Friday, 19 March 2004

Trouble brewing in Oxford?

You kind of have to read between the lines here, but it doesn’t look like the faculty think much of Ole Miss Provost Carolyn Staton. David Steele of the DM leads with:

In a debate lasting more than three hours, the Faculty Senate decided to not release the results of Provost Carolyn Staton’s quadrennial performance evaluation for the moment, citing privacy concerns.

A bit of background: this whole thing started when the quadrennial review of the Provost was scheduled; originally, Chancellor Khayat only solicited evaluations from certain deans and department heads; the Faculty Senate then decided to circulate separate evaluation forms to the faculty and then tabulate the results, stripping identifying information. The results of this evaluation are apparently what the Senate has decided not to release for now.

The whole article feels like it was cut-and-pasted out of order; one paragraph, we’re talking about the USM situation, the next, we’re talking about Staton, and never is it clear how much of the debate appeared in public. Interesting tidbit:

Khayat addressed the Senate on the [Staton?] issue in an executive session.

After that part of the meeting, it seems a little flip-flop happened:

According to Acevedo, some of the information in the provost’s review was good and some bad.

He said people might misinterpret the data, although he stated earlier that he thought the numbers spoke for themselves.

You are invited to try to make heads or tails of this at your leisure. I’m at a loss.

Friday, 23 April 2004

Southern Politics in Staton Nation

As expected, the near-legendary faculty review of Ole Miss Provost Carolyn Staton’s job performance was overwhelmingly negative, according to survey results obtained by The Daily Mississippian (who deserve kudos for even the vaguest attempt at investigatory journalism—heck, they deserve kudos for stringing together a coherent article, something rarely seen in the DM outside the Sports section). News at 11.

Though I have to give Bobby Khayat credit where it’s due—he runs a tighter ship than good ol’ Shelby Thames down at USM, and keeps things significantly closer to the straight-and-narrow, even if he engenders similar levels of animus from the faculty and students in the process.