Glen Gilzean Jr., Rufus Montgomery, Kimberly Moore, Kelvin
Lawson, and Spurgeon McWilliams were the five trustees who supported an
unsuccessful motion to reduce Mangum’s first-year pay to $385,000.
Mangum’s $425,000 starting salary will be $100,000 more than her
predecessor James Ammons made when he began in 2007.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, board members also made
the following two changes:
- “Mangum is no longer rewarded a $1,000 per month car allowance. Trustees agreed that the state-owned car and university-paid driver she already will receive is benefit enough.”
- “If she chooses upon resignation, Mangum can become a tenured faculty member at a salary of 75 percent of the one she leaves as president. That is a decrease from the 90 percent figure in the first draft of the contract.”
Board members squared off in a long argument over whether
Mangum should even receive a standard benefit for university presidents, a
tenured professorship. Mangum is currently on the faculty of the Samuel Curtis Johnson
Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. But Gilzean, Montgomery,
Lawson, and McWilliams all opposed a proposal to grant Mangum a tenured
position in the FAMU College of Education.
The amended contract will now go to Mangum for her approval
or disapproval. If she rejects the changes, the board will have to schedule
another meeting.
Trustee Marjorie Turnbull expressed fear that all the fighting
over Mangum’s employment agreement might ultimately cause the contract negotiation
process to fail.
“If we do not come to a decision on this presidency,
Florida A&M University will have difficulty in recovering from this. We will
never be able to hire a president. There is no one out there who will be
willing to take a look at us,” Turnbull said.