Transparency State University

On October 7, 2018 the Provost emailed SOPA faculty and staff that there is a new Dean search committee set up.  How these new committee members were chosen is a matter of consistent speculation among the SOPA faculty members as everyone is wondering what will happen on January 1, 2019 when Dr. Herrington will again head back into retirement wilderness after his contract ends.  You may remember the SOPA Acting Dean farce whereby Dr. Adams was booted out unceremoniously in the middle of the Spring semester and Dr. Herrington took office in April 2018 but was only confirmed by the BOR in August 2018.  How strange is that?.....How was Dr. Herrington's $100K plus salary authorized without BOR approval? There is increased speculation about whether or not Dr. Herrington will actually leave his position or will his contract as Acting Dean be extended for another year while the Lane regime again tries to concoct a Lane-friendly dean search committee, so they can plug in the candidate of t

We have so many Dean searches going on on our campus it has become incredibly difficult to keep track of which committee at which school is current.  We discussed the SOPA dean search run amok and railroaded due to several faculty haters in SOPA, one of whom was forced to publicly recant and pseudo-apologize in a Spring 2017 email for trying to poison and destroy Dr. Michael Adams's chances for becoming permanent dean and unfortunately it looks like these faculty members have succeeded...for now. The law school also has been going through it's search process as Dean Douglas stepped down last year and Dean Bledsoe who was formerly a member of the Board of Regents was sworn in.  No idea how that search is going.  We wish the law school much luck in finding a capable and fair dean. Recently it appears the COLABS search committee for the next dean is now in the final stages of being established.  While details are scarce we understand that recently the Provost sent an email to se

A long-time, tenured Education professor has reportedly been removed from employment at TSU (on leave with pay pending a hearing for an appeal to be re-instated) after being found liable for Title IX (sexual harassment) by an investigation through an outside law firm hired by King Lane.  It appears that King Lane seems to have found a new tactic to bully, harass and intimidate his critics or critics of his supporters as this Education professor was well-known to be butting heads with the Dean of Education who is a supporter of Lane. Who knows where King Lane came up with this creative idea...possibly our new General Counsel Ms. Hao Le advised him or possibly someone outside TSU advised the king.  We will likely never know how this idea came about, as it is certainly unusual to have an outside law firm do an investigation without going through HR first. ***We are not aware if HR was involved prior to outside investigators brought in with the Education professor.  They may have certai

In February 2018, without any fanfare or prior announcements, the TSU President, Provost and other bigheads held a press conference and invited selected members of the public and other King Lane favorites to come join them in celebrating a $2.7 million, 5-year Koch Brothers "grant" to TSU due to the "grant" proposal written by Dr. Howard Henderson and who is now the Director of the Center for Justice Research, the new "think tank" on our campus. But what exactly does the CJR do? So far since February they seemed to have simply fattened the wallets of a few Administration of Justice faculty, naming them with the dubious and banal title of "Faculty Fellows", perhaps a more apt description of their role at CJR might be "Faculty Friends of Howard" enriching themselves through this so-called "grant" by being paid approximately $20,000-$30,000 a year in addition to their salaries.  At least 2 Fellows are both faculty and

TSU has been in the news in the past because of many reasons but there hasn’t been a lawsuit against TSU in a few years. That record has been broken yet again.  On October 2, 2018 a law professor at Thurgood Marshall Law School filed a lawsuit against TSU alleging gender and racial bias, harassment and prejudice from fellow faculty and the former dean of TMSL. The law school was recently sanctioned by the ABA for gender discrepancies in pay but some might argue that this lawsuit is even more damaging for our school than the ABA’s sanctions.  Most damaging to our students and those of whom are planning on applying to TMSL is the numbers for first time bar passage examinees. Only 28% passed in February 2018 on their first try.  The ABA must have at least a 75% bar passage rate otherwise this creates numerous difficulties with law schools for accreditation and funding purposes.  What exactly is going on at our law school if more than 2/3 of our students CANNOT pass the state bar exam?