FAMU has been sued by former Head Coaches Earl Holmes and
Clemon Johnson, who are FAMU alumni. Former Athletic Director Kellen Winslow
terminated both of their contracts in 2014 and Mangum stood beside those decisions.
Holmes, former head football coach, was hired in 2013 and had a 6-16 record. Johnson, former head men’s basketball coach, was hired in 2011 and had a 32-64 record.
Both men have filed breach of contract lawsuits against the
university. Holmes has requested $400,000 for the more than two years that
remained on four-year contract prior to his termination. Johnson was set to
receive $150,000 for the one year left on his contract before he was fired.
They are both represented by Tim Jansen, an attorney based in Tallahassee.
SGA Presidential Election Winner
Back on Thursday, March 24, Leon County Circuit Judge John
Cooper granted a request by Student Government Association (SGA) presidential
candidate Justin Bruno for a temporary injunction to stop a redo of the whole
SGA presidential election in both Tallahassee and the law school campus in
Orlando. Cooper agreed with Bruno that the new election should only take place
in Orlando where voting-day problems were reported.
Bruno won the SGA presidential election in February. Mangum
supported a decision by the Student Supreme Court to order a redo of the entire
election after the losing candidate, Victor Chrispin, submitted an appeal that
claimed there were problems with the election process at the law school.
Mangum cancelled the new election that was scheduled to take
place at the law school on Tuesday, March 29. On the next day, she asked the
FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) to support an appeal of the decision by Cooper.
The BOT narrowly approved the request by a 7-5 vote.
Former Chief Financial Officer
Back on Tuesday, March 15, FAMU Chief of Staff Jimmy Miller
sent BOT members a memo about a change in the chief
financial officer/vice-president for finance and administration position.
“Dale Cassidy current vice president for Finance and
Administration has been reassigned to serve as the University’s chief ethics
and compliance officer,” Miller wrote.
The reassignment decision was a demotion for Cassidy. The
new job would his cut his pay from $195,000 to $177,760 and would mean he’d no
longer be enrolled in the Executive Pay Plan.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Cassidy “is
questioning whether, in demoting and reassigning him without warning, Mangum
violated university policy. On March 31, he filed a grievance with FAMU’s
offices of the President and Human Resources. He claims Mangum failed to follow
university policy in reassigning him, which, he believes, renders the demotion
moot.”