Sometimes I Doubt Your Commitment to Sparkle Motion

Read this carefully: I’m not saything that WVU, or the College of Business and Economics have given away 72 bogus degrees over the past several years.

Mike Garrison and Alex Macia are saying it.

Garrison’s people have been shopping this story around for over a week now. It’s not exactly a secret.

Alex Macia himself was going around during last week’s interim legislative session telling just about anyone who would listen about these “72″ bogus degrees.

I’m not saying that these “72 degrees” are bogus, either. MIKE GARRISON AND ALEX MACIA are. If there’s any truth to what they’re saying at all (what, these people lie?), it’s almost certainly along the lines of what readers have suggested in the comments: discrepancies over a handfuls of credits and / or minor clerical errors. In other words, apples and oranges.

Who knows if there’s any truth to what they’re alleging. The real point here is that THESE PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO BRING DOWN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY TO STAY IN POWER.

But now that the cat’s out of the bag, let’s hope that they think twice about their next move. I for one, would be just as happy if next week goes by and we don’t hear a damn thing about this from Stewart Hall.

“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: 565 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 565 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.)

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.

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.

80% OF FACULTY SENATE DEMAND GARRISON’S RESIGNATION

“The Faculty Senate of West Virginia University votes no confidence in President Mike Garrison. For the good of the institution and for the benefit of our students, he must resign or the Board of Governor’s must require his resignation”

Motion passed, 77 - 19.

What is the precedent for this?

Surely Mike Garrison isn’t the only President of a large university whose faculty have voted NO CONFIDENCE in him TWICE in less than a year.

Or is he?

BREACH OF DUTY

Not a single one of these people gives a goddamn about West Virginia University.

Steve Goodwin is the point man in a plan to transform WVU from an academic institution into a political machine — and an ATM for the powerful, on the side. The rest of the board is either in on it or doesn’t give a rat’s ass either way — they just like the football tickets and cocktail parties and political connections. In less than a year, they’ve taken the state’s crown jewel and turned it into the laughingstock of the world. And even though the Garrison/Goodwin plan for the university is becoming alarmingly clear (see what’s going on at the Health Sciences Center), not one of them has lifted a finger to stop it.

In the normal world, university trustees take the job because they have the school’s best interests at heart. They love their school and genuinely want to be responsible stewards. More than that, they’re fiduciaries—they’re legally required to act solely in the interest of the institution, not for their own interest or the interest of third parties. Loyal trustees would shout you out of the room if asked to install a totally unqualified boy president to advance his political career and help his crooked friends, or to turn a blind eye to his brazen fraud.

But these people are like bizarro-trustees. They seek the job for their own profit — political, professional, or financial. They actively look for ways to abuse the university’s resources for private gain. I doubt that the question of what’s best for the university or its students or faculty ever even crosses their minds.

And it’s a goddamn shame, because WVU was something special. No, it wasn’t Harvard or Yale, but for my money, it was something even better: a place committed to taking kids from nowhere and giving them a better life. A school determined to do scholarship and teaching the right way in a state where not much is done right. It was a good university doing good work.

And now these sad pieces of shit have turned it into the whore of the academic world.

I am ashamed.

Garrison Still Refuses to Admit that Heather Bresch Didn’t Earn Degree

From Saturday’s Decision Makers:

Bray Cary: Do you believe that Heather Bresch earned her Master’s Degree?

Mike Garrison: I believe that she believes it. I have no basis for believing it or not believing it.

Could someone in the media -ANYONE IN THE MEDIA — please ask Garrison what it means to “accept the report”, but totally deny its conclusions?

PLEASE?

Not only did the report find that Heather Bresch did not earn the degree — the report also found that it wasn’t even reasonable for Bresch to believe that she earned it.

And Mike Garrison has been running around spouting this bullshit for weeks now, and NO ONE has called him on it.

It’s worth noting here that West Virginia University Foundation is a substantial investor (read: millions) in Bray Cary’s West Virginia Media Holdings, and that just 2 years ago, Mike Garrison was their lobbyist. So if you were wondering who’d they’d find to throw more soft balls at Mike than Hoppy Kercheval ever could — the answer is Bray Cary.