At the February 8, 2016 meeting of the Florida Senate Higher
Education Committee, Joyner personally asked that Carter receive a favorable
recommendation for confirmation.
“I’d like to move for confirmation of Mr. Carter,” she said.
The committee then unanimously approved Joyner’s motion. Carter,
an appointee of Gov. Rick Scott, was later confirmed by the full Florida Senate
for a term that ends on January 6, 2018.
Back in June, the BOG said that it would review the claims
from a group of alumni in the legislature that included Joyner who said that then-FAMU
BOT Chairman Rufus Montgomery’s treatment of Mangum has been “bordering
dangerously close to bullying.”
The tension between Rufus and Mangum continued to increase
in the weeks after the lawmakers took their concerns to the BOG. On August 17, Mangum accused Rufus of
violating her “employee rights according to University Regulation 10.103(3b)
-Nondiscrimination Policy and Harassment Procedures.” She later told the
Florida Times-Union that she thought Rufus was working toward the goal of
firing her.
But Carter downplayed the seriousness of the problem. He told
a reporter that “I don’t think the relationship is broken.”
A relationship between a president and a BOT chairman can’t
get any more broken than when the president says she thinks the chairman is
violating her employee rights and is trying to fire her.
Carter went as far as to make sarcastic statements about the
group of FAMU alumni in elected offices that called for Rufus to be removed as
the FAMU BOT chairman on August 20. The
group included Joyner, Rep. Alan Williams, Sen. Dwight
Bullard, Rep. Mia Jones, Rep. Shevrin Jones, and Rep. Bobby Powell and
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, he “said ‘a limited
group of outsiders’ who last week called for trustee chairman Rufus Montgomery
to step down need to let FAMU officials handle their own issues without
interference.”
The article went on to state that Carter said “the mayor
should be reducing my taxes in Tallahassee, and let the people with
responsibility for leading FAMU lead FAMU.” It added that: “He also said the
legislators should have been focusing their attention on redistricting maps, an
urgent matter for the state.”
An article by the News Service of Florida also reported
that: “As to the role of the state university system in the FAMU leadership
dispute, Carter said he didn’t think mediation by the Board of Governors was
necessary.”
There’s already talk in Tallahassee that moving Carter from
the BOG to FAMU is part of an effort to fast-track him into the FAMU chairmanship
in time for a likely presidential search in the upcoming months. June 30, 2016
is the deadline for a discussion on whether Mangum’s
employment will be renewed.
Carter’s former colleagues on the BOG can create a vacancy
in the FAMU chairmanship as soon as they get ready. Current Chairman Cleve
Warren’s term expired more than a year ago on January 6, 2015.
View the video of Joyner’s motion to confirm Carter here
(beginning at 4:35).