The Ritual Humiliation of Steve Long

[Thank Gawd for @JoeKillianPW, who's actually in the room for the UNC Board of Governors meeting at AppState this morning. I'm depending on his Twitter feed]

You remember Steve Long? He's the one member of the Board of Governors who's come out publicly against UNC BOG Chair Harry Smith. Even urged his replacement. Primarily for the ouster of Eastern Carolina University Chancellor Cecil Staton.

This is what happened to Steve Long this morning:

JoekillianPW‏ @JoekillianPW

UNC Board of Governors member Steve Long is now apologizing to Chairman Harry Smith and the board for speaking out after the ECU chancellor's ouster. He said he should have come directly to Smith rather than speaking publicly on the matter in an "intemperate" way. #NCPol #ECU

JoekillianPW‏ @JoekillianPW

Long previously said Smith needed to step down, accused him of carrying out a personal vendetta against ECU Chancellor Cecil Staton. He now says he didn't handle things the right way. Smith thanks him, says they continue to be friends. http://ow.ly/hGBn30o9jm1  #UNCPol #ECU

 @JoekillianPW

Interim UNC System President Bill Roper does not acknowledge any controversy over asking the ECU Chancellor for his resignation, says simply he thanks the chancellor for his service and moves on to other business. #NCPol #ECU #UNC

JoekillianPW‏ @JoekillianPW

Reminder: Several UNC BOG members told Policy Watch earlier this week there was a movement to formally censure board member Steve Long for speaking out over the ECU Chancellor ouster and Smith's role in it. Long made an abrupt about-face this morning, apologizing. #NCPol #ECU

The UNC Board of Governors Meeting in Boone Just Got More Interesting

UNC BOG member Steve Long

Reference: BOG member Steve Long, who had the courage to call for BOG Chair Harry Smith's replacement, based on Smith's bullying yet another university chancellor into premature retirement -- ECU's Chancellor Cecil Staton.

Fellow BOG member Tom Fetzer, former chair of the NCGOP and one of Chair Smith's strongest lieutenants, has reportedly been lining up votes to formally censure Steve Long for his criticism of Chair Smith, such censure resolution to be sprung during Day Two of the BOG's meeting on the campus of AppState -- in other words, tomorrow.

Since that plan to censure Steve Long has been outed publicly, will it happen anyway, in the full glare of press coverage?

ADDENDUM
Said Thomas Harnisch, Director of State Relations and Policy Analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, “The stories coming out of North Carolina have garnered national attention. People are seeing heavy turnover in key leadership spots. That can lead to top talent not applying for those positions. Higher education is a community. People certainly talk to each other. All these transitions are piling up and taking a toll on the state’s reputation. North Carolina has gained a reputation where its Board of Governors is very political. There’s a lot of instability emanating from that board. All of the stories about in-fighting on the board, firings and resignations over the last several years, top talent sees that and may decide they don’t want to be a part of it.” (Thanks to Joe Killian, NC Policy Watch, for getting the interview with Harnisch)

Better Keep Your Children Indoors! The BOG Is Coming to Boone

UNC BOG Chair Harry Smith

The feudin', fussin', and fightin' Board of Governors (BOG) of the University of North Carolina System will hold its next meeting this Thursday and Friday on the campus of Appalachian State University (Plemmons Student Union). The BOG bears a certain justifiable resemblance to an institutional wrecking crew, chaired as it is by Uncle Fester lookalike Harry Smith.

Smith leads a band of hard-edged conservatives -- all appointed by the Republican overlords in the General Assembly -- and he's a bloodhound for sniffing out people who won't be missed. He just succeeded in getting rid of the chancellor of Eastern Carolina University, Dr. Cecil Staton, following closely his successful defenestration of UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt and UNC System President Margaret Spellings.

Forcing out Dr. Staton at ECU in the last week opened a public fissure on the BOG. Member Steve Long has issued a public letter denouncing his chairman as a petty meddler who relentlessly grinds his axes to the detriment of higher education in North Carolina. According to Long, Smith's vendetta against Chancellor Staton consisted of a "long-running campaign of false accusations and irrational attacks" based on Smith's failure to reap a profit from the students at ECU: "Harry Smith has been seeking the Chancellor’s removal ever since Chancellor Staton and his trustees rejected in 2016 Mr. Smith’s proposal to buy an apartment complex near ECU if the University would change its housing policy." The sordid topic of coin in the age of the Trumpists.

Making a profit seems very much uppermost in the philosophy of Harry Smith, as is keeping the symbols of white supremacy manifest in an old bronze statue. Wonder how he feels about Chancellor Sheri Everts' successful application for certifying AppState student IDs for the purposes of voting. Is that a strike against her? Smith doesn't seem like the sort of political operative who would be interested in encouraging student activism at the ballot box. In fact, we wonder if any discussion will focus on the fact that 12 of the institutions in the UNC System just had their students significantly disabled from their access to the polls.

Silent Sam Has No Place To Stand Now

The granite pedestal on which Silent Sam, the white supremacy symbol at the entrance to UNC-Chapel Hill, used to stand got hauled away in the wee hours this morning, by order of Chancellor Carol Folt, who incidentally also announced she's leaving her post as chancellor at the end of this semester just ahead (we imagine) of an angry mob of UNC Board of Governors members with pitchforks and torches who apparently did not know that Chancellor Folt was going to resign and order that hunk of granite removed on the same Monday in January. The BOG is largely an adamantine bunch of Republicans, and many wanted that warped statue back up on that pedestal.

UNC BOG Chair Harry Smith was particularly outraged by Chancellor Folt's actions, perhaps because he was in the middle of conducting a phone-in meeting of the board when news of Folt's resignation reached him. The board was discussing "personnel issues," and it's no secret that some of the board were gunning for Folt. Perhaps her unexpected resignation was one of those "you can't fire me because I quit" moments. We don't know. But Smith was unamused: "We are incredibly disappointed at this intentional action," Smith said in a statement. "It lacks transparency and it undermines and insults the board’s goal to operate with class and dignity."

With class and dignity. Is that code?

Smith made his fortune selling and installing air filters, but he's also the owner of apartment buildings that rent exclusively to students, and he's been accused of trying to steer member campuses in the UNC system to build public-private student housing via a company he had "a relationship" with. Uh-huh.

Smith, described as part of "an aggressive conservative faction" of BOG members, took over as chair last July. That faction ran off UNC President Tom Ross. Then they ran off his replacement, Margaret Spellings. Now Carol Folt is leaving too. Harry Smith and his faction get to replace those people with their people, and how they ultimately decide to handle symbols of white supremacy hang in the balance, sort of like that granite pedestal. If they go all hardline, we trust it will be with class and dignity.

POSTSCRIPT
The UNC BOG has decided that Chancellor Folt will not be allowed to continue until the end of semester. She needs to clean out her office by January 31st, they said.

Who Is This Man, and Why Is He So Happy?

This is Harry Smith, the next chair of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, and doesn't he have an eye for the main chance? Yes, the teachers and scholars and students in the UNC system have found themselves a standard-bearer for corruption and double-dealing. Copying here from Thomas Mills, in whose debt we all are for blowing the whistle on this joker:

Under the leadership and example of Donald Trump, the GOP has openly become a party of grifters, using positions of power and influence to benefit themselves and their cronies. The latest example is over at the UNC Board of Governors. The next chair has been trying to profit off his position with little shame or regret.

Harry Smith, who is running unopposed for Chair of the Board of Governors, tried to push a sweetheart deal that would have given East Carolina University more beds and made a bunch of money for him and his business partners. He wanted to buy a foreclosed apartment complex adjacent to university property and then rent the units to ECU. He said he would split the profits with university. The only catch is that to keep the place full, ECU would require sophomores to live in Smith’s newly acquire apartment complex.

Smith and his business partners, The Preiss Company, own apartment complexes including some near other universities. Smith is currently part of a legal battle right now in which he is accused by a North Carolina Central University employee of pushing the school to do business with Preiss. Of course he denies any wrong doing.

Smith’s actions are part of a pattern that’s emerged since Republicans took over the state. House Speaker Tim Moore has gotten rich since he won a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He drives a Maserati. Last month, reporters uncovered a deal where he bought a troubled property with an old chicken plant on it for $85,000 and sold it three years later with no improvements for more than $500,000. That’s a windfall and it’s not likely to have happened if Moore were still just an attorney in Kings Mountain.

In Washington, Republicans in Congress have decided to look the other way while Trump and his family cash in on him being president. They fill their hotel in Washington, DC, with guests looking for favors. His resort down in Florida, Mar-a-Lago is a destination for GOP bigwigs and others seeking favor from the president. Nobody in the GOP is going to criticize the Trumps or hold them accountable in any way.

The GOP has become a party of grifters who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand and supply-side economics. Profits are all that matter and if you can turn your stint in public service into windfall profits, good on you. Accountability and transparency seem quaint. When Democrats did these things, they went to jail. When Republicans do them, the GOP base cheers.