After the events of the past few days at Missouri Southern State University, I decided to revisit an old Turner Report entry, added some information to it and submitted it today as my Daily Kos post. That post is printed below.)
A uniter not a divider.
That was the slogan George W. Bush used in his first campaign for president and that was how current Missouri Southern State University President Bruce Speck was described when he first strolled onto the campus.
The phrase did not turn out to be accurate for either man, though it comes closer in the case of Speck. Speck is succeeding in doing something that has never happened in the seven decades Missouri Southern has existed, going back to its days as Missouri Southern State College and Joplin Junior College.
For the first time, the MSSU faculty is united…in opposition to Speck. Furtive attempts to unionize the faculty have occurred from time to time during the quarter of a century that Dr. Julio Leon was in charge of the campus, but nothing ever came of it.
Recently, a chapter of the American Association of University Professors was organized on campus and late last year, the faculty overwhelmingly issued Speck a vote of no-confidence. Still, the Board of Governors has stood by its man and told him he needs to be nicer to the faculty.
And now the students have joined the battle. Last week, students organized to protest the exclusion of gays from campus non-discrimination policy.
A sit-in was held outside Speck’s office Thursday, less than a week after a member of the Board of Governors resigned after making a comment about the university’s mascot changing from a “fag lion” to a “ferocious lion.”
Speck, as usual, did not offer any illuminating comments to the media about the situation, preferring to engage in doublespeak. He told the Joplin Globe, “If we have issues that we need to deal with, then I am committed to dealing with those issues,” he said. “And we have systems in place to deal with them.”
Speck also insisted that adding language concerning non-discrimination against gays to the policy could pose legal problems for the university.
Since Speck’s arrival, the university has been permeated with an atmosphere of fear as programs have been cut without notification, and seemingly without rhyme or reason, at a time when the country is having deep economic difficulties, but when the university itself appears to be in reasonably good shape.
In addition to the programs that have been eliminated, Speck has taken substantial steps toward dismantling the university's international program, the campus’ state-approved mission, and one which has brought students from all over the world, as well as taking MSSU students to numerous foreign countries.
It appears the MSSU Board of Governors either did not look carefully at Speck’s recent background, or it did look carefully, and decided that he was precisely the person it wanted to lead the university.
On April 14, a lawsuit in which Speck was initially a defendant came to a close when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Speck’s former employer, Austin Peay University in Tennessee, did not discriminate against four African American professors. Though the court ruled there was not enough evidence to prove discrimination, the decision noted that the only evidence of racism that had been offered was a quote allegedly made by Speck. I wrote about the lawsuit and other controversial issues surrounding Speck and racial discrimination on my blog, The Turner Report:
“The lawsuit said that Speck, who served as vice president of academic affairs at the university, insulted two of the plaintiffs, Jacqueline Wade, director of the university's African American Cultural Center (AACC) and Nancy Dawson by saying ‘he 'was tired of your arm-twisting and resistance to my decisions.'
“He also made clear that he would not tolerate Dr. Wade’s and Dr. Dawson’s 'pushiness' and 'uppityness.' Dr. Wade was offended by the latter comment as 'covert racial denigration.' "
Though the situations at Austin Peay and Missouri Southern are not the same, both involve a “my way or the highway” attitude that has created friction at the faculty level.
It would be easy to give the Missouri Southern State University Board of Governors a free pass since everyone makes a hiring mistake at one time or another, but the hiring of Bruce Speck was a bit unusual.
Despite his previous record at Austin Peay, which apparently was not investigated closely by the board, Bruce Speck was the only person the board interviewed for the most important job on campus.
