The Editors,

Sorry that I am rather behind the times here, but I still want to express my thoughts about a couple of things going on at VSU.

First, I want to congratulate the previous editors of the Spectator for their excellent coverage of the issues leading up to the resignation of former Pres. McKinney.   Spectator coverage was far superior to that of the Valdosta Daily Times.  Actually, the Daily Times did not cover the story at all even though more than one person wrote informing them of important issues developing at VSU.  The faculty senate under Dr. Michael Noll performed admirably; unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the current pack.

The administration has never spoken truthfully about the faculty dismissals and the reasons for them.   Supposedly, Pres. Staton gave the academic dean in cooperation with all department chairs the assignment of deciding what faculty members to cut, but it was never clear as to whether or not the dean and chairs were given a specific number of faculty to cut or if that decision was made by the president.

Once the number of faculty to be released was determined, the administration never made public who or what entity chose which departments were to lose positions nor how many in each department.  Obviously, the dept. chairpersons did not recommend to the dean that a certain number of positions from their departments be cut.   So, the question is, who decided which departments were going to lose positions and how many.  This is extremely important because apparently no administrative positions were lost.  It has long been know that VSU was top heavy in administration positions.  Further, no positions in the athletic dept. were lost.  In sum, a certain number of academic positions were lost, and the public still does have a complete list of them and who decided which departments had to lose positions.

The administration did give a sort of governmental disclosure, stating that positions were lost based on number of credit hours produced!  This is double talk, and even the Spectator failed to pursue this.

I expect to write more about this later.

With all best wishes,

William Fuller, assoc. prof. of English (retired)

VSU