You would think a 140 to 44 no-confidence vote would give any intelligent person the thought that something might be wrong at Missouri Southern State University.
Not when it's former Board of Governors Chairman Dwight Douglas and the policies University President Bruce Speck has been following have been his.
After the no-confidence vote, Douglas told Brennan Stebbins of the Chart, he was impressed with "Speck's lack of bitterness and resentment.
"I say hang in there and keep doing what you're doing."
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(Randy Turner's new book, Newspaper Days, is available at Amazon.com.)
15 comments:
Dwight Douglas is the worst thing to happen to MSSU. Ever. He is largely responsible for Speck and his reign of incompetence. Until both are gone from any responsibility for MSSU governance, things will only continue to go downhill. Governor Nixon, where are you?
Of all the knuckle-headed comments one could hear: " Keep doing what you are doing..."
Dwight keeps slapping us in the face.
Let's see what they'll do when the faculty really gets angry and take a strike vote.
Napoleon needs to go.
Adios,
Au Revoir
Arrivederci
auf wiedersehen
hu det
goodbye
Bruce
Dwight
Board
Both Bruce and Douglas should do the decent thing and RESIGN. You have been rejected. The board should accommodate them both. Find a reasonable settlement and let the school move forward.
But, given the character of these two, it's just dreaming.
RESIGN!!!!!
"You have been rejected."
That means, of course, that faculty rules the world...all the world. Is that what the statement means....what the faculty says is what goes?
Colleges and universities are different from businesses in the "real world" They have been for the last 400 years. That's why we require shared governance and collegiality. The university president interacts with faculty and all university constiituents on a daily basis. He/she does not sit in a 50th floor corner suite and rules the company.
Still, it's up to the board of governors, but in such resounding votes of no confidence, the moral, and normal, thing in higher education is to resign. That is, if you are a person of character.
Sounds like a mutiny. Perhaps some of the faculty need to go.
Randy:
Look into the decision by Bruce to suddenly suspend work on the construction of a indoor football facility (Chart). Nodler is backtracking like crazy. Now, all of a sudden he is talking about the "intended purpose" when before he was urging everybody to spend it fast and maybe nobody will notice.
Bruce as usual suspends the project because a prospective donor withdrew but he does not even bother to tell his athletic director who is supposed to be raising the funds for this project.
This is the kind of leadership we have had for the last two years, and that period includes Agee as interim.
Yer doin' a helluva job, Brownie!
Just goes to show that Speck is a puppet for Douglas.
To the third comment, “Nodler is backtracking like crazy. Now, all of a sudden he is talking about the "intended purpose" when before he was urging everybody to spend it fast and maybe nobody will notice.” Nodler has said from the beginning that this two million dollars was to take care of a problem of students and coaches being caught in lightning conditions more than a mile from shelter on multiple occasions. He has always said he had no preference on how the school solved the problem; He just provided resources to solve it. He has always said the appropriation was for a fiscal year and needed to be spent in a timely fashion. He has been consistent all the time; the money needs to be spent in a timely fashion and for its intended purpose. Where the “backtracking” and what is does this have to do with this post anyway?
"Hang in and keep doing what you're doing!" What? Is Douglas impaired in some way, or simply hostile to anyone who questions his Dickensian management style, and that of his puppet president? To tell Bruce Almighty to "Keep doing what you're doing" is tantamount to saying "See if you can screw up the coming year as much as you did the past year!"
Good God! When will The Governor take notice of all this and can ALL these guys, and the horses they rode in on!
8:59 AM (Nodler?)
Ha! If you think we are going to believe that, I've got a bridge in Arizona I can sell you, Gary...
We all know what you and Dwight were trying to do with this PORK.
And now you are backtracking...
Sooooooooo now we know why the U has been hiding all that money in the phony depreciation scheme--- to build a storm shelter, I mean in-door practice facility. So let me get this straight, cut faculty pay, make faculty and staff pay a portion of their health insurance, no cost of living increases for 2 years. It all makes sense now. Even the Joplin Globe should be able to unravel this nefarious plan. How about wasting $400,000 of the tax payers money on dirt work for a project that will now never see the light of day. Shame on RTV and DD. Come on Board, the time has come, admit you made a mistake in hiring Bruce. Correct the mistake and move the U forward.
From The Chart:
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Dr. Brian Chapman, one of three finalists for Missouri Southern's vice president for academic affairs post, has withdrawn from consideration for the job.
"The atmosphere there is just too poisoned to be successful," Chapman told The Chart Monday.
University President Bruce Speck said last Wednesday a decision would be announced this week regarding the next vice president. With Chapman out of the running, Dr. Charles Cullum of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Peter Johnstone of the University of North Texas in Dallas are the only remaining candidates.
Speck was not immediately available for comment.
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So the "poisoned atmosphere" has already run off one candidate. I can't imagine why any quality faculty would want to move to Joplin to work in this environment. The board needs to take notice that the longer they tolerate this mess, the more damage that the school will suffer.
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