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.

Tags: Heathergate, Mike Garrison