Bill Jennings has been working hard to keep morale high among the trustees who’ve joined him in trying to run President James H. Ammons out of the university. But the long string of failures is taking its toll and frustration is setting in.Rufus Montgomery, who Jennings assisted in an unsuccessful attempt to suspend Ammons, didn’t even bother to show up at last week’s presidential evaluation meeting. The effort to pressure Ammons to leave by giving him extremely low scores didn’t get anywhere. Those low scores were balanced out by the more objective feedback from trustees who are not in Gov. Rick Scott’s pocket.
Now, Jennings protégé Richard Dent is calling it quits. Dent’s exit is the biggest loss for Jennings since R.B. Holmes got booted from the Board of Trustees back in 2010.
The Florida Board of Governors appointed Dent to the FAMU Board of Trustees in 2007. He became vice-chairman in 2011 back when Jennings was chairing the board. He was widely expected to seek the chairmanship that year with Jennings’ support.
Before the election date, Rattler Nation reported that there was a possible deal in the works to make Jennings the head of the presidential evaluation committee and/or keep him on as the chief negotiator for making revisions to Ammons’ contract.
The majority of trustees did not want a younger version of Jennings in the chairmanship. It became apparent shortly before the meeting that Dent did not have enough votes to be a competitive candidate against Solomon Badger. Trustees still let Dent save face by letting him hang on to the vice-chairmanship.
Dent’s respect on the board declined even more when he assisted Jennings’ failed attempt to remove the super-majority clause from Ammons contract. Dent told the press that his concern was about aligning Ammons employment agreement with those of the other State University System Presidents.
"No matter who is in this seat, I believe this board would propose to not have a contract structure that is anomalous," Dent said.
Many board members questioned why he and Jennings were so desperate to get rid of that super-majority clause when the current and immediate past president of Florida Atlantic University had the same clause in their employment agreements.
It soon became clear that the board’s current membership had no intention of electing Dent chairman anytime soon or even taking him seriously as a leader.