Transparency State University

Recently there was a THECB visit to our campus.  This meeting was announced (surprise, surprise) AFTER the THECB met with selected administrators, students faculty and staff. But only those chosen by King Lane could meet with THECB. We guess that only the chosen few can be trusted to say the "right" things to the THECB.  Hopefully the THECB could use their X- ray vision to see the massive dust bunnies eating away at the mildew of the red carpet laid out for them.....

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 cand...

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 ...

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 m...

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 th...

No one seems to have an idea what is going on with the School of Public Affairs (SOPA) Dean search process.  The last news was that in late November 2017, the former Provost Dr. Bobby Wilson chose Interim Dean, Dr. Michael Adams as the new permanent Dean after a yearlong search process.  Yet somehow President Lane did not agree with his recommendation and never provided any reason for his refusal to accept the Provost's recommendation. Strange indeed.....and yet things became even stranger.....in January 2018 with the new Provost, Dr. Kendall Harris, arriving on campus he sent out a mass email to the SOPA faculty and staff informing them that the search would continue but offering no reason as to why Dr. Adams was denied the permanent dean position. In April 2018, it was announced that Dr. Adams would step down from his Interim Dean position and return back to his Interim Chair position of the Department of Political Science.  Stranger still...the old, ret...

Today at our board meeting we were joined by the father in law of the President's Chief of Staff who put on a very impressive dog and pony show with Powerpoint and informed everyone how TSU spending another $11,000 a month on Lane's proposed mansion would be an asset and definitely not a liability, an estimated total of $132,000 a year.  We beg to disagree.   When we have students and possibly even staff and faculty who are either homeless or one paycheck away from being homeless, why on earth should our President be allowed to spend $2.5 million of our taxpayers money on a mansion when he already gets almost $80,000 a year as a stipend for living accommodations?  Isn't that enough money? The arguments made by Senor Smith was that:  A) Other colleges have presidential residences, B) We used to have a TSU presidential residence (why was it sold off? he didn't get into that and there were probably good reasons why he decided not to do that),  C)...

At the July 2018 Board of Regents meeting, the rumor is that President Lane asked the BOR (in closed session and as a vague description on the agenda for "property") to buy him and his family a $2 million mansion to be used by himself and owned by TSU as an official Presidential residence. Many universities have formal and legitimate Presidential residences, useful for both a residential dwelling but also used as a place to entertain and solicit donations and host events from alumni, boosters and other legitimate uses.  Fair enough, but with so many of our current students sleeping in cars, on people's couches and even some students who are actually homeless, isn't there a better use of $2 million perhaps as a series of microgrants to our students or perhaps as a raise to our hardworking faculty and staff who have not had a raise since 2014?  Additionally, President Lane has only been at TSU for about 2 years; is this enough time to measure his worth for an ...

Looks like another Dean has been mysteriously removed.  Rumor has it that the Dean of Communications who was hired in Fall 2017 was suddenly removed from his office by TSU police and escorted out of the building.  If this is true, this is now the 2nd time in 1 semester that a Dean has been removed/resigned or terminated after a very short period of time. 

Some years ago our law school and several law school faculty were sued by two former TSU law students who flunked out of the law school.  This case made local and state news.  Now it seems that recently our law school was in the news again with an issue of gender equity payments whereby certain female professors were paid less than male professors with similar rank.  It also appears that our TSU law school was having some serious problems with ABA accreditation and Dr. Douglas, the Interim Dean appointed by President Lane was doing a great job but suddenly he resigned.  What exactly is going on at our university with all these deans being removed or pressured to resign?  

After a yearlong exhaustive and expensive search by TSU, the School of Business had a new Dean officially appointed in August.   However, just 7 weeks later, he was mysteriously and suddenly terminated and removed by the administration.   No one has any idea what happened and where he is now.   We guess that TSU will now spend another X amount of taxpayers money for yet another business school dean search.   If anyone has any idea what happened, inquiring minds want to know.We have several other dean searches going on concurrently.  More on that as the year progresses.