Michael Behrent's Burnt Sugar

I recently read on an Art Pope-sponsored website a long essay by AppState history professor Michael Behrent, who also until recently served as the Democratic Chair of the Watauga County Board of Elections. (He says he's no longer a registered Democrat.) Behrent begins his essay hypothesizing about something that only a bonehead first-year teacher would try, "overt campaigning in the classroom." While I certainly agree that overt political campaigning in the classroom is wrong, Behrent makes a dark and sinister suggestion that "some political organizations have found workarounds to avoid these prohibitions, allowing them to promote their interests in taxpayer-funded educational contexts."

That's the heart of Behrent's argument -- nefarious "workarounds" are subverting the will of the General Assembly.

"Workarounds"

That word needs unpacking. Behrent seems to be implying that "overt campaigning" is in fact happening regularly, especially on the campus of AppState. His main piece of evidence ... well, I'll let him tell it:

On Wednesday, August 27, I received an email that seemed to have been blind copied to other Appalachian State faculty, as well. It was sent from an App State email address to my App State email address. The sender identified himself as a student “volunteer” for the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force, which he described as “a local nonpartisan organization fighting for every person’s ability and right to vote” (italics in original). The student noted, “We do not engage with candidates or political issues.” He requested permission to visit my class—and those of other faculty to whom the email was sent—to discuss how to register to vote. The email said: “We understand your time is limited, so we only ask for five minutes at the beginning or end of your class. If you would like to invite one of our representatives for a brief presentation, please respond with the location, and preferred date and time for our visit.”

Behrent makes a big deal out of that email and its student author, but I don't see any "overt campaigning" in it. The Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force (WCVRTF) has always presented voter registrations as a strictly non-partisan, informational activity to ensure proper registrations that will count on E-Day. The Task Force registers everyone, of whatever party. The greater bulk of their registrations are "Unaffiliated," with a few Democrats, a few Republicans, and some Libertarians. What's wrong with that? And what's wrong with that student's emailed and open request, to legally and ethically and according to IRS rules do non-partisan voter registration in a classroom? Show me the "overt campaigning." To equate voter registration efforts with partisan campaigning is ridiculous on its face.

Behrent takes a leap of several furlongs, alleging that the "workarounds" are discoverable in that poor student's associations with other people. It's quite the Easter egg of guilt -- that the several people who started the WCVRTF are -- or were -- also active in the Democratic Party. And Behrent is right about that, but so what? The Voting Rights Task Force was originally a committee in the Party, focused on voter registration. The committee eventually spun itself off from the Party as a separate non-profit, barred by IRS rules from "overt campaigning." The Task Force promotes ballot-access for every voter and defends the provisional ballot, and has gone to bat for the rights of legally registered voters who go to the wrong precinct on election day. The Task Force won a lawsuit restoring the polling place in the AppState Student Union. More recently it went to court again and won a case to give due process to voters whose legitimate voter registration forms had clerical errors which disenfranchised them. The Task Force is also a co-plaintiff with NC Common Cause, seeking to overturn the Ralph Hise gerrymander of Watauga's CoCommish and school board districts.

Bottomline: A person can be legally, ethically, morally involved in more than one org at a time (or else the world is going to be short a lot of the volunteers who actually make things happen). Nowhere does Behrent offer a single instance of a classroom breach, when "overt campaigning" occurred, or of any actual breaking of the rules. Not one. It's all innuendo and those suspicious associations. Democrats doing democratic things while wearing different hats and following different rules. Behrent build a straw horse, imagining a bunch of political activists who (he says) give away their game on the WCVRTF website by quoting liberal icon Lyndon Johnson on the supreme importance of the vote, while editing the original quote to eliminate the word man. (The Pope universe loves this kind of "outing" of liberal stupidities, and Behrent makes hay out of it.)

Behrent's guilt-by-association tour eventually gets to my own household, to PamsPicks.net, and the whole progressive nest of plugged-in citizens who sometimes do voter registration for the WCVRTF and then sometimes do activities for the Democratic Party and who know how to keep things separate. For the record, PamsPicks.net is not published as an arm of the Task Force nor of the Democratic Party. It's an independent source of information and candidate endorsements that often infuriates Democrats as much as Republicans. Behrent gets this right: 

“Pam’s Picks” is the brainchild of a Watauga County activist, who for years has regularly provided extensive information about local, state, and national candidates in addition to making endorsements in most races. “Pam’s Picks” typically includes a marked-up sample ballot with her endorsements noted, which voters may take with them to the polls. A January 2023 article from The Appalachian, the App State student newspaper, quotes the author of “Pam’s Picks”: “I am a progressive Watauga resident and have long held interest in local politics and issues.” The same article notes that, in the 2020 Democratic primary, a candidate who received less than 10 percent statewide called the author of “Pam’s Picks,” puzzled that he had won Watauga. “Pam” explained: “Well, I got your story out.”

So what's Behrent's beef? That an independent woman -- not ever a Democratic Party officer but a self-starting volunteer who has quite separately built a following for her "Picks," because she does thorough research on every candidate of whatever party, offering background facts and social media links, and endorses according to her admittedly "progressive" political values. What's his problem with that?

His essay smells like burnt sugar.

Invisible Hands Make Evil Magic

 

A provision tucked into the proposed budget passed by the North Carolina House of Representatives last week would apply only to Buncombe and to Watauga counties. The provision would create an exemption from local codes for state building projects at UNC-Asheville and Appalachian State University -- only, of all the universities in the state.

According to Jack Evans in the Asheville Watchdog, the exemption provision first applied uniquely only to UNC-A; Watauga got added mysteriously as "part of a package" when the bill went through amendments in the House Appropriations Committee.

There's currently a controversy going on in Buncombe over UNC-A's administration's announcement earlier this year that it will seek to tear down a wooded area on campus in pursuit of an as-yet-unannounced project, which triggered a movement among Asheville voters to quash the development via zoning laws. Oops. This secret budget provision takes care of that -- by rendering public opinion, let alone local development ordinances, of no consequence whatsoever.

The Early Voting Line at AppState, 1st Day

 

This photo is time-stamped 12:15 p.m. today. The line continued behind the photographer and down a long hallway.

You Can’t Hide Anymore

 

Jack Yordy, guest posting:

Last week, I spent roughly seven hours watching videos of student protestors being beaten and brutalized by police. If I didn’t have final exams and projects, I’d likely be watching many hours more this week. There are endless high-definition photos and videos of police violence at universities across the country. But that’s not all I’ve been watching. 

In the months since October of last year, I watched people being torn to shreds by bullets and bombs from the comfort of my apartment. Nearly every day I see the aftermath of an airstrike on a school, or a hospital, or a home, or a body. If you’re wondering why young people care so much about this war, and why they’re willing to be expelled, arrested, and brutalized, there’s your answer. We’ve been watching a genocide through the eyes of its victims. We have lived fleetingly in their perspectives for seven months. 

In 1970, students protesting against the Vietnam War were watching their friends be drafted and never return. They heard the horror stories and saw the names of the dead falling down the TV screen every night. They did not stop protesting after four students were murdered at Kent State by militarized thugs. Fifty-four years later, students are watching their friends and people they follow document the daily deaths of their friends and family. They watch the bombing of homes and hospitals, the withholding of food and water, and so many more atrocities available to view at any time. 

When the media began churning out lies last month in response to protests across the country, it was already far too late to change the minds of GenZ. No statement or spin could make me forget about the body of a child and the aid worker who was trying to save her when they were hit by an American-made, university-funded, missile. Israel, AIPAC, and their U.S. propaganda proxies can’t hide what is happening from us even if they ban TikTok. There is no hiding from us and there is no backing down from demanding our government stops supporting genocide. 

I don’t believe this is going away. In fact, I’m almost sure it is not. For the first time in my four years at Appalachian State University, I am seeing large networks of students forming in response to policies that they disagree with. These students are committed to connecting, organizing, assembling, and dissenting peacefully, regardless of the consequences. They’re not going to forget about this over the summer. They’ll be back after spending the summer planning, not playing. No one can watch what we are watching without feeling a duty to stop it. With Israel continuously gearing up their war machine to escalate this genocide, as sad and angry as it makes us, we are not going to stop watching or dissenting in accordance with constitutional rights. 

Jack Yordy is president of the AppState College Democrats.

AppState Chancellor Resigns in the Middle of the Semester

 

AppState's PR office announced yesterday that Chancellor Sheri Everts is resigning. Her last day will be this coming Friday. 

It's a sudden and unprecedented leave-taking by an administrator who was reviled, high and low. Well, maybe not in the highest places in Raleigh, but most of the AppState faculty had come to distrust her. Along with the students. In recent weeks she had been the target of repeated campus protests.

North Carolina System President Peter Hans will announce an interim chancellor before April 19.

Back on April 3rd, The Appalachian student newspaper published an editorial complaining about Everts' ill-advised initiative to buy a big building in Hickory and expand the AppState campus to that satellite location. The editorial was prophetic about her jumping ship:

Have you ever heard the expression “jump ship”? When things are getting bad so you run to another thing to escape? How about the billionaires that are attempting to leave Earth and live on another planet because Earth is becoming a toxic wasteland? See the connections yet? Everts is jumping ship, running away from the problems she caused at App State.

She continues to ignore student complaints and push back, causing chaos on the main campus, while painting everything as good. Then, she continues to put money into the Hickory Campus, advertising it as though it is as good as App State, hoping to gain more money and more students, because App State’s main campus can not hold more students.

In its coverage of her resignation, the News&Observer was more comprehensive in detailing the push-back against her at AppState:

Everts’ time as chancellor was not without controversy. In August 2020, amid the then-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the university’s Faculty Senate passed a vote of “no confidence” in Everts, citing a lack of competency, transparency and concern for the wellbeing of students. 

Everts was “frequently isolated from and unable to effectively communicate with faculty, and has failed in her basic tasks of strengthening institutional finances, providing goals, operating in a transparent fashion, embracing shared governance, and pulling the university community together in a common mission,” the faculty’s no-confidence resolution stated. 

More recently, Everts drew the ire of students and alumni for her decision to “upgrade” the university’s “expression tunnels” — officially, the Rivers Street tunnels — by removing the art, paint and other designs in the tunnels and adding brighter lighting and cameras to monitor the area. 

She also faced criticism by student groups, including the Appalachian State College Democrats, for a variety of actions they called “attacks on free speech and expression.”

AppState Chancellor Under Fire for Suppressing the Queer Community on Campus

 

The Appalachian State University Graduate SGA has produced a string of accusations against Chancellor Sheri Everts alleging that she is behind the suppression of "Pride Week," the banning of drag shows on campus, and the actual firing of "at least four (4) Queer & Trans Staff and Faculty" without explanation (and presumably without cause). The document actually names names of those shown the door.

Other student groups have joined the out-cry against Everts (including the ASU College Democrats, which produced its own statement of solidarity). The student groups want Pride Week restored.

Aside from their condemnation of the AppState administration (principally Everts), the students don't raise the questions that immediately come to my mind ... that perhaps Everts is merely carrying water for the Republican-heavy Board of Trustees and the even-more-laden-with-cultural-conservatives Board of Governors, who have shown some eagerness for clamping down on what they consider the too-liberal university system. Everts has seemed all too willing to please those powers and not at all susceptible to the pleas and arguments of her own student body and faculty.

She's been highly unpopular on campus for a long time. The ASU Faculty Senate passed a "no confidence" resolution about her back in 2020, but nothing much about her style of authoritarian administration has changed.

Faculty Dissatisfaction with AppState Chancellor

 

Stella Anderson

At Appalachian State University, the Chair of the Faculty Senate has always gotten time at the first general faculty meeting each fall to address the entire faculty, with the administration present, to report on problems and on-going activities that affect what is actually mandated in the operational Code for the university system, in short, something called "shared governance" (which implies input by the faculty).

The Chair of the Faculty Senate this year, Stella Anderson, had her 10-minute address ready, but she got cut off the program by Chancellor Everts. (Maybe the chancellor had gotten wind of some of the complaints Anderson intended to air.) Not only did Everts unilaterally end last Friday the tradition of the Faculty Senate Chair getting time at the podium, but she also cut out traditional addresses by the chair of the staff council and the president of the Student Government Association. In other words, nobody actually hopeful for and dependent on the promise of "shared governance" was allowed to speak. Only the Chancellor.

So shut out of that general assembly, Stella Anderson recorded her speech on video and published that on YouTube (titling it ominously "Breaking With Traditions"), and in the calmest tones, supported by a slide show, she recited an extensive laundry list of grievances about the chancellor's "lack of adherence to system policy," including the high-handed rewriting of the Faculty Handbook that ignored faculty input and which simply redounded to more power for the bosses and less for the faculty.

Anderson's bottomline: "There is nothing more fundamental to faculty when it comes to shared governance than the policies that affect faculty employment. There is no greater 'test' of shared governance than work done in drafting and revising [university] policies." 

The current reputation of Chancellor Sheri Everts on campus seems to have hit what may be rock-bottom. The consensus holds that she is breaking a trust.

Fright Is the Mother of Invention

 

“When you vote, it scares some folks.”

--Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking to students at NC A&T, Sept. 16, 2023

Rep. Zenger

Here's one now, so frightened he makes a serious suggestion to take away voting rights from college students in North Carolina -- more specifically, students at AppState -- that would violate the Supreme Court's ruling from 1979, Symm v. United States. College students have the constitutional right to vote where they go to school.

But Rep. Jeff Zenger (Forsyth, Dist. 74) said he got an idea from his daughter, a student at AppState, who complained to him that college students voting in local elections made her feel yucky. "When they vote for Senate and vote for President, that’s great," Zenger said his daughter said. "But what isn’t fair is that they vote in the local elections. The problem is that the college students don’t understand the issues of the local politics and the local people."

"Don't understand the issues"? Is there a test for that? Doesn't understand the issues worse than, say, local high school graduates who did not go away to college and who don't know the three branches of government? There are uninformed people everywhere, and all of them have the right to vote in local elections. So far.

So Rep. Zenger, who likes ideas that cripple the student vote, proposes putting it into North Carolina law that any college student claimed as a dependent by parents must vote where those parents live. Heaping on the heads of college students (who are already not supposed to know their asses from a handsaw) new hurdles and confusion that come with voting by mail -- already made more difficult by Zenger's pals in the General Assembly. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Slicker Than Snot on a Doorknob, Four Eggers Gets Himself Back in the News

 

A famous cartoon by Andrew Cox for
The Appalachian, 2013

On Thursday, and again on Friday (May 11-12), Laura Leslie at WRAL published and then updated a scoop about two prominent Watauga Countians. Leslie found out that Four Eggers ("Stacy Clyde Eggers the Fourth") had secretly gone to the general counsel for the state Board of Elections (SBOE) and first suggested that SBOE member and current secretary Stella Anderson was ineligible for reappointment and then also suggested (possibly threatened, in that mealy Four Eggers way) that the state Republican Party would sue if she were reappointed to the board that Eggers himself also serves on. (It's a whole nother story about how two Watauga Countians ended up on the same important state board at the same time.)

Bottomline: Anderson, who told Laura Leslie that she fully expected to be reappointed and had been told by the governor's office that she would be reappointed, suddenly discovered that she was out in the cold because the governor's people were afraid of a lawsuit. (H1029, passed in 2018, prohibits state employees from serving, but after the enactment of H1029, Anderson was reappointed anyway because she was considered "grandfathered." She had already been serving on the SBOE when H1029 passed. Why, she now wonders, is she no longer grandfathered? Doesn't that question deserve litigating? Rather than instant retreat?

Four also challenged another Democratic SBOE member, Jeff Carmon, on the same grounds. Carmon teaches one class as an "adjunct" (part-timer) at NC Central. Serious question: Legally, can part-timers get around the state employment prohibition? Probably not, so Carmon actually quit his part-time teaching job to get reappointed.

NEW NEWS

Here's the kicker. Four Eggers is himself, according to his lawfirm's own website, "since 2005, a Certified North Carolina Criminal Justice Instructor through the Criminal Justice Standards Division and has taught continuing education classes to both the Appalachian State University Police Department and the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office."

Continuing Education classes at AppState pay their instructors. I feel pretty safe in suggesting that. So how exactly does Four Eggers stand apart from the same eligibility requirement that ensnared Jeff Carmon to stop teaching? How special is Four Eggers? And where does he get off, successfully manipulating the governor to not appoint his one nemesis on the SBOE, Stella Anderson, who likely knows election law a little more thoroughly than Eggers. She's a many-year veteran of both the county BOE and the SBOE, and her name is on the actual lawsuit (Anderson v. State Board of Elections, 2014)  that successfully reopened the ASU polling place that Four Eggers had tried very hard to get rid of.

A Jesse Barber photo

So it's not the first time that Eggers has been outed as a secret manipulator. He was exposed once before in a Winston-Salem Journal investigative article ("One County Attorney, Two Hats: Documents show attorney as 'author' behind key resolutions") on September 15, 2013, just a few months after Republicans (that is, Four Eggers) took control of the local BOE for the first time in a Protestant eternity. With his little brother as chair, and with Bill Aceto as wingman, Eggers immediately began driving Elections Director Jane Anne Hodges (with decades of experience) into early retirement and went to work suppressing the ASU student vote. He got famous on campus, which was not necessarily a good thing, and became a regular passenger on my personal ship of fools (I'm the friggin cap'n and the purser), this blog. I've written about Four Eggers probably more than I ever did about Donald Trump. Don't believe me? Search "Eggers" at the top of the page.

In response to Leslie's questions, Eggers admitted that, yes, he did go pay a visit to the SBOE general counsel's office, and yes he did raise the issue about Anderson and Carmon's eligibilities, but, he claimed, "it was not a challenge to the Democrats’ re-appointments." There's no paper trail proving he's working the angles for the NCGOP -- no official challenge from them. But I think it likely that Eggers was delivering -- in that unctuous, oily way of his -- a nevertheless clear (and obviously effective) threat from the NCGOP that he was recruited to deliver.

Either that, or he went rogue. Out of ambition and self-interest.

AppState Town Hall: Concern About University’s Direction and Administration

By Mata Hari, guest-posting: 

“Houston, we have a problem.” This is the message about Appalachian State that concerned faculty and students delivered at a town hall held on campus on Sunday evening.

The problem lies not with the university itself, according to town hall participants, but with the administration, and specifically Chancellor Sheri Everts, whose leadership style was characterized by some speakers as “authoritarian.”

Panelists and audience members described a campus climate of “fear,” in which students are “silenced” by the administration and faculty told to “sit down and shut up.” They told stories about an administration that uses Zoom to mute open discussion, that suppresses unfavorable reports on issues like diversity, that press-gangs deans into publicly denouncing faculty views that fail to tow the administration’s line.

The town hall, which was held in Belk Library and on Zoom, was organized by Appalachian’s Student Government Association (SGA), Faculty Senate, and Staff Senate. Its theme was the university’s direction.

The town hall was opened by Faculty Senate Chair Louis Gallien. The first panelist, Richard Rheingans, a professor of Sustainable Development, put the town hall in context. The students and faculty, he observed, are the university. They fulfill the university’s mission. The institution does not exist for the sake of administrators. And yet Appalachian’s administration seems entirely focused on congratulating itself on its own (dubious) accomplishments. It does little to support students and faculty. Rheingans asked: “What do you do when leaders don’t lead?” He noted that when you’re told to “sit down and shut up”—as faculty regularly are—it usually means it’s time “to stand up and speak.”

Bailey Gardin, the current student body president, recalled the administration’s handling of the Black at App State Collective, which issued a series of demands in July 2020. Gardin described the meeting that the Chancellor held with students of color on July 21 to address these demands. He called it “one of the most traumatizing meetings I’ve ever been a part of.” Chancellor Everts packed the meeting with around 40 individuals whose involvement had not been announced to the students (and were loyal to her). The students of color were, moreover, prevented from speaking at the virtual meeting because they were muted by the administration. More recently, the administration has failed to produce a “demand tracker” to monitor its commitment to meet the demands. And last November, the administration suppressed a report by the Faculty/Staff of Color Affinity Working Group, most likely because it included information about negative experiences these faculty and staff had experienced. “Racist tactics of tokenization and gaslighting” were, Gardin stated, a hallmark of Everts’ administration.

Bekah Nielson, an App State student with the Climate Action Collaborative, expressed many students’ frustration with the university’s tepid climate goals. The university has pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, which is no more ambitious than the national goal. The administration has shown, Nielson said, a “lack of sustainability, accountability, [and] transparency.” She emphasized that in fighting for genuine sustainability, students were not “fighting against university, but fighting for our home.”

Stella Anderson, a professor of management, discussed university funding, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that public higher education was appropriately funded by the state. She noted current efforts to change the funding model that determines the allocation of state monies, but observed that this change may only be marginally beneficial to Appalachian. She emphasized the importance of funding the university’s core academic mission. She reminded the audience that Appalachian’s Athletics program is not self-sustaining, as it is funded largely by making students pay an athletics fee—a fee that all students must pay as a condition of attending the university.

Todd Carter, a newly elected member of the Boone Town Council, was the last panelist to speak. He emphasized the importance of cooperation between the town, the county, and the university, while noting the aggressive sustainability measures the town has pursued.

The tone of the meeting was refreshingly optimistic. It was evident that the faculty and students were deeply committed to Appalachian and to its educational mission. But it was equally clear how much they felt the university’s mission was stymied by Chancellor Everts’ administration.

Some faculty recalled, for instance, that they had recently conducted a survey of faculty about the university’s policies regarding the omicron variant. They communicated the results directly to the faculty. But on January 10, all seven of the university’s deans (Michael Madritch, Sandra Vannoy, Melba Spooner, Shannon Campbell, Marie Hoepfl, Marie Huff, Dean, and James Douthit) sent an email to students stating: “It has come to our attention that some faculty might be sharing misinformation about university COVID safety protocols, procedures and decision-making that are inaccurate and potentially harmful.” The deans were ordered to send this email by none other than Chancellor Everts.

More recently, Megan Hayes, the university’s chief communications officer, criticized the press release about the town hall itself. Hayes, who reports directly to Chancellor Everts, wrote the following to the town hall’s organizers (the email was shared at the meeting):

I read a news story in the Watauga Democrat this morning in which Faculty Senate, Staff Senate and SGA are described as “governing bodies” for the university.

I wanted to let you know our team is reaching out to the editor to request a correction, as this is not accurate.

Additionally, you may want to correct the graphic you are using to publicize your upcoming event on Feb. 20, as I am sure it is not your intent to mislead the constituencies you represent, the public or the media that your organizations hold governing authority, or that you represent the university in an official capacity.

 

In addition to being astonishingly petty, Hayes’ email is simply wrong. The principle of “shared governance” upon which American higher education is founded means, literally, that bodies like Faculty Senate participate in governance. In no way were any of these bodies pretending to be the university’s chief executive officer or governing board. This red herring of an argument simply shows the administration’s churlish need to suppress any voice that might contradict its own.

Of course, as several town hall participants indicated, the core problem is that Chancellor Everts, lacking any support on campus or in Boone, depends entirely on the support she receives from the campus Board of Trustees and the System Board of Governors. Every single member of these bodies (except for the SGA President, who is also a trustee) has been chosen directly or indirectly by North Carolina’s gerrymandered, Republican-controlled legislature. Objectively, Chancellor Everts serves North Carolina’s Republican politicians.

It was clear from Sunday’s meeting that this is not the last time the university’s faculty and students will meet to press for their vision of the university. 

Sheri Everts Accused of COVID Mismanagement

 

I've been hearing for literally weeks about AppState faculty's beef with Chancellor Sheri Everts about her lax policies regarding COVID, especially considering the current spike in Omicron which has coincided with the opening of the spring semester and in-person teaching. The faculty I hear from -- and see mentioned now in the press -- allege that Everts is unresponsive to faculty questions and complaints and -- worse -- simply absent from any collegial conversation about the best plague decisions. Faculty say Everts now goes into an automatic "defensive crouch" when challenged about anything -- which is just another form of hiding out.

What does the majority of faculty want? A recent faculty survey found that some 63.5% of the 441 faculty respondents said the university’s current COVID protocols will not allow the university “to continue to function normally, in a manner that permits them to provide a high-quality education to all of our students, without disruption, for the full spring semester” [reporter Joe Killian]. And...

Nearly 63% said they think it is either likely or very likely they will have to move their courses entirely online in the next few weeks due to COVID infections.

Overwhelming majorities also supported allowing faculty members to control the mode of instruction in their classes, requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test for admission to all on-campus events and requiring all students, regardless of vaccination status, to undergo testing prior to the start of the semester.

The majority of respondents — 76% — said they would be willing to hold courses online for the first few weeks of the semester, until the current omicron-driven surge of infections peaks.

...so far the university’s administration hasn’t been willing to take any of the suggested steps.

AppState's protocol for COVID
accused of being mainly PR

Everts' fear of her own faculty -- or her ingrained disdain for them -- possibly goes back a couple of years (some would say farther than that):

Tensions between Everts and students and faculty at App State have been escalating since August 2020. At the time, the university’s Faculty Senate voted “no confidence” with regard to Evert’s leadership, over the campus’s handling of COVID-19. A no confidence vote is rare in UNC System history. [Joe Killian]

Killian also reports on an open letter that a prof of sustainable development (who also happens to be a former health economist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) sent to all students, alleging that the university is “failing to provide the leadership, guidance and support that students, faculty and the broader community needs”; followed by a mass email response to students from Everts' office alleging that the prof was peddling "misinformation"; which provoked followup questions to Everts' office from the press and from faculty demanding "what misinformation?"; and then finally an attempt at explanation from Everts' flack sent to reporter Killian that does not pass the smell-test among faculty.

Stella Anderson, a professor of management, said that Everts' administration is the worst case of mismanagement she's seen in her 29 years at the university. “It’s an unmitigated disaster,” Anderson said. “The administration and leadership failures and bone-headed communication is really astounding .... I’ve been at the table for a lot. I know good management and leadership and I know when I’m not seeing it.”

The chair of the AppState faculty senate offered the best explanation for Everts' intransigence: political shit ineluctably rolls downhill:

“The era we’re living in now in North Carolina higher education history is truly a hegemony,” Dr. Louis Gallien said. “You have a majority of Republican legislators who appoint the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors in turn appoint the Boards of Trustees. The Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors choose the chancellor. So you have a hegemonic philosophy of leadership and management those groups have. And it is not totally in sync with traditional shared governance principles.”

Sheri Everts is not about to buck the real bosses.

Hegemony, incidentally -- the word -- is just a fancy academic way to say "the power derived from the inability of any group to think and act independently."

Deanna Ballard Watch

 

Saw this headline in the High Country Press the morning after Thanksgiving, just in time for giving thanks: "Sen. Deanna Ballard Secures Critical Improvements for District 45." I immediately said out loud, "Oh she's definitely running for something."

To recap: She's double-bunked with Sen. Ralph Hise in what used to be her NC Senate District. What will she do? What will Hise do? (Hise is rumored to be considering running for the congressional seat -- CD14 -- as is Ballard.) Putting out an eye-grabbing press release like the one referenced above is evidence of a politician who intends to be noticed and of a comms team honed for the main chance.

The story in the High Country Press lists all kinds of special budgetary grants aimed at projects in Watauga and the other counties in Ballard's 45th Senate district, and I have no inside poop nor any reason to doubt the worthiness of any of those grants. I tend to support government funding of community-based projects, so good on Deanna Ballard. I do note that AppState is singled out for some $122 million, and I'm sure they can use it.

It All Comes Down to Sheri Everts

Last Wednesday, Oct. 27th, some ambitious faculty members at Appalachian State University -- alarmed by the chancellor's governing style and her administration's evident ambition to bend town government to the maximum benefit of ASU -- invited everyone from the university and everyone from the non-university community to come to a town hall in the county library and air both grievances and potential solutions for a major university's tendency to eat the town of Boone. The town hall was organized by ClimAct, a student environmental club, and the Appalachian State chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Clark Maddux, American Studies specialist, presided.

Today the High Country Press published both a detailed account of the town hall and a response to the criticism submitted by Megan Hayes, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Communications Officer for ASU -- Chancellor Sheri Everts' flack. You have to scroll way down for Hayes's answer to the townhall, though you may end up wondering why she would have taken the time for this, pablum-stained wallpaper about how Chancellor Everts has lots of meetings with lots of university groups. And she'll keep on meeting.

In that same High Country Press article, and following Megan Hayes's non-answer to the mounting criticism, Clark Maddux answers Hayes:

“Whenever any faculty member, or group of faculty members, decides that we are going to do anything that could appear faintly critical of the chancellor, the Board of Trustees or the Board of Governors, we ask ourselves, do we need to hire a lawyer? And what is she or what is the board going to do in retaliation? That says a lot about the environment that she creates … She’s had six years to become a partner with this community. And all of the so-called conversations and listening sessions and programs that she holds have clearly not done that. She has not created a partnership with this community. And so I think it’s up to faculty who care about the community to do that.”

An environment of retaliation. 

I know faculty members who are visibly squeamish about any show of political thought -- even bumperstickers on their cars, or receiving email from hell-raisers like me. They often express outright fear that the administration will notice and come down on them. While well known members of the Board of Trustees feel perfectly free to strut their political stuff.

AppState's Student Newspaper Probes the AppPAC

Ethan Hunt, reporter for The Appalachian newspaper, has up this morning a lengthy, in-depth investigation into the Appalachian PAC and its possible water-carrying for the university. 

It's a little late to be of much utility in this municipal election today, but it's notable for its thoroughness.

Hunt's reporting is also notable for upstaging the Watauga Democrat, a newspaper that might have done the same investigation but didn't. Or at least didn't publish anything, if a reporter there did in fact look into the story of heavy university connections behind some candidates for the BooneTown Council.

Town Hall Condemns Appalachian State’s Unresponsiveness to Local Concerns

 

What impact is Appalachian State having on Boone? 

This was the question explored by a town hall held last night in the Evelyn Johnson Room of the Watauga County Public Library. The event was sponsored by the Appalachian State chapter of the American Association of University Professors and ClimAct, a local environmental group. The room was packed, with over forty citizens in attendance and that many more joining via Zoom.

The town hall left little doubt that there is a lot of concern—from community members, students, and faculty—that the university may be adversely impacting Boone and the surrounding area. Kellie Reed Ashcraft of the Watauga Compassionate Care Initiative noted that Boone’s poverty rate is significantly higher than the state average. There was a lot of worry expressed about the university’s aggressive enrollment growth goals. Many noted that the town is increasingly full of shoddy housing and that it is expensive, too, forcing many people who work in Boone to seek housing elsewhere. Some students bemoaned that App State is becoming a degree mill, and that reckless growth is resulting in lower quality of students, diminishing the quality of an Appalachian degree. One participant quoted Edward Abbey to chastise the university’s priorities: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Frustration was also expressed about the university’s lack of responsiveness to the Boone community, even to answer questions. At one point, the question was asked: “Who has even met Sheri Everts [the App State Chancellor]?” Only a few hands were raised. Many noted that the core problem is that Everts owes her $375,000 annual salary to the UNC Board of Governors in Chapel Hill—and that the Board is the only constituency she really cares about. Needless to say, the Board is appointed entirely by the Republican majority in the General Assembly.

Finally, some attendees pointed out that, on top of everything else, the recent revelations about App Pac and the lavish donations by two members of the App State Board of Trustees suggest that the university is now trying to buy the Boone Town Council. What a convenient way to get land owned by the university rezoned to meet its interests—and those of wealthy real estate developers.

Enough is enough, it was decided. App State used to be the pride of Boone. But, as one resident pointed out in one of the evening’s most moving testimonials, the university is now exploiting the local population, forcing out people who have lived in the region for generations.

The event’s organizers promised that more was soon to come.

More Questions About Big-Dollar Donors to AppPAC

Additional background on Mark Ricks and Brian Tracy, two maxxed-out donors to the AppPAC in the Boone Town Council elections:

In November 2017, at the time Mark Ricks was giving $10 million to AppState athletics, Brian Tracy was senior associate athletic director for external affairs at the university and very involved in securing that unprecedented gift from Ricks. The next year, in 2018, Ricks was appointed to the AppState board of trustees.

Last month on September 15, when he gave $5,600 to the AppPAC, Brian Tracy listed his address in Round Hill, Va., and his employment as "COO of DWF." I understand COO to mean Chief Operating Officer, but DWF momentarily stumped me. DWF? I didn't immediately understand that stood for Double Wood Farm, "an equestrian sanctuary for retired show horses in Bluemont, Virginia," owned by BOT member Mark Ricks. (I'm grateful to "Octavia" who made the connection in a comment on "Who's Funding the Appalachian PAC.")

So Brian Tracy is now working for Mark Ricks and living near Double Wood Farm in Virginia? And maxxing out to the same political action committee that Mark Ricks is supporting?

Why are so many of the big-dollar donors to AppPAC from out of state? We understand why so many have clear connections to AppState.

AppState Denies Any Involvement in the Appalachian PAC

 

On Monday, Oct. 11, AppState political science major Adam Zebzda addressed a letter to the university administration "respectfully requesting" an investigation into the involvement of two AppState trustees in the launch of a political action committee (PAC) whose stated goal is to take over Boone town government for the betterment of the real estate industry and housing developers. I have a copy of that letter.

 

Zebzda wanted answers about whether "any Trustees violated North Carolina General Statutes or the UNC Policy Manual and Code, either explicitly or in spirit, which govern the political involvement of public State officials…."

 

Quickly the deputy general counsel for Chancellor Sheri Everts answered Zebzda in a two-page denial on Oct. 12, quick turnaround for a bureaucracy! (I also have a copy of that letter.) There's been no untoward political activity by the two trustees nor by Appalachian State University, wrote the deputy. 

 

Much of his denial seemed based on the photograph of the two trustees that was published on this site: 

 

The deputy counsel wrote: "Their only involvement seemed to be that they were photographed together. The photograph further illustrates that neither of these individuals wore any indicia of Appalachian State University affiliation and were pictured talking to each other and not candidates or officers of App-PAC."

 

The wording is interesting: "Their only involvement." The flat denial implied by that word choice gets undercut immediately by "seemed to be," which made me flash on the university's Latin motto: To Be Rather Than To Seem. The physical evidence in this case is a "seems," at least for the deputy counsel, and is utterly without substance. (But the involvement of high-ranking university officials in a PAC was never the implication of an otherwise innocent photograph. It's the stuff that stands well outside the view of any camera that concerns us. And the lawyer's argument is silly.)

 

None of it matters, anyway, because the deputy counsel hurries to his main point: The rules against political activity applies to employees, not to trustees (tiers of power):

 

"…this North Carolina law only applies to employees, as it is entitled Political Activity of Employees. Trustees are not Appalachian State University employees." 

 

Flatly stated, the two trustees are entitled to their political activity. I certainly agree with that. The question for me was always this: Does their political activity represent political policy for the university?

 

The deputy counsel says "no."

 

"To be clear, App-PAC is not affiliated with the University. Most importantly, the University is not affiliated, not associated, not connected and otherwise not part of the PAC in any way, especially when individuals, whether they be faculty, staff or students, are permitted to attend these types of political events on their own time."

 

I accept that categorial denial and wonder why the chancellor did not also say this at the ASU faculty senate meeting last week. I've apparently been roundly condemned on campus for publishing that Zoom clip of Chancellor Everts remaining mute (and not a little miffed) when asked the direct question about university knowledge of or involvement in the Appalachian PAC. If her silence did not signal guilt, then I have to assume it's just arrogance and irritation at being questioned about anything at all, ever.

 

That's now the corporate style at AppState.

 

And the overriding question behind all this controversy remains: What are AppState ambitions in Boone regarding real estate development, and what kind of levers of power can they marshal for those ambitions?

AppState Chancellor Stonewalls Questions About AppPAC

 

The footage below, shot with a cellphone during Monday's AppState faculty senate meeting on Zoom, captures two different moments when Chancellor Sheri Everts shrugged off the chance to say anything about the Appalachian PAC, which claims it will endorse candidates for the Boone town council who wish to advance "University prosperity." Warning: the sound quality is very poor, so turn up your volume.

At the beginning of the clip, a male questioner can be heard asking for any explanation of the AppPAC. Chancellor Everts maintains a stony if slightly irritated silence after the man mentions trustees Mark Ricks and Tommy Sofield. Then we hear a female voice asking the same question, getting nothing but silence and shrugs, and so she repeats the question. You can judge the chancellor's silence/curious lack of interest for yourself.

Sauce for the Goose Ain't Necessarily Sauce for the Gander

 

Guest Post by Mata Hari

Can App State trustees help "launch" a political action committee (PAC) designed to influence municipal elections in Boone? Especially in view of this: On August 26, ASU’s General Counsel, Paul Meggett, sent a harshly worded four-page document to faculty and staff warning against “Political Activities of Employees, Candidacy for Elective Office; Office Holding (Elective and Appointive Public Office) and Free Speech and Free Expression.” It stated the following (among other fine points):

“No employee may use his or her position, state or university funds, services (including mail or email service), supplies (including letterhead), equipment (including telephones and computers), vehicles or other university property to support or oppose a candidate, party or issue in an election involving candidates for office. See, N.C. Gen. Stat. §126-13 (applicable to SHRA employees); see, UNC Policy 300.5.1 (applicable to EHRA employees).”

There are perfectly sound reasons for such policies. But as Meggett also notes, being a “state employee does not mean you lose your constitutional rights to participate (or not participate) as you desire in the political process as long as such participation is not on work time and does not involve the use of university property.”

Were two AppState trustees violating at least the spirit of the "no politics" clause? Worth noting -- section 101.4 A 5 of the UNC Code (the governing document for the whole university system) clearly intends to keep service to the UNC System and electoral politics separate.

Ethics is as much about avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest as it is about breaking the law. Chancellor Everts and Provost Norris implied, at the Faculty Senate meeting on Monday, that they knew nothing about App Pac. Shouldn’t the Boone community be skeptical when the chancellor and provost say they never discussed with App State trustees a plan to elect a town council that is favorable to the university’s real estate interests?

Appalachian State Provost Claims to be Unaware of App PAC

Guest post by Mata Hari: 

Mark Ricks and Tommy Sofield,
members of the AppState
Board of Trustees, at the
Appalachian PAC launch party.

The plot surrounding App PAC thickens. At the meeting of the Faculty Senate that took place yesterday, faculty asked Provost Heather Norris about App PAC. To be clear, they asked only after Norris tried to leave without answering any questions — their modus operandi vis-à-vis faculty, students, and community since Covid. But the faculty did manage to get a question asked — about what App PAC is, about why Mark Ricks and Tommy Sofield, two AppState Board of Trustees members, are shown as being involved on the PAC’s Facebook page, and how this might relate to the university’s real estate ambitions. Norris was clear: she said she could not answer the questions about the PAC because she was unaware of its existence.

Another faculty senator asked if anyone could answer the question about App PAC. The silence during the Zoom meeting was quite deafening. Provost Norris and Chancellor Sheri Everts said nothing — Everts adopting her preferred public demeanor of fiddling with her phone while the questions build. 

 

But no one — no one — in administration was willing to answer the question. Even to the point of allowing an embarrassing silence to endure after the question was repeated.

 

It's an interesting question whether the university did, in this context, violate public meetings laws. As Attorney General Jeff Stein has noted in his open meetings report, simply asking for public documents is sufficient to establish that a request has been made.

 

In any case, it will be interesting to see just how long App State remains silent on App PAC.