Confronted with a highly critical report that cast the University of South Carolina’s governing board as beholden to politicians, trustees here on Friday struggled at times to swallow the bitter conclusions of the two consultants who had written the assessment.
The board’s all-day retreat followed a presidential search that was tarnished by political meddling and concluded with the trustees’ split-vote appointment, in July, of Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., who was favored by the governor but opposed by many students, faculty, and alumni.
The search has chipped away at public trust in the board and exposed the university to scrutiny from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, or SACS, South Carolina’s regional accreditor. The commission, which recently concluded that there is evidence that the governor exerted undue influence on the board, will require the university to submit a monitoring report in the fall.
The consultants’ report, which was made public on Friday, was written by Richard D. Legon, the immediate past president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and Ellen Chaffee, a senior fellow for the group. They concluded that the board had a “fundamentally misguided governance culture” with “a predilection for political governance.”
In the parlance of college governance, those are fighting words.
The report was the basis on Friday of a board workshop, which felt at times as much like an intervention as a seminar.
“You swung and missed in a very high-profile way,” Legon said. “And you got crosswise in the saddle with an organization that has more power than you’ll ever have, and that’s your accrediting body.”
Universities that lose accreditation, which is not on the table for South Carolina at this time, cannot receive federal student aid, a step that can put a college out of business. Trustees who ignore complaints from accreditors, therefore, do so at an institution’s peril.
Legon said some of South Carolina’s trustees have questioned “who are these people in Atlanta,” where the accrediting agency has its headquarters, to lord over the fate of the university?
They’re God, and you’re not.
“My answer is, they’re God,” Legon said, “and you’re not.”
The consultants anticipated pushback from the trustees, who were likely to quibble with the report’s harshest assessments. The report, however, was drawn in part from interviews with the trustees themselves. Additionally, the consultants reviewed board materials and spoke with legislators, administrators, students, and faculty members.
“This is a work of nonfiction,” said Legon, describing the document as “a mirror of what you shared and collectively indicated we need to work on.”
The consultants’ report and workshop came at Caslen’s recommendation. It cost the university $146,000, a university spokesman said.
Getting Right With ‘God’
A central issue at play for South Carolina’s governing board is its appointment process, which some have described as inviting political interference.
In addition to three ex officio members, including the state’s governor, South Carolina’s board has a member from each of the state’s 16 judicial districts, who are elected by the General Assembly. Additionally, the governor appoints one at-large member. In all that’s 20 board members, and some lawmakers have suggested that number is unwieldy and ought to be reduced.
It is not uncommon for public-university trustees to be appointed through a political process that involves the governor and or the legislature. But South Carolina’s system has produced a board with little diversity and a warped perception of its fealty to lawmakers, the consultants concluded.
C. Dorn Smith III, a board member who voted for Caslen’s appointment as president, took umbrage at the suggestion that the university’s board was captive to the desires of its legislative electors.
“The implication that you’re alluding to is that every member of this board is only concerned about themselves being re-elected, and that we put our political lives before the forefront of the greater good of the university,” Smith said. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
Few would disagree, however, that the board has been tarred with the perception that it is overly politicized. Public records, which have come to light in recent months, show that board members conflated the presidential search with concerns about liberalism at the university, and stayed in regular communication with the Republican governor’s office about it.
In one text-message exchange, for example, the governor’s chief of staff described Caslen’s appointment as a partisan victory.
“The Democrats hate us,” Trey Walker, the chief of staff, wrote. “We took their castle.”
C. Dan Adams, who serves as the governor’s designee on the board, replied, “It’s our turn!!”
None of those details came up during the board’s retreat, which was billed as an opportunity for radical candor. In an interview with The Chronicle, however, John C. von Lehe Jr., the board’s chairman, said he was disappointed with the partisan tenor of Adams’s communications with Walker.
I see it as a learning experience hopefully for that trustee, and hopefully for the others of us, that this is not the way.
“My reaction to it is very negative,” von Lehe said. “I see it as a learning experience hopefully for that trustee, and hopefully for the others of us, that this is not the way.
“This has to do with political concepts, which are foreign to our duties on the board,” he continued. “Hopefully, something was learned out of that.”
Von Lehe, though, is walking a fine line as the board’s chairman. He at once denies that trustees have done anyone’s political bidding, while he also acknowledges the need for stronger safeguards against undue political influence.
After 22 years on the board, von Lehe said, he has “never” witnessed a trustee vote for or advocate a policy because of political influence. He said he includes in that assessment the recent presidential search, during which Henry McMaster, the governor, called every trustee to recommend the retired general for the top job.
“Well, let’s put it like this,” von Lehe said. “He called 20 people, all right? And 11 of them voted the way” the governor “would have voted had he been there — in other words, for General Caslen. Nine did not.”
The board planned to meet again on Saturday to chart a path forward, and von Lehe told his fellow trustees that a strong policy against political interference must be on the table. If “SACS is God,” he said, the board needs to get right with its accreditor — before it’s too late.
