Calling for a public official to resign is a step a newspaper should not take lightly, but how in the world can the Joplin Globe shirk its responsibility in the wake of the crisis that has enveloped Missouri Southern State University for the past two years.
The Globe's Editorial Board needs to step up to the plate and demand the resignation or firing of President Bruce Speck before he can do any more damage to what was once a well-respected educational institution and one which I was always proud to call my alma mater.
The most recent spectacle of Speck cowering in the shadows and demanding that all media interview requests go through Rod Surber is bad enough, but when that is coupled with a policy that requires requests for interviews with anyone ranging from school officials to professors to students, it is clear that Speck is in over his head and cannot recover from his self-inflicted public relations disasters.
And when you add that policy to the other things that have happened over the past couple of years, including the Joplin medical school fiasco, which Speck continued to pretend was a going concern long after he had been told it was a no-go, Speck's infamous "Pink Slip Blues" song, the games that have been played with the university budget, botched searches for new officials, alienating nearly the entire campus, and doing his best to destroy the innovative and highly-respected international mission one has to wonder why the Joplin Globe has not stepped forward.
Unless pressure is brought to bear on Speck and the Board of Governors now, MSSU's reputation will continue to diminish, and some good people are likely to lose their jobs as Speck tries a few last desperate maneuvers to punish the people who have stood in the way of his mismanagement of the university.
The Globe's management made an excellent move when it footed the bill for approximately $400 to allow the campus newspaper, The Chart, to pay for copies of e-mails sent from Speck to KCUMB President Danny Weaver and former President Karen Pletz, but other than that the role of the Globe has been primarily to latch on to the work that has already been done by T. R. Hanrahan's crack staff at The Chart, primarily Brennan Stebbins, who has been all over this story from the beginning, without letting Globe readers know the source of the information.
The Chart, under much duress, and despite continued heavy-handed attempts to silence it, has been the only media outlet to stand up to the Speck regime.
It is time for the Joplin Globe to assert itself. For the Globe to have gone this long without even writing a story on the Chart's battles for its First Amendment rights, is an abrogation of duty for what is supposed to be the newspaper of record for the Joplin area.
This is the biggest story in Joplin, has been for quite some time, and anyone wanting to get the lowdown on what is really happening has to go to the Chart.
It's time for the Globe to do something for the Chart besides poaching its reporters.
7 comments:
The Globe is an embarrassment. The Chart puts it to shame. Hell, the Carthage Press puts it to shame. In fact, it was noted in the last Chart that President Speck's calendar included three meetings with Globe publisher Michael Beatty. Does that tell you something? The fix is in at the Globe. Maybe the Chart can do some investigative reporting on that. But don't expect Greg or Derek to do anything. They're impotent.
Randy Turner 'thinks' he is another Woodward & Bernstein demanding that President Nix, er Speck, resign.
Why should Speck do any such thing? After all, the Board of Governors renewed his contract and Speck isn't in any danger of being fired.
So whine away, Turner. Nobody cares what you want. That includes the Joplin Globe.
Gee thanks, Dwight. Nice of you to chime in.
Speck should resign because the PEOPLE want him gone. The board is impotent, run by Dwight Douglas and Gary Nodler. Of COURSE they renewed his contract.
Speck should go quietly now, before he does more damage. He should resign so he can keep his dignity, because sooner or later, they are going to tar, feather him, and run him out of town on a rail.
It's up to him.
What people want Speck gone? Anonymous whiners and left-wing bloggers like Turner?
The fact of the matter is that Speck got his contract renewed, that the Board of Governors are in power for the foreseeable future, and that most people since they have no interaction with MSSU really don't care who runs it or how they run it as long as it don't affect them.
So liberal whiners wanting their own way doesn't make for a revolution. So get over yourself.
I don't think Dwight is posting here anymore.
I think it is The Globe. They have likely been bought and sold. (Check out the calendar of Speck's schedule and look for names)
Greg and Derek are not impotent. They have been neutered.
Prove me wrong here, Globe. One little editorial. One little column. Some little mention on "Editor's Notebook." Something.
Fact: The Chart has been all over this from the get-go
Fact: The Chart and its adviser (who is likely at Kinkos now) have taken extreme heat
Fact: The Globe made a token gesture to pay for an open records request then disappeared
Fact: The Chart first reported on Chapman's suggestion that Speck apply elsewhere and Speck's refusal to comment (and thus deny it)
Fact: The Chart broke the e-mail from KCUMB head Danny Weaver that indicated that project is in grave danger of failing
Fact: The Carthage Press, The Chart and the Student Press Law Center have decried the idiotic media policy and bunker mentality Speck has imposed. The Globe has not mentioned it at all.
Applying the Ewing rationalle, it is clear the Globe is a big pansy. Facts and evidence.
This boared of governors should swallow hard and buy out Speck's last year of the two-year contract they foolishly gave him last year. After all, they are used to "wasting" money. Witness the $400,000 of the state pork for the "storm shelter/indoor-football-practice facility-for-Bart" they threw away. Guilty parties on this one? Nodler, Bruce, Dwight, Bart. Witness also the $250,000 they forced the MSSU Foundation to borrow to hire a KC architect (not a local one) to design a $7 million building to be rented to the KC Medical School, EVEN THOUGH THEY APPARENTLY KNEW the project was not likely to happen. Read the Chart! Guilty parties on this one? Familiar names again: Bruce, Dwight, Rob O"Brian (New name!) of the Chamber of Commerce, Gary Duncan?
So with so much wasteful waste, Rod Anderson, why not just swallow hard and spend another $200,000 to buy Bruce out, and END THE MISERY on this campus and let us breath a sigh of relief and begin to look with some optimism at the light at the end of the tunnel.
After all, you have squirreled away 16 million in cash reserves for no good reason. What's a little 200 grand to save the life of this moribund patient.
It is time for the Board to begin a search for a new president. After Dwight made such an embarrassing show of affection for Speck at the recent BOG meeting, over the $16 million Speck socked away out of academic programs and services the students had paid for, it was clear other BOG members were squirming.
And today, the KCUMB board voted unanimously to have nothing more to do with Speck's fawning suit for their hand in marriage. Having borrowed a quarter million dollars for architect drawings (Can he get that back?) and spending another $25,000 on the economic impact statement, we learn there was never any real hope of such a deal.
So, why all the hoopla? One suspects it created a cloud of presumed accomplishment over Speck's unprecedented LACK of achievement of any kind. He is like the Midas of Muck: everything he has touched has turned to crap!
Please, BOG, treat it quietly, but decisively: accept his resignation, appoint faculty, staff, and community members to find a new president, and let all this unpleasant publicity die away!
What a pleasure it will be to get back to Globe headlines about an abnormally large watermelon!
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