ABA accreditation problems at our law school?

Transparency State has learned that the law school still seems to be having issues with the ABA accreditation status.  You may recall the American Bar Association (ABA) found Thurgood Marshall in violation of several ABA standards in 2015 and 2016.  So far as of Fall 2018, TSU law school has only been able to satisfy one standard.  There are several other standards that will be worked on until July 2020:

·                Standard 104, which provides for data integrity with information that is complete, accurate and submitted in a form, time and manner to the Council

·                Standard 205(b): provides for equality of opportunity for faculty and staff

·                Standard 301(a): provides for a rigorous program of legal education

·                Standard 309(b): provides for academic support

·                Standard 501 (b): provides for qualified applicants (Source- HBCUBuzz)

We at Transparency State support and will provide unqualified support to our law school, but we question whether making a board member (who may not be entirely qualified to lead the law school) an Acting Dean was such a wise idea. 

Dean Gary Bledsoe may not be the worst dean for the job (we reserve that distinction for another current dean), but certainly brings to question as to why Dean James Douglas was removed so abruptly and rudely.  Why was there such a necessity to remove a man who has been at TSU possibly for more than 4 decades and has tons of experience to place a board member in the dean’s position?  After all, BOR members are unpaid, their sole mechanism for getting a seat on any state university BOR is to contribute $5000 to the governor’s campaign and the governor draws names from a list and chooses. 

The optics as usual look terrible- a man who was an unpaid, volunteer board member was somehow able to parlay his unpaid position into a $250,000 a year job.  Perhaps Dean Bledsoe is a very qualified dean, we don’t know him well enough to cast judgement on his competency, but the optics do not lie.  As usual Transparency State can only report on what we know, we reserve judgment for another day.