Transparency State University

TSU has had a few morally righteous and aggressive Faculty Senate Presidents in our past but our latest Faculty Senate President Dr Javus Cavil has been quite clearly the least effective and the least faculty-caring among all the Senate Presidents.  He has been verified to have traveled with President Lane for events that a Faculty President does not need to go to simply to be able to enjoy the perks of free travel thanks to the Texas taxpayers.  However, this frequent flyer BFF nonsense isn't anything as serious as Cavil not respecting and responding to Faculty Senate requests regarding faculty pay increases and after much prodding from the Faculty Senate, Cavil finally went and spoke with King Lane.  King Lane responded as you all know by now by providing us with a one-time 2% payroll increase.    The Faculty Senate has repeatedly asked Cavil to send President Lane a clear and unequivocal message that the faculty is not appreciative of being sidelined by King...

In October we reported that there was a rumor that the School of Communications Dean- Dr. Odine- has been removed/resigned/terminated.  We are still sketchy on details but the rumor is now CONFIRMED- the SOC Dean has returned to his teaching duties and is no longer Dean of the School of Communication. We were able to confirm this change through a school-wide email on January 7, 2019 by the Provost informing of this latest development. As mentioned, we are sketchy on exact details as to what happened for this Dean to leave their position for whatever official reason.  However, it's terrible leadership and awful management for the Lane regime to keep cycling and recycling deans (such as in SOPA and the law school) and setting up, closing and re-setting up dean search committees. It harms and destroys employees morale, inhibits trust and accountability in our institution and ultimately will NOT benefit our most precious and valuable resource- our students.  King Lane needs...

So the rumormill is abuzz again about King Lane finally being able to move into his mansion, aka the Palace of Versailles.  The Board of Regents is meeting on January 25-26 in the Woodlands for a retreat and according to the Meeting Agenda, it looks like they will be signing some sort of lease agreement with a mysterious "Foundation". Rumors have been swirling since October 2018 that the Chief of Staff's father-in-law offered to buy the mansion and then mortgage it back to TSU according to the October BOR meeting.   So perhaps this is what has happened.  We shall know more this weekend.  Will King Lane be inviting Transparency State to his opening party?  Probably not, but hope springs eternal.   

On TSU's website for several months now there has been a humble brag about our university being the second biggest HBCU in America.  Humble brag indeed. But what exactly does “2nd biggest HBCU”mean? Is that a reference to the size of our student body?   Or is it more apt to describe the size of the student body at the BEGINNING of the Fall semester...?   We all have been aware for some time now that since King Lane came to TSU about the boastfulness  punctuated by our stellar roster of Lane hirees especially in the Media, Communications and Development offices.  The enrollment numbers will be boasted and swaggered about every Fall semester with a huge opening class and then quietly and without fanfare the Lane administration has downplayed or become creative in showing enrollment numbers going "up" or holding steady.  Slick marketing and propaganda is expected and necessary for any authoritarian regime to prop up it's authority of course.  ...

After many months of back and forth emails, secretive meetings in the dead of the night (we suspect!)it seems that the SOPA Dean search committee is finalized and the committee members are meeting or at least soon will be meeting this coming semester for another round of Dean search.  Recall that we have now had 5 SOPA Deans in 11 years. Looks like all the members appear to be best buddies and cronies of the former Dean, Robert Bullard. Perhaps Dr. Bullard will re-apply and this whole search is a farce to bring him back as Dean even though he was fired by the King Lane upon his Majesty's arrival in June 2016? We shall see.  In an interesting twist, all the 3 departments in SOPA (AJ, UPEP and Political Science) are NOT represented equally.  While AJ and Political Science are top heavy on the committee, for some reason there does not seem to be a single UPEP faculty member.  One of the faculty members on the search committee has a joint appointment with both Politic...

Recently an email was sent out from the President's office for a surprise announcement for a 2% one-time bonus pay increase for all part-time and full-time faculty and staff.   Ostensibly this was meant to thank and show an "expression of gratitude" from King Lane to all his subjects, big and small in the TSU Kingdom. More likely, King Lane had decided to throw us all a few bones to use a colloquial expression, i.e. a few drippings from the Lord of the Manor in order to fend off a possible Faculty no-confidence vote or more complaints from faculty and staff who feel that the President has done little in the past 2 years to improve our paychecks but has been reportedly given a $34,000 bonus for performance pay from the BOR. So a 2% one-time increase while he received $34,000 bonus seems.....well, I'll let you decide.   It is true that faculty and staff were given a one-time 2% raise in the Fall 2016 semester when President Lane arrived on campus.  But we tend not t...