It does not appear in the online version.  I am trying to type it in a word processing program for cut-and-paste.  Someone with a good scanner would earn much thanks.

Thames lacks temperament, skills to lead university

To hear Dave Elliot of WLOX-TV state last Sunday evening that Shelby Thames told him he was hired by the Board of Trustees of State Institiutions of Higher Learning to "clean house at USM" amazed me.

Until I heard this assertion, I was laboring under the obvious delusion that USM was a pretty fine university, one at least as good as Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

Now, it seems, we have been harboring an instituiton in our midst riddled with bad professors and rampant mismanagement. For 23 years I served as a top adminstrator under USM presidents William McCain and Aubrey Lucas. And while I did not agree with all of their decisions, I saw no evidence of gross mismanagement. I did see a university on the rise, one that was an asset to South Mississippi with the promise, because of its faculty, of becoming even better.

In the late 1970s Shelby Thames was promoted to the position of vice president of regional campuses. Almost immediately he began to put such pressure on his subordinates that he created turmoil and unrest among them.

In spite of this record, Dr. Lucas chose to name him executive vice president of USM. In this larger arena, Shelby's manangement techniques created even greater unrest and dissension.

Dr. Lucas finally called a special meeting at the Gulf Park campus with his deans and top administrators to consider how the unrest could be ended and peace restored to the university community. Not until the second day -- when Dr. Lucas promised to write a letter stating that he would tolerate no repriasals against any administrator for any comments made and they had a copy of this letter in their hands -- were the deans and other administrators willing to state their true feelings and concerns about Shelby's leadership.

At the close of the discussion Dr. Lucas asked whether they thought Shelby could change enough to become a competent administrator. Of the 15 people who were present, only Dr. Karen Yarbrough, a close associate of Shelby's, voted yes.

Sadly, Shelby was allowed to continue as executive vice president in spite of this overwhelming vote of no confidence until he stepped down following an incident concerning a personnel matter. In spite of the guarantee by Dr. Lucas that Shelby would not be able to take reprisals against us, all of the deans became a target of Shelby's petty vindictiveness.

Some became physically ill as a result; some stepped down and others left the university.

Shelby Thames has neither the temperament nor the people skills necessary to provide leadership to a university community. He is incapable of seeing any way but his as the the right way and, like an elephant, never forgets what he perceives as an injury done to him.

I have known him for nearly 40 years and was instrumental in helping him rise in the university, though I deeply regret that fact. The bottom-liners and power-brokers who put Shelby in as president will, if they do not demand his resignation, live to regret it.

If past history is not a warning, nothing is.

--Gene D. Saucier, a resident of Hattiesburg, is a former member of the Missississppi House of Representatives

 

This is absolutely the best thing yet to be printed in the paper.  Everyone who reads this should understand that Thames needs to go.

Thank you, Gene Saucier, for this.  IF only IHL would read it...

Saucier's column nails Thames to the wall!

Does anyone know who to contact at the Hat Am about putting the column in the electronic edition?

I'd like to link to it in the piece I'm writing for Liberty and Power, and I'm sure that others would like to link to it as well.  I'll link to this discussion instead, if I need to, but seeing it on the Hat Am's pages will bring the point home to readers that Thames has truly pooched his credibility with the local newspaper.

Robert Campbell

Gene Saucier has just flung a mighty big hammer! It doesn't surprise me a bit to see him come down on this side of the "controversy."

quote:

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Originally posted by: ram
"Dr. Lucas finally called a special meeting at the Gulf Park campus with his deans and top administrators to consider how the unrest could be ended and peace restored to the university community."

---

Thames was the VP of Administration and Regional Campuses in 1981-82. There is a photograph in the Southerner yearbook from that year (p. 269) of a "Leadershop Workshop for USM Administrators." I wonder if this is the same special meeting Gene Saucier references. The administrators in the photo are

• Shelby Thames - VP of Administration and Regional Campuses


• Joe Paul - Assistant to the VP for Student Affairs


• Susan Graham - (not an administrator, but I suspect she was a workshop facilitator)


• Shirley Jones - Dean, School of Social Work


• Gary Wildman - Dean, College of Science and Technology


• Walter Cooper - Dean, School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation


• Gene Tinnon - Dean, Continuing Education (became dean when Clyde Ginn was promoted to VP of Administration)


• James Sims - Dean, College of Liberal Arts


• Joe Holloway - Dean, USM-Gulf Park


• Jerri Laube - Dean, School of Nursing


• Sara Gibbs - Dean, School of Home Economics


• Roy Moore - (probably a workshop facilitator)


• Peter Durkee - VP, Student Affairs


• Al Jaeger - Assistant VP, Business and Finance


• Roger Johnson - Executive Administrative Assistant to the President


• Karen Yarbrough - VP, Academic Affairs


• Bill Gore - Dean, USM-Natchez


• Nick Fruge - Assistant to the VP of Academic Affairs


• Sidney Weatherford - Director of Institutional Research


• Rader Grantham - Dean of Students


• Aubrey Lucas - President


• Gene Saucier - Dean of Admissions and Special Academic Services


• Tom Estes - VP, Business and Finance


• Clyde Ginn - Dean, Continuing Education (later VP for Administraton)


• Bob van Aller - Dean, Graduate School


• Wallace Kay - Dean, Honors College


• Dick Prenshaw - Assistant to the VP of Academic Affairs


• John Green - Dean, College of Fine Arts


• Joe Green - Dean, College of Business Administration


• Roland Dale - Athletic Director


• Charles Probst - Dean of Student Services


• Bob Anderson - Dean, College of Education and Psychology

(The 1982-83 Southerner lists Thames as Executive Vice President, so his ascension to this position must have been in 1982.) 

Googler,

It's off the main topic here, but:

Rader Grantham is a familiar name from Exit 13.  While Piliawsky was at USM (1970-1972), Grantham's title was Dean of Men, later Associate Dean of Student Affairs.

And Grantham was a real piece of work, according to Piliawsky.

When was Shelby canned from his Executive VP position?

Robert Campbell

 

 

According to Saucier's article today in HA, it seems
SFT was forced out twice, once in the early 70s from departmental administration, and then the 1980s at Gulf Park.

Saucier used the euphemism "for personnel reasons."

I died laughing at why no one can come out and just say it. Why the HA cannot come out and say it, but everyone is scared.

Anyway, SFT has had two failed administrative posts,a and I was unware of that until I read Saucier's article today.

It is hard for me to believe that Aubrey Lucas could be such a, well, I cannot find the right word, ........ how he could be so insincere and unforgivably WEAK in not speaking out. Someone posted here a while back that AKL told the female IHL members, when asked about the bootyologist aspect of his stepping down at Gulf Park, the famous reply: "I know nothing about anything like that."

AKL let USM down and he let down the very colleges (Arts and Lib. Arts) that he built up.

I do not think SFT has ANYTHING "over" AKL.

I just think AKL is yellow in hiding behind that "administrative code" of silence. That is a crock.

Look what he has done. In many ways, it is AKL's "fault" this is occuring because we all know, and Roy and Scott and the Ole Miss / MSU boys on the IHL know, that SFT would never ever have survived that first 7-5 vote had the concerned members been told the truth by Aubrey. They asked and he LIED.

Print that HA.

I think we should call him, with all due respect for his good, "Little Aubrey"........LA.