Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Woe to thee, CofC




BY ADAM PARKER

It has become a farce. What a pity.
The College of Charleston is a respectable institution of higher learning located in a vibrant city that is on the cusp of a new era. The city is set to thrive, so long as good choices are made about livability, stewardship and economic development. It could stand to gain from a robust college playing a central role in its economic and cultural life.
And the College of Charleston is in a position to deliver. Its 10,000+ students pay a lot, to be sure, but they get a decent liberal arts education and options to pursue coursework in business, science, math, music, political science, visual arts, cultural studies, arts management, languages and more. As I have pointed out in a previous post, some of the school’s programs are excellent; others could be improved. And the College certainly needs to build upon its academic offerings by adding master and doctorate degree programs, for which it would require a willing General Assembly.
Unfortunately, College faculty and staff are distracted right now. They are caught up in a two-pronged dispute about whether to merge with the Medical University (the vast majority of faculty and staff at both institutions are opposed to this, even as some politicians and business leaders continue to push for it) and about whom the next president will be.
Whoever the next president will be—whether it’s business leader and College of Charleston Foundation board member Jody Encarnation, University of West Florida provost Martha Saunders, or South Carolina lieutenant governor Glenn McConnell—he or she will have to deal with this merger issue, and with a level of morale that is probably the lowest it has ever been.
Few among the faculty are enthusiastic about any of the candidates, about the prospect of a merger or about the immediate future of the College. Some, I’ve heard, wish the search would presently cease and a new effort begin from scratch. Two of the three candidates have little or no academic experience. But, to be fair, that should not necessarily be a major impediment. As Alex Sanders reminded me recently, the College had seven presidents during the 20th century, four academics and three non-academics. Of the academics, only one, the mathematician Harrison Randolph, improved the school. Two others, Walter Coppedge and Edward Collins Jr., were soon forgotten, and another, George Grice, nearly destroyed the place, in part by resisting integration. The most progress was made under non-academics: Harry Lightsey Jr., Ted Stern and Sanders himself. Leo Higdon, president from 2001 to 2006, was a former Wall Street executive.
So a little perspective is surely wanting in the current presidential dispute, and it is unlikely the search will be cancelled, not after all this time, money and effort have been spent. One of the three candidates is almost certain to assume the helm of the College.
Protestors on campus are rightly drawing attention to McConnell’s Confederate sympathies with the hope of scuttling his candidacy. They might succeed, but then they could be faced with one of those careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios: of the three, McConnell  might be the most likely to defend the liberal arts emphasis of the school, back opponents of the merger and work toward a more rational approach to growth and change. Encarnation is a businessman with a Boeing contract and, one might surmise, a somewhat myopic view of what academia is all about. Saunders could turn out to be good, or she could be someone who likes to improve the physical plant and sports teams.
Should McConnell assume the presidency, the College can look forward to consequences. Despite his stated record of promoting diversity, McConnell is defined in part by his interest in honoring the past. He is a backward-looking fellow intent on re-enacting the Civil War and paying tribute to the heritage of the South—which means the white heritage of the South since it is wholly inappropriate to “pay tribute” to slavery. He insists he is simply striving to remember the antebellum past in all its dimensions but fails to appreciate why this effort might offend the portion of the population that endured an erasure of identity, the stripping of their humanity, the flaying of their flesh and the forced abbreviation of their lives so that Charleston’s economic system might provide for their masters.
A college president, by definition, should be forward-looking, open-minded, interested not only in diversity for political reasons but for cultural and moral reasons. If McConnell becomes a college president, it will hardly be the first time a politician assumed that role. But the main reasons to put a politician into that position are two: because he is a consummate fundraiser, adept at collecting very large sums from donors, and/or he is well-connected to powerful legislators who can be convinced to boost funding and provide other forms of essential support.
McConnell did raise “millions” to preserve the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine, but one big project a track record does not make. It remains unclear whether he can raise millions and millions and millions more on behalf of the College. As for powerful connections, McConnell surely has a few, but they have made it very clear that they’re not interested in allocating a lot of money to higher education. So his influence among lawmakers is not likely to amount to much. Perhaps he can tell them to bug off next time an assigned book is deemed pornographic by legislative prudes, and perhaps they will abide him. One can hope.
Finally, with that Confederate flag figuratively wrapped around his shoulders, McConnell is not likely to garner much admiration from his peers at other institutions around the country, or from certain prospective students, including black students, who are looking not only for a decent school to attend, but for a better future that includes mutual respect and understanding among an increasingly diverse population. Perhaps the Board of Trustees appreciates this dilemma now that the NAACP has begun to protest and now that someone on campus draped a large banner at the president’s residence that showed the ol’ battle flag with the circle-backslash symbol overlaid upon it, and this text: “No Confederates for CofC President.”
But then who? And here is why the search for a new president has become a farce, exacerbated by the outgoing president’s insistence on a merger with MUSC and by pressure from legislators applied to trustees who themselves are political appointees. The process is unraveling. The faculty smells something fishy. Only one of the top five candidates the search committee recommended to the trustees is among the three finalists. The College received more than 100 applications for the post. This is the best they could come up with?
So perhaps McConnell will get his coveted job after all. And maybe he will prove a capable (if “heritage”-obsessed) leader of an academic institution in great need of renovation. Possibly the consultant Encarnation will assume the presidency and point the College in a more practical direction, encouraging the sort of education that produces the next generation of employees. Or Saunders will step in and put her experiences in academia to work. Abundantly clear: All three candidates, who are in their 60s, view the College presidency as their final post before a comfortable, tax-payer-assisted retirement. The winner stands to benefit regardless of what he or she accomplishes on campus.
But what will become of the College of Charleston? What of its shortcomings? What of its potential? What of its disempowered faculty? What of its role in the community? Will the farce continue?


Adam Parker is a journalist, an advocate for the humanities and the husband of a College of Charleston professor.