UA: Why can't we all be friends?

May we assume that the big ad in Friday's Beacon Journal critical of the University of Akron's  top leadership may  have at least been scanned by President Scott Scarborough over  his morning coffee while also interrupting the long sleepover by the school's trustees?

I mean, a sharply targeted reminder by more than 325 concerned campus and around-town UA supporters sent a graphically clear message: lot of folks are quite fearful that the school is going to hell under Scarborough's teflon management.  It wasn't the first time that the anger and frustration  have erupted on the campus.

The best that the front office could offer in its official porous defense was forwarded to the ABJ readers by UA spokesman Wayne Hill, who responded with an authorized version from on high:

"We believe that what is best for the University of Akron and the greater Akron community is for those who care about both to work together to  ensure  the university's long-term success and continued positive impact on the community."

Nice try.

 It should be obvious by now that from the time Scarborough settled into the job some 18 months ago, he was driven by his own ideas on how to attack the school's $40 million shortfall - ideas that were rejected by the faculty   at the University of Toledo where he once worked - and God help those  who declared,  "Whoa there, pony."  He arrived with a sense of entitlement that shaped the tone and execution of his mission.

Work together with his critics?  As he once put it, his critics simply didn't understand what he was trying to accomplish .By his narrow standard, it takes only one to tango.

And the trustees who sat quietly in the wings as the school's debt grew under Scarborough's predecessor Luis Proenza?    There appears to be a sacred   board rule that only chairman Jonathan Pavloff  can speak for the other political appointees.  It's fair to ask what do the trustees really do beyond showing up for meetings for a public university. You tell me.

So the bow is bent.  More arrows will  fly in the paper on Saturday and Sunday with ads  2 and 3.  

What does arrival of advisory group say about Scarborough's ability?

If you have felt some heavy winds in the weather around the University of Akron campus  in recent days, they may very well have been produced by the rush of the city's business community to offer its services to the troubled school.

In short order, a full page Beacon Journal ad called for a detente between the opposing forces to allow  more time for the UA leadership's poorly  executed  rebranding and debt reduction plans to work. Under the headline COME TOGETHER, the ad bore the names of seven heavyweight CEOs.  That was quickly followed up with a UA annnouncement that another ad hoc group of businessmen had formed a "University of Akron  Business Executive Advisory Council"  to work  - on call - with President Scott Scarborough and the reclusive board of trustees to resolve issues that have swept the campus.

Interesting.  As one who has been trying to piece together the  palpable fallout in the wake of the new administration that arrived a year and half ago on the downtown campus, I can only conclude that with so many business leaders now on tap, there is  real panic motivating the guardians of the school's. reputation.   One source mentioned to me  that it looked more like a receivership in the works.

Some history:

For starters, it might be helpful if Scarborough was a little less stuffy about his management skills and widened his vision to include the surrounding off-campus territory.  When Team Scarborough settled in with a ringing fanfare,  the school was already deeply in debt, an untidy situation left by his predecessor,  Luis Proenza and  a napping board of trustees who dared not question  the red ink that was flowing from a multimillion-dollar building plan that included a a new $60 million football stadium.

Unfortunately, Scarborough, a  man with no lack of self-confidence, simply took a bad situation and made it institutionally worse as he surrounded himself with a bunch of highly paid executives for his unchallenged command-and-control  changes to the school's name (Ohio's Polytechnic  University) and other initiatives to reach out farther for enrollment.   Keep in mind that among the target models was Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which showed a 5.34 pct.decline  in enrollment this year.

Among the UA victims was the downsizing of E.J. Thomas Hall, the  iconic performing arts fountain that has extended UA's reputation far and wide. Various disciplines were raided.  Faculty found other campuses.  On the other hand, Scarborough's obsession with personal behavior led to the creation of a student cadet corps with the same mission as the ROTC already active on campus.

But now it is fair to ask: Why does a guy hired by the trustees and paid around a half-million dollars with princely perks in return for his touted management ability now need a squad of businessmen to bail him out? And where have the reclusive trustees been idling for so long as the royal debt piled up?

The business force will find there is much to do, starting at the top.  Frankly, I don't have a clue where this will end up.  I do know that one of the businessmen mantioned in the ad  isn't shy  about talking about it.  That's Joe Kanfer the CEO  of GOJO Industries ,  who was honored this year as the recipient of  the  Akron Community Foundation Bert A. Polsky Humanitarian Award. He is a former outspoken UA trustee who isn't cut out to let anything be swept under the textbooks.

Kanfer gave me a brief preview of his mission to return UA to a peaceful and honorable existence.  But he doesn't want anybody to think he's just coming along for the ride.

"The university of Akron is an important part of the area.," he says in his usual hurried voice.  '"And I want it to come together again."

He also  offered a word of caution to everyone involved:  "I won't be a rubber stamp."

I've seen Kanfer in action before and can assure you that he's far from being a rubber stamp. I believe you will be hearing more from Joe before this epic tale of woe ends.

UA's speechless merry-go-round

I have once again found that there are precincts  of the University of Akron that are on lockdown.  As in the case of the Multicultural Center, once believed to have been a victim of  the Scarborough administration's summer housecleaning. Sort of.

My curiosity was aroused by a private  top-level meeting the past Friday at City Hall between Mayor Jeff Fusco and UA President  Scott Scarborough, each flanked by his  own confederates.

Fusco had arranged the session in what at first  seemed to me to be a way of leveling the playing field on Scarborough's strictly controlled game plan for the  downtown campus.  The mayor was joined by City Planning Director  Marco Sommerville and two black ministers; in Scarborough's corner were Board of Trustees chairman and the CEO's first responder, Jonathan Pavloff,  as well as African-American trustees Olivia Demas  and Warren Woolford.

Something else apparently on the table:  the topsy-turvy  reports from last July that the Multicultural Center, which is serving minorities  and international students, was headed in a different direction that has yet to be defined by the front office.  From all that we could determine, the minority ministers had wanted a clearer focus on where that was ending up. Alas, in the end, Sommerville  told  me,  the session  didn't accomplish very much.

In July, word that the Center would be closed (its three staff members were dispatched)   was officially denied by the leadership. Or as spokesman Wayne Hill put it at the time,  "the programming and services will be supported in different ways."

The situation remains fluid in November to the concern of the students.

I tried to shake out an update on Tuesday on whether the Center was still functioning.   John Alvarez Turner, an associate director, said he wasn't authorized to talk to me.  He said that only the  Center's director, Lee Gill,was authorized to talk to a reporter. And Gill is now a cabinet member  on the Scarborough team.

I innocently asked Turner whether his office had been moved to new quarters but he responded by telling me to call Gill. I did , left a message, and didn't get a reply.

The situation, a disgraceful lockdown directed by Scarborough's desk, leaves many of us  to fill in the blanks.   And  in the face of so much criticism, the new UA Polytechnic fantasy is trying to play by its own fail-safe rules.  That's  false royalty for you.

Oh, I did hear from Wayne Hill, who e-mailed  an authorized response by late afternoon, which is as far I've gotten so far:

"Yes, the Multicultural Center is still functioning.  We are finalizing comprehensive plans to increase the impact of UA's inclusive excellence commitment and better coordinate the provision of services in a more convenient manner.  As previously reported, The Office of Inclusion &  Equity/Chief Diversity office, headed by Lee Gill, now reports directly to the President of the University.  The more comprehensive  plans will be communicated in in the days and weeks ahead."

Or not. Sounds more like a statement put together by a committee.


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Scarborough file adds new critical voice

We can now add the Beacon Journal's  editorial page editor Mike Douglas to critics of  UA President Scott Scarborough's bleak performance since his sceptered arrival from Toledo University.  For many months, Douglas offered his readers a virtual politically correct touch-and go job rating.

Not this time.  From the tone of the Douglas piece, the prez  has fallen more deeply into the mire of a badly scripted promise to  ease the school's $60 million debt.

Moreover, for the first time, the question appeared from a top row of the ivory
tower of whether Scarborough is professionally fit to manage the school.  Douglas wrote, in what can ony be a desperate shot across the bow:

''Is Scarborough, for all the promising ambition for the university, the right person to get the school there?   Jonathan Pavloff, the chairman of the university board of trustees,  describes the  president as possessing the 'precise talents' for the job.  Actually that isn't clear..."

Since the new Maestro took over the university with the sound of silence from the cowering trustees, it's been one thing after another as he  ignored critics and insisted that only those who don't understand his format for change  are now complaining.  He  was the model of the right way, some of it even shaped by his deeply religious Texas background that has referenced church people as the ones who stooped to pick up trash.

His campus culture was to be one of discipline, discipline,  discipline - an "organization engaged in disciplined thought and action."  He even initiated a new uniformed Corps of Cadets as a campus role model.  Meantime, he became embroiled in a badly executed name change for the school, which soured more people than he cared to acknowledge.

Throughout the upheaveal on the campus, he seemed to be conducting the thunderous Ride of the Valkyries as a lilting Strauss waltz.

Things are finally catching up.  From Douglas to mega-philanthropist Eileen Burg to the UA Women's Committee to the AAUP and to those of us who questioned his muddled game plan, the clock is ticking faster. At least we  are having more reason to hope .

I once worked for an editor who defended an unpopular decision by shrugging that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break an egg..  In the editor's case, his own egg was finally broken as he headed out the door.

UA has its very own Dr. Pangloss

When University of Akron President Scott Scarborough announced his plan in July to  trim the school's debt while  cutting 213 jobs, he wanted the cast-aside people that he was not a mean-spirited man.  He said the cuts were "painful"  but he did want to   thank   the severed victims while promising them counseling "to show them the respect and courtesy they deserve." Cool.

He also explained the mid-summer move to the Beacon Journal by saying that he wanted to put the "painful"   upheaval  behind the school before the fall semester. Cool, again.

As shown  in other wobbly steps taken by Scarborough, it revealed his knack for miscalculation in the  moves that have so troubled the campus ever since. Like burning post-shingles itch, they're not going away. (Trust me on this one!)

Nothing that occurred in July and later was "put behind".

 Two scheduled campus protests are on the calendar - the first at the UA Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, from 9 to noon, in the Student Union.  The Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors reported  that a "coalition of groups representing students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the community"  will be face to face with the dormant trustees who have  been conspicuously silent  (except on occasion by the chairman) throughout the nightmare.  Isn't it fair to ask whether UA really needs a board?

The second protest, courtesy of the Akron AAUP,  will attend Scarborough's State of the University address  on Oct 20 in, of all places, E.J. Thomas Hall, the site of  Team Scarborough's wrecking crew. (Time: 1:30)

For this one, I can only imagine that Scarborough's recitation of the goodness of his administration will be inspired by Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who found good in everything, no matter what.

Text here, text there - soon an odd Q&A

The University of Akron's leadership team has previewed and withdrawn so many options in its rebranding exercises that even stillborn ideas gravitate to front-page media coverage these days.

Take, for example, the Beacon Journal report on the a bizarre tightly controlled student government forum with President Scott Scarborough  in the Gardner Theatre.  Students were required to text  their questions to a  couple of student leaders who were seated aside Scarborough.  The questions were then forwarded to the boss. That doesn't  even happen at the White House press conferences!

The topic that quickly gained traction was a mere mention by Scarborough that  UA was looking at establishing a K-12 school,  like, say, the University of Chicago's.  But it got no farther.  Scarborough said later the UA College of Education  is  merely exploring the idea  but it  might never happen.

Still, Tuesday's BJ reader saw a commanding Page One headline that said:    UA considers own K-12 school.  

And we're sure that's how Scarborough, a man of action,  would like us to remember another exciting foray by his regime.

About the Chicago plan, which has been operating for nearly two decades.  It's called the  UChicago Charter School and is one of the four integrated units in the Urban Education Institute.  It serves 1900 students as a "pre-K-12th pathway to college"  .

I asked about the cost in a call to the school and was told it was "funded like public schools".

Are you listening David Brennan?

Please.  No more of this talk. Certainly not when charter is part of the conversation.  It could get quite expensive for UA, which already is claiming poverty.  And based on Scarborough's remarks, it's a bridge to nowhere for UA. I would text him about this but I don't know how to do it.  I've never fully caught up with the digital age.

UA becoming a company campus

You would think that a new regime that claims strategic academic advances  would have at least considered the adage "Look before you leap".

By now we can conclude that University of Akron President Scott Scarborough and his meek servants on the Board of Trustees didn't.  And so, the school's reputation and credibility  are in free fall.

Scarborough arrived with a spotty resume from the University of Toledo  last year with a merit badge for wanting to get things done quickly.  He had tried to sell his grand plan  to the Toledo faculty and failed.  I remain puzzled  over why the UA Trustees chose to not only hire him but also to grant him an unchallenged and a richly rewarded command post to carry out his scheme to change the university's name (now , he says, abandoned). The price of renovating his home at nearly three times the original estimate was particularly troubling for a school insisting it was flat broke.  And what parent couldn't react sharply to a contractual perk that his daughter could someday attend any school in Ohio at no charge?

There have been other retreats from his initiatives along the way that exposed hasty efforts to "rebrand" UA into a tech center. Today's mail brought to us a flier from the University of Akron,  tagged Ohio's Polytechnic University - not a comforting fit for UA's music school's programs, do you think?

In the past year there have been too many reports of Scarborough's shredding of some of the school's departments  to cut into the school's debt.  Add the odd  administrative mistakes bobbing like apples in the pool of new executives  too highly paid to be making them. There have been too many bulging contracts for questionable  new programs.

On Sunday, a deeply researched report in the Beacon Journal included a startling statement for those of us who have fallen into the trap of linking UA with a $60 million debt.

"UA," reporter Rick Armon wrote, "doesn't have an annual $60 million deficit or shortfall".

That's what UA Chief Financial Officer Nathan Mortimer told him.  The explanation was too complicated for this column.

Still, Scarborough found his  comfort zone in the well-paid executives he brought to the  campus, morphing UA into a company school. That includes a hire who had once functioned in David Brennan's parallel $1 billion  taxpayer funded universe of White Hat Management's  charter schools.

Under Brennan's command,  Todd Rickel, UA's new vice  provost and dean of College of Applied Science and Technology,  made it known that he was an "education futurist" as White Hat's "Chief Learning Officer."  What could go wrong?

 Inasmuch as White Hat's charters are tanking  with  awful grades (as they did under Rickel on Brennan's payroll) you might wonder what he's doing at UA with a  $295,000 salary anyway.

 Brennan has long boastfully considered  himself a "futurist"  and years ago invited me to a private breakfast where the speaker  predicted the total demise of universities.

Folks, this whole rebranding idea is going nowhere as it stumbles over its own flubs.     Right now it's a high-priced game of academic silly putty.  Guess who's picking up the tab.

Shouldn't we stop calling Akron names?

Throughout the long, hot summer of a search for a new name of Whatchmacallit U, little or nothing has been heard from the school's Board of Trustees - an abstract group, , really - that follows Justice Clarence Thomas' discreet path that silence is not only golden but also safer than a remote desert isle.

The board's missing public face has had a curious absence while  the - University of Akron...There!  I've dared resurrect the name! - is in the throes of historic woefully managed policy pains.

It's quite clear that the eight political appointees are not even minor risk-takers in their lofty perches  above the academics.   Skilled as they are in collegial meeting and greeting, they then manage to slip back into their real lives once the campus agenda is approved.

As for President Scott Scarborough, do you get the idea that he may have spent too much time studying the Peanuts strips in which Lucy devilishly pulls the football away from Charlie Brown?  I'm referring, of course, to the times that we learned of another fail-safe initiative to advance the school's prospects, only to learn later  that it had been rescinded, only-rumored, misrepresented  in the media or too nasty for words.

So it has been with Polytechnic, Ohio Tech, Institute or other appendages to Akron (or not) , a name now removed from the marching band uniforms.

In this town with compact loyalties, even the Akron Aeros changed its name to Akron Rubber Ducks and it caused  little public alarm because Akron was retained and it didn't change to, say,  something like the Rubber Ducks  Baseball Institute.

So to Team Scarborough and the trustees, I would humbly say:

C'mon, guys and gals,  Polytechnic - or so we have read, - suggests modern cutting edge insight into a Z-shape future.  You've had a year to figure all of this out. Why not have a naming contest and announce the winner at the Whatchamacallit Zips first winning football game?

That's mean.  I'll take it back.  I can rescind, too.

Two more columnists check out UA's debacle

News is  breaking out.  About the University of Akron's new regime.  And so, dear reader, I lead you to two sources, the Akron Legal News and the West Side Leader, for further guidance on the messy state of academic affairs.

 In the ALN there's a column by Scott Piepho, a lawyer and former UA teacher, who writes that President Scott Scarborough  is "enamored of faddish, think tanky ideas about reforming higher education along conservative lines".  No  argument from me on that assessment.

And in the WSL, columnist Craig Marks takes up a satirical pen regarding the shutdown of the school's baseball team under  the provocative headline:  "Who needs grand slams if  you have a grand entrance?"   That, of course, refers to Scarborough's grandiose proposal to build an eye-catching entrance arch (with curb appeal!)  on a new path leading to the ringmaster's offices.

Read on!

For Best and Scarborough, the two who tangoed

 Randy Best is a mega-rich entrepreneur who has become the big man on the University of Akron campus, if only in the offices of President Scott Scarborough and his servile board of trustees.   Best was just awarded a lucrative contract for an online nursing program in which  his Texas-based company, Academic Partnerships, will receive half of the tuition from students who sign on. Half?  Nice work if you can get it.   And Best knows how to get a lot of it.

But the subplot to Best's huge success story, insofar as he embraces UA, is that he and Scarborough have had intersecting careers for years  in which the latter  has had Best's business model coursing through his grand plan  to rebrand UA, relieve some of the school's debt and apply whatever other strategies that leave academia in the distant past. That not only includes Scarborough's passion for online courses but also his promotion of hired off-campus "coaches" for students.

 As Forbes magazine  once described Best's  M.O. to profit from a university's  treasury, his  three R's are  "recruitment, retention and revenue".  It quoted his bottom line judgment on academic matters: : "The Stanfords, the Harvards, of my gosh, those schools are remarkable.  But they're irrelevant to the market."

A think-alike Texan yoked with Scarborough, Best  is also active in national politics, having raised millions of dollars for former President George W. Bush. And Jeb Bush is an investor in Best' s enterprises.

Scarborough, of course, will deny the linkage defined in a growing number of media reports.  He prefers to call it nothing more than just another day at the office in his heroic effort to cut UA's debt.   But don't believe it.  He's already cashed in  his credibility as the CEO on the reeling downtown campus even though he's admitted his mistakes in ramping up his grand designs on the ailments of  higher education. The paper trail is simply too persuasive .

Some tell-tale evidence:  As the chief financial officer at DePaul University in  Chicago,  Scarborough recommended the sale of Barat College, a tiny  Catholic school, to Best's company in 2005 and that would include accreditation, land and buildings.  You can only believe that the transaction would have had a lengthy get-acquainted period as the details fell into place.

Eureka!  As part of the deal,  Scarborough  landed a  seat on the new owner's  board.
There he remained, the Plain Dealer reported, until  2007, when he became chief financial officer at the University of Toledo, giving up his board seat on Higher Ed Holdings, the company's new name.

He became Best's go-between to the  provost in which Best offered an online master's degree in an education program for  teachers.  Sorry, the College of Education said,  and turned it down. Undaunted, Best came back with  an online nursing program with Scarborough serving as his greeter.  Again he was rejected.

Academic Partnerships then scored with Ohio University in 2008 for the nursing program.  But OU has since cancelled it.  Randy Leite, dean of the College of Health Sciences,  told the PD:  "We found over time that the quality and level our students expected was not being met." Meantime, Best had collected 50 pct.  of the tuition.

And so the ship has now come in at the UA, with Scarborough saying he only  had been contacted  by Academic Partnerships and turned over its proposals to the trustees for them to decide.   He said he was surprised that it was accepted by a "consensus".  Really?  With this board?

You may have noticed that  Scarborough has met the critics by saying that rather than  enhancing  his friend Randy Best's business opportunities, he simply  made a few introductions.

And at the University of Akron, based on their  feathery track record how could the trustees  possibly resist?  By the looks of things, Team Scarborough ain't done yet.








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Bobblehead giveaways for UA football fans?

Having had no experience in building crowds at college football games, I am eminently qualified to offer you today's sermon.  The idea came to me as I read an expert's advice on the Beacon Journal's op-ed page to seduce people to attend University of Akron football games.

What didn't work, I should begin, is the school's attempt to pulsate  its  30,000 seat stadium on  those hapless afternoons when the team was doing its pantomine before   more than 20,000 empty seats. The $61.6 million structure,   which opened in 2009, hosted a team that won three games  that year.  (The following year 1-11, followed by a lot of etc's)  Its grand opening, however, was celebrated with so many exclamation points that  the school's  administration under President Luis Proenza could have been penalized for demonstrating in the end zone after  a game-winning touchdown.

About the crowd-building expert:  Katie Swartz, who runs a sports management consulting firm, prescribed an enhanced  "game day experience" with one option being a LeBron James event tied to ticket sales.   She also recommended aggressive ticket hustling with corporations,  local businesses and donors;  raffles, and changing the game time. I would suggest a moment when the game didn't conflict with a Trump TV speech.

Inasmuch  as so many decisions by the Team Scarborough  front office have been scrapped  to the extent that the school has become a national joke, I have a crowd-pleasing suggestion offered by the  other person who shares our home:  Why not offer every patron on game day a Scarborough bobblehead doll?, she asks.  I would add a free tee shirt with the names of the trustees printed upside down in school colors.

Well, why not? It won't win any games, but it would certainly add some joy to a game-day experience.

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On restored UA president house, olive jars and Mike Williams

Inspired by the nearly $1 million makeover of  University of Akron  President Scott Scarborough & Family's new digs, I spent some time over the week end  making my office more presentable by emptying files and wastebaskets.

Among the old clippings that turned up was a Beacon Journal piece dated July 19,  2014 reporting the projected cost of the renovation as $375,000. Ted Curtis, UA vice president of  capital planning and facilities management, made it all seem worthwhile by saying "it's a great house in a wonderful neighborhood.  Very solidly built."  Not as solidly built was the rollout of the Team Scarborough's plan to cut UA debt.

Also quoted was Board of Trustees chairman Jonathan Pavloff , who noted that the trustees were "in agreement that the house is an appropriate piece of the presidential package". It was a reminder that the trustees were as useless then as they are now.

As we have come to learn, Curtis  missed the mark by a cool half-million dollars, even if you leave out that notorious olive jar...

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Speaking of that jar, it could be reinstated with respect if it were offered as a trophy to the winner of the annual KSU-UA  football game, much like the Michigan-Minnesota Little Brown Jug trophy.  I know.  UA and KSU already have a wagon wheel trophy.    But who wants to reach for a wagon wheel to garnish a martini?

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At last week's Akron mayoral debate Democratic candidate Mike Williams, a longtime foe of former Mayor Don Plusquellic,   talked of the improvements  in downtown Akron  over the past decade, sounding self-congratulatory as a city councilman.  But he forgot to mention that most of these improvements were produced during the Plusquellic administration.

A cameo self-portrait of Spencer Scarborough

University of Akron President Scott Scarborough's son Spencer is a UA student and should you want to know a little more about him, here is how he describes himself on  Twitter:

"Lifetime learner.  Higher Education Enthusiast.  Lover of Jesus, fitness, and athletics.  Believer in GREAT PUBLIC education for ALL people."  

Latest from the Front: Team Scarborough to the parapets! .

There was good news and bad news from President Scott Scarborough  surrounding  Wednesday's closely monitored meeting of the University of Akron's Board of Trustees.   Yes, he said, to his many detractors who already knew it, mistakes were made during the turbulent rollout of the new regime's ill-conceived plan to erase the school's debt.

But as he told Akron Roundtable a year ago, he wanted his audience to know there was good news in the Bible.  Quoting Psalm 30:5,  he had said:

"Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning."

He said he was confident "the sun will rise on our great university" - a reprise of Reagan's Morning in America, right?  Well, so far, it hasn't.

Biblical or not, that won't be of much consolation to all of the folks who were cut from  the ledgers and are now out of work.  But a lot of people at Scarborough's pampered level don't seem to connect to those who are left behind when  the Top Loaders come calling with big ideas.

When, as in Scarborough's case, you are being paid a half-million dollars with princely perks in the noble cause of debt reduction,  you reduce humanity to winners and losers.  I mean, when he spoke to the Akron Roundtable shortly after his arrival from Toledo  last year, he smoothly rose to the podium with the sternest of advice to his newly acquired faculty with a demand that if they wanted to  earn respect as serious-minded educators  they must pick up trash.

Although not quite ready for Bartlett's,  he explained his odd trash pickup philosophy:

"A person who is too important to pick up trash is probably too important to help a student who is struggling to understand an important concept or practice."

That struck me at  the time as the broadest  consideration  of what higher education is all about with all of those messy career professors on the loose.

In this dark moment of UA history,  however, he can rest assured that he has all eight trustees who hired him on his side.  From Board Chairman Jonathan Pavloff came a salute that the Board remains solidly behind its hire, and despite those embarrassing mistakes,  "We'll do a better job in the future."  (Remember, this in the context of higher education, not reform school.)

Still,  the focus  remains on  the board's disengagement during the entire process.  Where were  these bright lights of the community - six Republicans and two Democrats -political appointees supposedly chosen for their ability to serve as thoughtful gatekeepers rather than ego-serving lines in their resumes.  Where have they been for so long during the systemic free-spending spree that embraced the Proenza years, too?  And did any of them wonder about the public relations breakdown of half-prepared initiatives that were reversed in a publicity rout?  Ask them.

How much confidence should any of us have in their ability to be accountable jurors since they silently ratified the notion that university presidents are also gods, even those with questionable track records? (You won't find that in Psalms.)

The wounds to the school's reputation are deep from this clumsy bush league  performance and neither Psalms nor triage will  help.

President house rebranded into catbird seat

About that house: The University of Akron's obsession to rebrand itself  leads me   to rename the president's home as the Catbird Seat. It is a dream of wish fulfillment accorded more and more to university presidents these days.   With so much money - nearly a million dollars -  spent on  renovating the UA property,   you'd think the president of the United States  was moving in with his family.  UA President Scott Scarborough walked away from his job interview with a colossal deal, from spiffy quarters for his inlaws to a  $556.40 olive jar while the UA leaders were pleading poverty.

Along with other questionable payouts, the school's spending spree exposed the servile Board  of Trustees not only as rubbery stamps but also as a a useless cancelled  postage stamp, serving at the will of a president that it somehow decided to hire, despite a rickety track record .


Some faculty people say it was either Scarborough or Jim  Tressel,  so there really wasn't an option   But it does raise another question as to how a campus that was so free to offer a new president  $450,000 and endless perks failed to draw a standing- room-only  crowd of applicants from academia.  Was it because UA ranked so low  on the collegiate scale that folks simply wanted to enhance  their careers elsewhere?

So Scarborough got what he wanted, even if the generous trustees  with a  top-heavy Republican majority blindly acted as if their school's destiny lay solely in his hands.

You don't hear that very much  from the brain trusts on the Beacon Journal's editorial page  It has become an apologist for the new regime and its latest editorial to that effect appeared under a  pleading headline:  UA has a good plan.  It really does.    The "really does" part weakly suggested that it needed a bracing modifier to support the "good plan".

Although some articles in the paper, along with Bob Dyer's column, have pointed out   the gaps in the regime's armor back at the catbird seat, the ed page  advises the readers that there are good things going to happen now that Team Scarborough is on the scene with a plan  for the "university moving forward in a credible and promising way."

It's unkind and nitpicking, I know, but I keep thinking of that olive vase adorning the House of Scarborough.  Good luck on that, campus.  But first you must behave yourself.

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From the campus, more victims from the front

The body count at the University of Akron continues to grow. The UA  Press and the Multicultural Center have been shut down. That means  five more  employes will be looking for jobs.  Because of his contract, UA Press director  Thomas Bacher  will stay on until January. It isn't clear what he will do to fill his day in the meantime.

The Plain Dealer's Karen Farkas quoted  Board Chairman Jonathan Pavloff after Monday's Trustees meeting as purring: "The board appreciates the dedication of the employees who are affected by these actions.  We know that they have been and remain committed to the success and well-being of our students and that they have served them and the university well."

But apparently not well enough, although I don't doubt that the latest casualties heard the same  purring from the leadership on Tuesday.

As these units are shut down, I will ask again:  When does a university stop being a university?

From the many people that I've talked to the past couple of days, there is agreement that the damage to the school's reputation has been deep and will hardly benefit  President Scott Scarborough's promise to rebrand the university.

As President  Clinton once said, when you are in a hole put your  shovel down and stop digging.

Do UA leadership, trustees hear the drumbeat?

To the concert audiences at E. J. Thomas Hall over the years, Larry Snider was a familiar figure - the upstage percussionist in the Akron Symphony Orchestra whose work added a drumming or tingling beat to the ensemble.

Snider is the Distinguished  Professor Director of Percussion Studies at the University of Akron who has been painfully keeping time with the current dismantling  (disinvesment, they call it) of the school lately known with a " Polytechnic"  officially attached to its name. However, for Snider,  it has now reached a point of eruption as resonating as the tympanic boom of his instrument.

His letter to  trustee Olivia Demas, a Richfield lawyer,  surfaced on my screen (as well as others) with  his view that "our academic programs and enrollments are being gutted by irresponsible, un-informed and ineffective leadershp."

And that's just for starters, all the more effectively on a campus that has been buttoned down to the smallest talk these days.

Snider lamented that three "well-paid  professors" retired in the spring, months before the  music school received permission from the administration to begin a search for replacements.   Even so, the replacements would be one-year appointees paid $32,000.

 It gets worse, Snider said."We are only allowed to hire someone with a completed doctorate   or ABO (all but dissertation) - thus further  reducing the pool of candidates willing to accept a temporary job at such a meager salary with only a few weeks to start the semester."

One of the retirees, I've since learned, is Steve Aron, widely known professor of classical guitar studies with an international reputation.  Aron has brought to  UA's stage foreign classical guitarists like Pasquale Rucco and is now said to be in Caserta Italy  as a summer guest at its music school.  Upon returning, I'm told, he will join the Oberlin University music faulty.

Snider has good reason to fear the consequences  of the amateurish front office.  The UA music school was once highly regarded,  staging operas and other musical  programs that drew grand public audiences to Thomas Hall (Annual attendance for all events that included a speaker series and other events has been more than 300,000 a year.)

 Several opera students  moved up to the Metropolitan Opera and Cleveland venues.  A former UA vocal teacher, Mary Schiller, is now the lively, dedicated  head of the voice department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.  Never until lately has there ever been any question about the UA music school's quality.

Snider didn't focus solely on the music school. Among other things, he complained sinking campus morale and a plan to expand  two semesters annually  into  three.  He called  the new format "catastrophic"  and "out of sync with other Ohio university schedules."

He concluded that other universities in our region are "incredulous that the trustees are sanctioning President Scarborough's "misguided idea" while defining the president's   leadership as "academically and fiscally unsound, damaging to this university and our  community in countless ways, and widely ridiculed by UA's stakeholders on campus and beyond".

Do you get the up-tempo of his frustration?

The trustees will meet on Monday, at which time they are expected  to make some sort of announcement about the specifics of the plan.  I'm sure what they will do has already been vetted in the president's office.

Will the school  veer away from its nosedive?  Drumroll, please.

Former White Hat takes important reins at UA

As if matters weren't edgy enough on the University of Akron campus under a new president on the block, there's even more faculty concerns for a campus in some sort of transition.  It's the appointment of a new vice provost and executive dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology to oversee President Scott Scarborough's. "repositioning'" the school from a traditional academic mission that allows for the humanities  as well as technology. As the question arose on whether  the school would change its name - which Scarborough  finally dismissed as nothing more than rumors - some faculty members figured he would at least see to it that UA would have "Technical Institute" attached to its legal name.

But the new science and technology guy who will doubtless work  in close quarters with the president is  Todd Rickel, who brings a resume that notes he was once the "Chief Learning Officer"  of White Hat Management.

You haven't been around these parts   very long to not recognize White Hat as David Brennan's charter school behemoth.  Which leads us to wonder  how his self-appended expertise as an "education futurist" will play on a  campus where departments are either being eliminated or downsized in what Scarborough refers to as "disinvestment.".

That  futurist stuff  is also how Brennan has seen himself .  Years ago he invited me to a private breakfast to hear a fellow, whose name I've long forgotten, who predicted the imminent demise of universities.

As Steve Dyer of Innovation Ohio, a progressive issues group,  wrote:  "While I'm not opposed to changing things, I deeply question how [Scarborough] could put so much faith in Todd Rickel'' while telling us that Rickel also has served as the Executive  Vice president  of the White Hat's  Distance Education Group - ''overseeing Ohio's worst online school..."

While Rickel was at White Hat,  Dyer wrote, " the company was receiving $110  million a year, on average, from Ohio taxpayers.  Meanwhile the school's performance - for which Rickel was directly resposible - was dreadful."

For those of us who see UA as a significant partner in the city's future,  we can only hope  that things don't turn out the same way on the downtown campus.

UA's Scarborough: Will he face immovable object?

Although one may be impressed with the recent arrival of University of Akron President Scott Scarborough as the new sheriff in town, his stern warnings to the management folks  might well develop into an irresistible force against an immovable object.

Telling an Akron Roundtable audience that he expects his  top people to show up at meetings on time, be positive in their work and pick up trash projected his role as a disciplinarian  running a sprawling well-paid and deeply entrenched team.

It's not uncommon for  a new face to lay out a change in the trajectory of what they inherit, but in this instance, challenged with debt, declining enrollment and the constant buzz on campus that there are too many long-term managers  settled into their posts at six figures, it can easily be inferred that the new prez was not happy with the first-team campus-scape that he found - and we're not talking about new buildings and trees.

It will be awhile to see whether it  works, no matter his needed Draconian call for teamwork and pride in a day's labors among the slow-moving parts.   But if you don't find some of the high -level campus operatives  picking up an empty  beer bottle on the way to their offices, it will tell you there are still miles to go for the irresistible force to triumph.