At the Special Committee on Governance meeting held on that
day, Chairman Rufus Montgomery said that a senior member of the FAMU
administrative team had called him and asked him if he would be willing to have
the committee end its discussions on two topics it was considering. According to him, those
topics were the possibility of having the FAMU general counsel report to the
Board of Trustees in addition to the president and clarifying the options that
are available to the board for employing outside counsel.
The chairman said the administrator told him that in
exchange, Vice-President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel Avery McKnight could
be replaced with a new potential general counsel.
“I was told in exchange for replacing Attorney McKnight, we would drop this whole thing,” Rufus said.
The chairman later said that the caller was Dale Cassidy,
vice-president for finance and administration. According to the Tallahassee
Democrat, “Montgomery also said he’d been given the name of a possible
replacement and that he was told the call came at the request of Mangum.”
Mangum gave a set of vague responses when Vice-Chairman Kelvin
Lawson asked her if she had any knowledge about that alleged call. When
the chairman asked her for a “yes or no” answer to that question, she refused to give one.
The FAMU Board of Trustees shouldn’t give Mangum its trust
as long as she declines to give a “yes or no” answer to that question. Members
of the board have a duty to do everything they can to ensure the integrity of
the administrative operations at FAMU. If Mangum is unwilling to be straightforward
with them, then that means she shouldn’t receive the benefit-of-the-doubt when
she gives them her word during future discussions.