“The group that met at WVU today”

Let’s talk about that “group.”

Of the 1800 or so faculty members, 200 to 300 are off-campus — many of them hundreds of miles away. And WVU’s administration made it very clear that no concessions would be made to allow them to attend the Assembly.

About 500 more of the faculty are clinicians with patient care responsibilities — which is a fancy way of pointing out that most of them weren’t allowed to attend the Assembly either.

So of the faculty members who were realistically able to attend the Assembly — a vast majority of them showed up. And all but a handful of them demanded Garrison’s resignation. Again: 569 in favor of resignation, 39 against and 11 abstentions.

This can’t be repeated enough: even if a full quorum of 900 had showed up, and the same 569 faculty members voted in favor of Garrison’s resignation — the motion would have passed by 63%.

THE FACULTY HAVE SPOKEN.

Hell — so has Hoppy.

It’s over, Mike. You lost.

(Thanks to the commenters who basically wrote this post for me.)

HUNDREDS OF WVU FACULTY DEMAND GARRISON’S RESIGNATION

569 in favor of resignation, 39 against and 11 abstentions.

First, a profound debt of gratitude is owed to the hundreds of brave faculty members who risked their very livelihoods by standing up to WVU’s derelict and tyrannical leaders.

Second, congratulations are in order — to Mike Garrison. He’s managed to achieve what no other university president has — THREE VOTES OF NO CONFIDENCE. Great job, Mike!

Just for fun, do a Google search for “university president ‘no confidence‘” to get an idea of the type of company President Mike is in.

But this is hardly over.

No doubt Boss Garrison and his handlers busy working with their big money PR firms to prepare his next bullshit response. Garrison stubbornly hangs on despite an unprecedented THREE VOTES OF NO CONFIDENCE, and in the process, continues to bring shame upon the University, its students, faculty and graduates. He’s all too happy to keep dealing damage to the hopes and accomplishments of others in order to preserve what might be left of his future political future.

And no doubt, we’ll be asked to wait until the next Board of Governors meeting, so that the same 18 people who have done nothing but abused the university’s resources for their own private gain, the same 18 pieces of shit who shamelessly turned WVU into the whore of the academic world can go behind closed doors in a last-ditch attempt to save face.

No doubt we’ll be asked to take even more time, and have more discussion.

NO CONFIDENCE. THREE times.

What more is there left to discuss or debate? FIRE MIKE GARRISON — only then can we move on.

ENOUGH

BREAKING: Garrison has appointed Jane Martin, former Dean of Nursing, as Interim Provost — in an attempt, no doubt, to take the heat off himself. Good luck with that.

Now. From reading the hundreds of comments, it’s clear that a lot of you people sound a lot like battered wives. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but–

Think about that.

Look guys — it’s now or never. Either stand up to Garrison today, or start stocking up on lube. Because if this guy stays, the only thing you can count on is getting totally fucked.

So get your ass to the assembly. FIND A WAY. Cancel appointments. Break prior engagements. Unless you’re bleeding hard from the head, you have no excuse. The Faculty Senate BRAVELY stood up — now it’s your turn.

Enough of this whining on the internet. IT IS TIME FOR ACTION. Hit them back. Let the bullies know you’re NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

Oh, and report back.

Tomorrow Is The Most Important Day in the History of WVU

Mike Garrison hangs on by a thread. The whole world mocks him—a bloated, rasping bully, painfully out of his depth. In the spotlight’s glare, he’s so godawful embarrassing that I almost feel sorry for him. He desperately wants to sound like a university president, but he just doesn’t have the brains for it. It turns out he’s not even much of a politician, at least when dealing with people who he can’t pay off or strong-arm. He gives one wrong, dumb, unbelievable answer after another. If you’ve seen or read his interviews, you know what I mean—the attention from this scandal has permanently unmasked him as a mediocre fraud, wildly inadequate to the job he stole and the mess he’s made of it.

And now, out of nowhere, his patron Goodwin has quit. The Gazette has gotten religion in the eleventh hour. WVU is losing millions of dollars in donations. He faces a third no-confidence vote in less than a year. Boss Garrison is in dire straits.

But he still figures time is on his side. School’s almost out. More important, the scandal is running out of newsworthy events. On Wednesday, the University Assembly will vote no-confidence and demand his resignation. He’ll respond with a statement that some high-dollar Washington PR firm is no doubt writing, on WVU’s dime, as I type these words. (It’s probably Joe Carey’s firm, which leads me to digress: if anyone with access to a grand jury happens to be reading this, ask around about Joe Carey using the state plane as a taxpayer taxi to visit his fancy girlfriend in NYC, after a postcoital Wise flew the coop to Sandy’s doghouse and left the kids in the Governor’s office totally unsupervised. In fact, ask if Bob Wise knew about it. That worthless shitbag would literally piss his Fruit-of-the-Looms if he got a federal target letter — and he certainly deserves to wet himself after ending his richly deserved exile just to defend Garrison.) Garrison will promise more pay raises and daycare centers and “healing.” And then things will quiet down. He will have been pushed to the very brink, but he will live to fight another day.

That’s Garrison’s endgame.

The faculty — AND ONLY THE FACULTY — can stop him from getting away with it. Let’s not delude ourselves about a criminal investigation or a legislative review. The political cesspool that created this problem isn’t going to solve it. The faculty are the only organized force with the independence and the courage to stand up to Garrison (and more important, to Manchin, who’s the real reason the political class is afraid to take this on).

That’s why tomorrow, when the University Assembly votes on Garrison, is the most important day in WVU’s history. Because if Garrison survives this — after giving away a master’s degree as a naked political favor, like a job holding a STOP/SLOW sign in Logan County — then whatever is left of WVU as an “academic” institution will be gone. The precedent will be set: The governor, the president, and the board can use WVU as their personal slush fund and political machine, right out in the open, with no fear of repercussions. And make no mistake: as soon as the spotlight’s off, Garrison will gut those who opposed him. NO JOB AT WVU WILL BE SAFE. Multimillionaire Julian Bailes and goons like him will be free to roam campus handing out pink slips and demanding fealty to Garrison — or else. Even worse, a whole generation of budding politicos will begin bidding to be the next politician-president of WVU, knowing that the one who can harness the university’s budget and prestige to his own political ends will come out on top. It’s no exaggeration to say that if Mike Garrison can pull this off, WVU will never be the same again.

We’re at a crossroads, friends.

At a minimum, the Assembly has to vote overwhelmingly in favor of Garrison’s resignation. That’ll put the story back in the national news for another cycle. But if all the faculty do is vote no-confidence and then fall silent, it won’t be enough to force Garrison out.

Instead, to win this fight — and to save my alma mater — the faculty have to use unconventional measures to keep the story in the news. Here’s one simple guerilla tactic: pass a resolution that not only votes no-confidence and demands Garrison’s resignation, but also requires the Faculty Senate to vote on a no-confidence/resignation resolution every single month as long as Garrison is president. That’d create an automatic mechanism to continue registering the faculty’s disgust — and continue generating news stories about the faculty’s struggle against the polluted Garrison administration. (None of the current resolutions includes that option, but the Assembly uses Robert’s Rules of Order, so the resolutions can be amended from the floor.) Professor Larry Hornak proposed another excellent idea at yesterday’s Senate meeting: put teeth in the Senate’s no-confidence vote by boycotting Garrison’s sham search committee for a new provost. And if Garrison ultimately refuses to leave, the faculty shouldn’t hesitate to use the nuclear option: stop teaching until he packs up his cash-filled briefcase and leaves Stewart Hall. I’m dead serious. The university itself hangs in the balance.

In short, the faculty have to declare war. A mere one-and-done vote will lose the school. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But we’re also in a rare window of opportunity. Right now, for a fleeting moment, the faculty have the power. Garrison is on his heels. The faculty hold the moral and political high ground. If they seize the moment and aggressively press their advantage, they can bury him. They can take back WVU. And if they don’t, they’ll regret it forever. We all will.

CLUELESS

Last week, Mike Garrison told the Gazette’s editors that he assumed the average pay for a tenured WVU professor was $100,000. “I would assume that the average may be at a hundred - but I don’t know.”

Mikey doesn’t know.

Seriously, people — could this man be any more out of touch with the men and women he is supposed to lead?

Even now, I’m having a hard time getting over the extent to which Garrison really doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. The man has been utterly and totally at sea throughout this entire scandal. Case in point: even if you don’t fully understand how the magical world of tenure works (I don’t — but then again, it’s not my JOB to), and even if you don’t know what the average tenured WVU professor makes — YOU DON’T ADMIT THAT!!!

2 things: 1 — remember back in the day, when Garrison apologists were insisting that “no, you don’t need an academic to run a modern university?” Well, I think we’ve seen a couple instances in which that sort of knowledge would have come in REAL fucking handy for him.

And 2 — even if the WVU Board of Governors wanted to hire some sort of crackerjack business-minded fund raiser — THIS WASN’T THE FUCKING GUY. He’s a goddamn hack lobbyist who’s managed to amble into a difficult, vastly important, quarter-million dollar a year job just because he made friends with the right people when he was a teenager.

This Wednesday, let him know that his services will no longer be needed.

The Shaming of WVU

Heathergate finally gets a mention by one of my favorite bloggers, Atrios. His blog is one of the most widely read left-leaning sites on the internet by far. Which means that as of today, there are now about 100,000 more people who only know one thing about WVU — that it manufactures fake degrees for the wealthy and well connected.

Thanks Mike.

The Mike Garrison 2008 “Sit on it and Spin” Tour

And in these difficult times, who better to defend Mike Garrison than the father of the very woman he manufactured a degree for. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Apparently not.

Let’s all say it together: Only in West Virginia.

And by crikey, Hoppy even managed to write this commentary, where he agrees (at least at first) with Garrison’s assertion that there’s “no evidence to indicate that WVU’s reputation has been ruined.”

But there is a bright spot — judging by today’s Gazette editorial, it looks like Betty’s paper is no longer buying Garrison’s bullshit.

Why Garrison Won’t Resign

There something most people don’t realize, and it has everything to do with why Garrison refuses to resign: Mike Garrison’s ambitions extend beyond WVU. His plan is to bleed WVU dry to make the down payments on his political future.

This job was always intended to be a stepping stone to whatever he wants to do next — most likely a run for the United States Senate. This might not be apparent to those of you in Morgantown, but during the Wise administration, it was one of Charleston’s worst kept secrets. And all you have to do is look at where Garrison is now to realize that stranger things have happened.

But I know what you’re thinking — this guy thinks he can run for the U.S. Senate — and win? In other words, the exact same reaction I got 5 or 6 years ago when a I told people that Garrison was gunning for David Hardesty’s job. And I for one, cannot think of a better way for Mike Garrison to have ensured that Puskar, Heather Bresch, and dozens of other Mylan fat cats will absolutely line up to raise MILLIONS for him whenever he runs for office.

So you see, Mike Garrison isn’t refusing to resign because he’s stubborn or obtuse — it’s that if he resigns in disgrace after 7 months on the job, his political future is DEAD. He HAS to stay in that job, or his path to the U.S. Senate (or any job other than Mylan lobbyist) is permanently blocked.

Law? Steve Goodwin Wipes His Ass with the Law

Little Brother Goodwin is a big, loud, purple fist of rage. He’s one step away from a full-on tantrum at any minute. Maybe he’s pissed off about his 60 years in the shadow of two older brothers who were better than him at everything.

Last week, for example, he deftly handled the Bresch situation by telling the faculty to kiss his all-powerful ass:

“[The faculty] don’t appoint me, they have nothing to do with my selection or with my term at the University…We’re not playing ‘who can pound their chest the hardest’…The law prescribes how the University is administered — it is by the Board of Governors; if they don’t like that, the only way to change that is to change the law.”

In case you didn’t notice, the they have to “change the law” line was a little inside joke at our expense.

You see, if Little Brother had to follow the law like the rest of us, he wouldn’t be Chairman of the WVU Board of Governors anymore — he’d be busy packing his office. When he got that job in 2006, the law said he could only serve for 2 years. That meant his term would have been over in June — just a few weeks from now.

But Little Brother Goodwin wipes his ass with the law. He is Joe Manchin’s main man in Morgantown. And Little Little Brother — Steve’s son Carte — is the Governor’s lawyer. He literally writes the law, because he’s in charge of drafting legislation for the Governor.

So what do they do? They change state law so Steve can keep pulling the strings at WVU. I shit you not. W.Va. Code 18B-2A-1(i). Here’s the bill, and here’s the law, signed by the Governor. They changed the rules in the middle of the game, so Little Brother could be Chairman until 2010 – and be there to get Boss Garrison through the rough spots in his first few years. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.

That’s how life goes when you’re playing by Goodwin rules.

HOMEWORK (formerly open thread)

In the comments, please post links to as many different articles about Garrison and Heathergate, from as many different sources as you can find. I’m looking for variety, not quantity — so never with mind the PPG, Charleston Newspapers or other local stuff we’re already familiar with. Actual links, and / or quotes please, so I can compile them into a post.

I want stuff from as far away as possible, and from as many countries as possible. How many people are there all over the world who thanks to Mike Garrison, know 1 thing and one thing only about WVU: that it will give fake degrees to the politically connected?

Document the atrocities.