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Regents Fail Public

President Adams Is Their Boy

State boards are meant to act as taxpayers' eyes and ears, monitoring management and regulating CEO performance. The state Board of Regents, as overseers of Georgia's university system, has an additional mission, to help guide thousands of state college students toward knowledge and wisdom. They are not mere decoration, serving at the CEO's pleasure. Why then, did the Regents respond to a scathing audit of University of Georgia President Michael Adams like parents defending a straight-A teen caught skipping school?

"Has President Adams been perfect for the six years he has served as president of UGA? Of course not!" wrote the Regents. "Have there been times when he might have used better judgment? Absolutely, but those times are relatively few." In a telling two-page statement, Regents reserved their wrath for the University of Georgia Foundation, calling the Deloitte and Touche forensic audit ordered by the private Foundation "offensive" and grousing about how complaints about management should be made "privately."

Worse than decrying the public release of the report, the Regents addressed none of the claims brought against the UGA president, though there is much in the audit that merits closer scrutiny. In a rare glimpse into the secret fund-raising world inhabited by Adams, the audit depicts a president intent on increasing his own compensation package and perhaps prone to misleading fund-raisers to further his own interests. Specifically, there are allegations (disputed vehemently by Adams and widely reported in the press) that he overstated a salary offer from Ohio State presidential searchers in order to boost his own pay in Georgia, hired a friend outside the normal bidding process to oversee the design process for a campus alumni center, let friends and family use his football tickets, reporting them as potential donors in order to skirt federal taxes on these "gifts," and spent Foundation money to charter a plane to a non-UGA-related funeral.

Auditors do not tally the private dollars that flowed out of the UGA Foundation as a result of these and other alleged transgressions, but they would clearly be in the six-figure range. Aside from questionable expenditures, the audit shows Adams acting at times in a less-than-presidential manner, shifting the blame for mistakes onto others, onto "staff" and onto his own senior administrators. In one instance, auditors state, "Even Dr. Adams seemed unsure as to who should be held accountable for the Alumni Center project, although he finally offered up that perhaps the Senior VP of Finance and Administration, Mr. Hank Huckaby, could be held responsible."

It's ironic that a private foundation board, with a history of closed and secret activity, should be the entity leading the charge for presidential reform, speaking for those Georgians who have been less than satisfied with Adams' leadership. The public board, comprised of regents appointed by the governor, has so far used this scrutiny of Adams only to complain about the "hearsay" contained in the audit and to decry the public manner in which it was released. Instead of pausing to consider the president's actions at greater length, it last week called the matter "closed."

Why? The audit, among other things, shows a president consumed with matters of land purchases, salary packages, spousal stipends, chartered flights and coaches' contracts. The Regents, as a public body, could have stopped to consider whether the president's time might be better spent on other projects, such as investigating the availability of courses on campus or the reliance at UGA on part-time instructors. Tellingly, there is nothing in the audit or the responses to the audit directly regarding learning. Parties, golf trips, funerals and alumni facilities are the focus of these higher education leaders, not the education of students.

The reason for that glaring omission is that Adams, together with the Regents, has lost sight of the university's mission, and he and the board share an obsession with prestige, rankings and the pursuit of big-ticket researchers. Their mutual commitment to corporatized education explains the Regents' blind support of the president, whom they hired. If they condemn Adams, they condemn themselves. In calling for an end to the scrutiny of Adams, they asked university supporters to "reunite their efforts to push UGA into an even more prominent position nationally." The further such public college boards let dollar-driven presidents like Adams drift from the prime university mission, the more they can expect national prominence, of the kind they least desire.

Joan Stroer

Joan Stroer is a local freelance writer.

Dim Bulbs, Big City

GOP Lurches Towards Disaster

Next year, for the first time ever, the Republicans will hold their national convention in New York City, the high temple of American liberalism. At a time when Americans are politically polarized over Iraq and other divisive issues, Republicans plan to nominate an extreme right-winger in a city where 81 percent of the locals voted for Al Gore. To top it off, they're scheduling their Roy-in-the-lion's-mouth act in September - the GOP usually holds its confabs in July - to coincide with ceremonies commemorating the 9/11 attacks.

At the risk of coming off like those who warned that President Clinton risked his life every time he appeared before audiences of well-armed soldiers on Southern military bases, let me say, as a New Yorker: this is a very bad idea.

"Next year in New York" is already the rallying cry of more than 150 groups planning to protest Bush's coronation. United for Peace and Justice, which organized some of the biggest demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, has applied for a 250,000-person permit to march past Madison Square Garden, where the convention is being held, on the event's first full day.

Everyone from radical anarchists to moderate environmentalists expects the NYC/GOP ideological collision to spark the biggest American protest march since the end of the Vietnam War. Families of 9/11 victims, predominantly Democratic like the oasis of ideological sanity they live in, are so incensed at reports that the convention was timed to allow Bush to lay the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site that many plan to join the protest. "Keep your hands off Ground Zero," Rita Lasar, head of a 9/11 victims group, warns Republicans. "Do not make a political football out of this."

Too late. New York's Republican mayor and governor have denied the cornerstone-laying story, but they've confirmed that Bush will shuttle back and forth between the convention in midtown and speeches at Ground Zero. And Rudy Giuliani is encouraging convention organizers to use 9/11 as a prop.

Activists are talking, some with barely hidden glee, about the possibility of violence. "It'll be Chicago 1968," a well-connected progressive leader predicts, referring to the "Days of Rage" riots during that year's Democratic National Convention. "Things are gonna burn, people are gonna die." Harsh new NYPD tactics, like using horses to trample protesters, could throw gas on an already combustible situation. "Angry protesters have claimed police are meeting [antiwar] demonstrations with new heights of repressiveness, amounting to a pattern of unfounded arrests and abuses," reports The Village Voice.

Both sides are itching for a fight. "If they think New York City will welcome them with open arms, or even tolerate them dancing on the graves of the WTC victims, they are in for a very rude awakening," "Seraphiel" posted to the TalkLeft.com website. "I hope it is a remake of the '68 convention in Chicago and the fabulous NYPD, this time, get to break some left-wing heads like grapes," a Bush supporter named "David" retorted.

As much as I relish the idea of a million angry Americans turning the tawdry Necropublican National Convention into a Seattle WTO-style fiasco, the potential for mayhem is terrifying. As a Manhattanite, I hope that the Republicans will seriously consider moving their convention somewhere else. New York, wounded by the dot-com crash and 9/11 (the latter injury exacerbated when Bush welched on the money he promised to help the city rebuild), continues to suffer from widespread unemployment. The risk of convention-related terrorist attacks should be reason enough not to hold it in a city that paid the highest price on 9/11. A revival of 1968, with cops fouling their batons with the blood of young people, wouldn't do anyone - left or right--any good.

Riots would make everyone look bad - New York, the GOP and the demonstrators. The resulting property damage could exceed the cost that would be involved in moving the convention to another city - a price that the well-funded Bush campaign can easily afford. The Bushies would be better off today if they had taken my advice on Afghanistan, Iraq, and the economy. They've haven't listened yet - but that's no reason not to start now.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back, now available in a revised and updated paperback edition containing new material.

Animal Control

Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 72 calls:

5 complaints of animal cruelty

1 reported bite case

5 complaints of barking dogs

7 ordinance violations

31 animals impounded

27 dogs

2 cats

1 rat snake

1 chicken

25 dogs placed

6 adopted

9 reclaimed

10 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of Wednesday, Oct. 23 to Wednesday, Oct. 29.