On July 30, Rattler Nation reported that Rufus Montgomery
was on his way to an easy reelection as chairman of the FAMU Board of Trustees
and that Cleve Warren was unlikely to run against him again.
Sure enough, the FAMU Board of Trustees unanimously reelected
Rufus on August 6. Warren didn’t come to the meeting or
even bother to participate over the phone.
The members of the board also reelected Kelvin Lawson to the
vice-chairmanship. Belinda Shannon nominated Kimberly Moore for the job, but
Moore declined to vote for herself and supported Lawson. Shannon cast the only
vote for Moore.
Back on April 8, Rufus won the race to serve out the remainder of the term of former Chairman Chuck Badger. Badger left the Board of Trustees on March 27, 2015 when Gov. Rick Scott replaced him with new Trustee Robert Woody. Badger had been a supporter of FAMU President Elmira Mangum.
The election of Rufus, Mangum’s biggest critic, showed that
the tide was changing on the Board of Trustees. Torey Alston, Lucas Boyce,
Bettye Grable, Tonnette Graham, Lawson, Spurgeon McWilliams, Moore, and Woody
all voted for him.
Mangum supporters Marjorie Turnbull, Shannon, and Karl White
gave their support to losing candidate Warren. Turnbull later left the board.
Lawson was also originally elected to the vice-chairmanship
at that meeting.
Former Warren supporters given the boot from BOT leadership offices
Rufus doesn’t appear to have forgiven the three remaining
trustees who voted for Warren on April 8. Right after his reelection to the
chairmanship on August 6, Rufus removed all the trustees who didn’t support him
in April from their leadership offices on the Board of Trustees.
Rufus appointed Kimberly Moore to replace Karl White as
chair of the Audit and Compliance Committee and appointed Robert Woody to
replace Belinda Shannon as chair of the Direct Support Organization
Committee. He also appointed Woody to replace Cleve Warren as the Board of
Trustees representative to the FAMU Foundation.
Those changes were the only ones that Rufus made to the Board
of Trustees leadership offices. He let all the trustees who voted for him on April 8
keep their current offices.
Continuing questions about Mangum’s leadership
That shake-up was not the only bad news for Mangum at the Board
of Trustees meeting last week. The board continued to question her leadership
by declining her request to immediately approve the revised version of her 2015/2016 Work Plan for the Florida Board of
Governors. Last month the Tallahassee Democrat reported that “[Montgomery]
said he’d had a conversation with the chairman of the Board of Governors who
said he was surprised trustees hadn’t expressed more concern over a university
Work Plan that Mangum had presented recently to the board.”
The Board of Trustees also voted to seek an outside public relations firm to help FAMU without even bothering to ask Mangum if she thought that was needed. That suggests that the trustees are not fully confident that the new leadership Mangum hired for the Office of Communications is up to the task.
The Board of Trustees also voted to seek an outside public relations firm to help FAMU without even bothering to ask Mangum if she thought that was needed. That suggests that the trustees are not fully confident that the new leadership Mangum hired for the Office of Communications is up to the task.
FAMU trustees will discuss those two issues during
a special conference call on August 17.
It is shameful that Rufus Montgomery would relieve members of the board from their positions of office mainly because they did not vote for
ReplyDeletehim. Were they not efficiently doing their jobs? Or, was this just another vindictive act by the chairman?
These are very sad days for my Alma Mater! I am truly ashamed that the chair seems to have a vendetta against the FAMU president and the members who support her. NO one is always
on task; even those supported by HIS governor! Be your own person, Mr. Chairman!!!