2002: Bill Jennings succeeds in denying FAMU a Melvin Stith presidency

Last spring, Melvin T. Stith retired from the deanship of the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Throughout his nine years in that position, he brought in millions in new private donations and grant dollars.

Stith’s huge success as a fundraiser and grant-raiser at Syracuse was no surprise. Prior to becoming Whitman’s dean in 2005, he led the Florida State University (FSU) College of Business for 13 years. According to the Central New York Business Journal, “During his tenure [at FSU], Stith increased the school's endowment from $8 million to $55 million, expanded the number of endowed chairs to nine, built an all-wireless 12,000-square-foot technology center, made the school a leader in graduating minority doctoral candidates, and guided a $79.5 million fundraising campaign for the business school.”

FAMU had a chance to hire Stith as its ninth president in 2002. A proud alumnus of Norfolk State University, Stith wanted to lead the nation’s largest single campus historically black university. During his campus interviews, he talked about his desire to use his connections in Wall Street to help expand the FAMU endowment. He also wanted to build more research programs at the university.

But Bill Jennings, chairman of the Board of Trustees presidential search committee, and the board members who thought like him led the charge to deny FAMU a Melvin Stith presidency.

The 2001-2002 FAMU presidential search process was a very dirty affair. On the night before the final vote, there were more than enough votes to hire Charlie Nelms, vice-president for student development and diversity for the Indiana University system. But a lie that claimed there weren’t enough votes to seat Nelms was spread throughout that evening. By the end of the shenanigans on that night, Nelms had withdrawn his application.

The 11th hour anti-Nelms shenanigans were coupled with under-the-table badmouthing against Stith. Stith had a large amount of support from Tallahassee FAMU alumni who knew him as a result of his time as a visiting professor at the FAMU School of Business and Industry from 1982 to 1985 and his work with numerous community organizations.

Much of the vigorous opposition to Stith’s candidacy came from FAMU trustees who were afraid that he would be as strong as Frederick S. Humphries. Some had fears that his fundraising and academic management skills would make him very popular among FAMU’s supporters, which would make it difficult for individual trustees to bully him for their own selfish purposes. There were even grumblings that he bore too much of a physical resemblance to Humphries.

When the FAMU board met for the presidential vote, Jennings worked to fast track the selection of Fred Gainous to run FAMU. He was joined by trustees such as Castell Bryant, R.B. Holmes, and Jim Corbin.

The missed opportunity for a Melvin Stith presidency had nothing to do with Stith’s quality as a candidate. It had everything to do with the lack of quality trustees on the FAMU board.

FAMU is finally rid of Bill Jennings, the last of the original appointees to the FAMU board. But even though he’s no longer in a position to wreck another presidential search, FAMU still has a number of trustees who are just like him.

Rattlers can’t let what happened in 2002 happen again in 2014.