“The communication is horrible and is not improving,” Rufus
told the other trustees during a conference call on August 17.
Rufus said that he and Mangum had spoken over the phone
earlier that morning. He said that her response to his request for more timely and detailed information was “odd, disrespectful, and unacceptable.” The
chairman also said that the president left the call in an abrupt manner.
“I’m also going to take the step of informing you that when I spoke with Dr. Mangum this morning, she simply took the step of hanging up 20 minutes into the call,” he told the Board of Trustees. According to him, she said that she had other things she needed to do.
Rufus informed the board that he has continued to insist
that Vice President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel Avery McKnight be
present during all of his voice conversations with the president due to her
previous public complaints about the way he has talked to her. He said he’s
also had the general counsel sit in during his voice conversations with other
members of the president’s administration because “she said there are members
of her staff that feel threatened.”
The chairman claimed that Mangum was uncooperative when he
asked her for a written response to a set of specific questions yesterday.
“Dr. Mangum indicated that she was busy today and that she
would not be able to accommodate my request for answers in writing,” he said.
He said he also told her that a decision to leave the call
early would be an act of “insubordination.”
“I said if you leave this call, I will consider this to be
rank insubordination,” he told the board. He repeated his claim that Mangum left the call anyway.
Rufus then moved the meeting into a recess of several minutes in order to
give the rest of the members of the board a chance to read a memorandum that the
president had written that day. He said the memorandum contained a claim by
Mangum that “she feels as if my behavior this morning was a violation of her
employee rights.”
The memo by Mangum admitted that she was the one who had ended the call with the chairman that morning, but stated that she did it after her attempts to reach a compromise with him on rescheduling the discussion failed.
“You refused my compromise and insisted that it would be 'rank insubordination' if I ended the call without your inquiries being
answered right then and there,” she wrote in the memo.
“At this point, after more than 20 minutes of trying to
reach a compromise, I ended the conversation,” Mangum wrote in the memo. “While
this incident in and of itself may not seem like reason enough to end the call
with my supervisor, I want to state for the record that I believe that your
behavior, like many other instances before, constitute a violation of my
employee rights according to University Regulation 10.103(3b)
-Nondiscrimination Policy and Harassment Procedures.”
According to the Florida Times-Union, the chairman “would
not directly answer questions about whether he was trying to make a case for
firing Mangum. Mangum said Monday that she believes that is what he is trying
to do. She said that has been Montgomery's goal ever since she arrived at FAMU
in April [2014]. Mangum said she is not deterred from her mission of making FAMU
a better institution for students. ‘I’m going to do it until I get it done or
get fired, whichever one comes first,’ she said.”
The chairman ended the conference call by stating that he thought
Mangum should make individual calls to the members of the board before scheduled
meetings in order to discuss important agenda items with them one-on-one.
“Dr. Mangum has stated in writing that she disagrees and
that she will not do it that way. She believes she does it during the public
call. I believe we do it prior to the meeting,” he said.
Mangum was present for yesterday’s conference call but did
not directly respond to any of the complaints that the chairman made about
communication.
At the meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the revised
Legislative Budget Request and the revised Work Plan for the Florida Board of
Governors.