) are handling business as a board.
At the meeting, trustee and Student Government Association President Tonnette Graham said she received within minutes of the vote to fire Mangum 200 text messages from her 10,000 student constituents. (The first motion to fire with cause was voted down 7-5; the second to fire without cause failed 6-6.)
(Likely, saying: OMG, WTF, and SMDH — the illiterate but devastatingly blunt (and even, in this case, apropos) argot of texting culture.)
So trustees have failed to even consider the views of all of FAMU’s constituency: alumni, students, faculty, and staff.
This says a lot: This is a visceral reaction against a president determined to change a campus culture, to remove the stigma of incompetence and instability, to bring coherence to its accounts, to wipe away the debris of failure that has attended to all things deemed FAMU. Obviously, trustees cannot abide that.
On the legal side, not to forget, if this firing business were to ever take place, FAMU has a gorge of lawsuits heading its way, for Mangum has clearly documented all instances of purported harassment in memoranda available for public inspection.
What’s next, hardly anyone knows. But what’s apparent is FAMU trustees have become more overbearing, more hysterical, and more dangerous to the future of FAMU.
Here’s the math as it works out: Trustees without credibility equal institution without credibility.
What a mess this has become.
What a mess has soiled the recent history of FAMU.
SMDH!
(Translation: Shaking my damn head!)
Chris Timmons is a native Floridian, bird-watcher, editorial columnist, and fellow with the James Madison Institute. He lives in Tampa, and his opinions belong to him alone.
