Under-the-table antics of FAMU Board of Trustees finally make headlines

On Wednesday, Rattler Nation broke the news that certain members of the FAMU Board of Trustees were working secretly to gather enough votes to oust FAMU President James H. Ammons during the teleconference scheduled for that day. A number of board members who were deliberately left in the dark found out anyway and made their anger known.

The information from the trustees who weren’t supposed to know anything helped make sure that the news spread across Tallahassee and beyond.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported yesterday that former state Sen. Alfred “Al” Lawson “had been told that a motion to terminate Ammons was going to be introduced during a teleconference FAMU trustees held late Wednesday afternoon to discuss the budget for the athletics department and its fundraising arm, Rattler Boosters.”

The Democrat also stated that the president of the FAMU Faculty Senate, Narayan Persaud, “was not aware of a plan to terminate Ammons or to ask Ammons to resign during Wednesday’s meeting.” That is not surprising because the trustees who were coordinating the coup do not think much of Persaud or any of the other men and women who teach the university’s students.

Rattler Nation learned that there were just enough votes to keep Ammons in office. His contract requires a super-majority of nine for a termination vote. But Lawson said that the president was weary of having a board that refused to support his efforts to guide FAMU on the right path.

“Instead of having all of this conflict and board members beginning to express anxiety with each other, he felt it was best that he stop the bleeding and move on,” Lawson told the Palm Beach Post. “He had very mixed emotions. But from his family’s standpoint and all the agony he’d been going through, he said it was best and that he needs to move on.”

FAMUans are well aware that numerous trustees want to make major decisions about the university in secret. These are the same trustees who want the interim and permanent presidential searches to be sham processes. The individuals who don’t want the students, Faculty Senate, and National Alumni Association to have any meaningful input concerning FAMU’s top executive leadership must be stopped.