When I learned that S.C. State’s trustees were coming back into session at 5:30 today, I had to cancel plans for a live editorial (that is, one for Friday’s paper), for fear that it would be outdated by events that could occur Who Knows When tonight. At this time of year, it becomes necessary to work ahead so we can make it through the holiday, so holding pages past usual deadlines militates against that. Besides, we try to be deliberative and include the full board in decisions, which constitutes another reason to avoid late-night, off-the-cuff, pontification. One hardly wants to be as precipitous and reckless as the S.C. State board now appears to be, does one?
But here are three main points that would have been included in that editorial, and are likely to appear in one at some future date:
- S.C. State University is a state-funded institution of post-secondary education, which is another way to say it is a public institution. The trustees, alumni, donors and others involved have no right and no business to run it as though it were a private club. The trustees, in particular, have a clear and compelling obligation to explain their actions in firing Dr. Hugine. The president is not their personal, private employee; he is employed by the taxpayers of this state.
- Once again, we are reminded of the need for a Board of Regents to run all of this state’s higher-ed institutions (and to close some of them), rather than having them run by autonomous respective boards of trustees.
- The steady erosion of public funding for public higher ed is probably a contributing factor in this tendency of institutional boards to misunderstand their fiduciary duty to all of the state’s people. When most funding comes from tuition and grants (even when the original sources for those funds are public), it can be easier for those in positions of immediate responsibility to fail to see their obligation to be accountable to the state.
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