Willie Roberts, a retired FAMU mathematics professor, has
also stepped up to the plate by publicly debating Florida Board of Governors
Chancellor Marshall Criser, III on what has happened to the engineering college
as the alumni lawmakers have continued to avoid the issue.
A December 9 letter by Roberts in the Tallahassee Democrat pointed out two facts that Criser doesn’t seem to want to talk about. One was that FAMU was in charge of the College of Engineering budget for 28 years. The other is the continuing requirement for the FAMU and FSU presidents to make a joint appointment decision on the selection of a dean for the college.
Humphries came before the FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) on
October 18 and said that the 1987 deal he struck with then-FSU President Bernie
Sliger gave FAMU control of the budget in exchange for him agreeing to support
Innovation Park as the building site for the COE. He told the BOT that the deal
was made final by the 1987 “Memorandum of Agreement.”
But this year, a new Joint College of Engineering Governance
Council has now started making the decisions on the $12.9M core COE operating
budget. It is formed in a way that could let FSU and the BOG chancellor simply
vote together in order to make sure that FSU gets its way on all the big budget
decisions because the BOG chancellor is the tie-breaking vote on the Joint
College of Engineering Governance Council.
A December 13 letter that Criser wrote in response accused
Roberts of attempting “to reignite a false argument to the detriment of the
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering students, faculty and leadership.” But Criser still didn’t acknowledge that FAMU was in control of the COE budget from 1987-2014. He
also didn’t deny Roberts’ statement that FAMU President Elmira Mangum can’t
fill the vacant deanship line, which rotated to FAMU on August 1, until FSU
President John Thrasher agrees to make a joint appointment.
The Capital Outlook published a December 15 rebuttal that
Roberts wrote to Criser’s statements. Roberts said that Thrasher is now able to
achieve what he tried to accomplish back when he proposed a separate FSU College of
Engineering as a state senator in 2014.
“Now the stacked Joint Governance Council and Mangum’s
ability to make unilateral agreements with Thrasher can give Thrasher what he
tried to achieve as a senator in a surreptitious manner,” Roberts wrote. “Dr. Mangum has not been a strong voice for
FAMU in the COE. She has even fought
against the FAMU BOT having input in her agreement with Thrasher.”