When you’re the biggest $$$ honeypot in a poor southwestern City full of geriatric hippies, enviro-zealots, sinecured hard-left academics, struggling charities, and conniving biz-guys, anything “Green” (i.e. $$$) is a huge target. ABOR, the Arizona Board of Regents, should know this, especially after their last 2 spectacular executive trainwrecks. That is established fact.
In my mind, the #1 [outside] cause of the previous 2 UA presidents’ abject failures at that bloated, morbidly obese institution was CULTURE. Their respective failures to redirect the culture, and the chief bad habit they both fell into …was getting all chummy with the locals. Something that’s totally anathema to a genuine “change agent.” (especially in a City like Tucson)
It serves no purpose here to recount all the various ways the past 2 UA presidents engaged in such behavior, only to note that for the good ship UA, there’s a gigantic “sea change” afoot, outside their previously dreamy “ivy covered halls of academia”. And it’s rapidly coming ….like a gigantic bitch-slap as our present Piscean Era ends.
Mr. Trump’s ascendancy is merely the opening bell of this dramatic saga, one starting to unfold in human awareness, accountability, practicality, and most importantly: expectations. It’s something deeper than most American periods of the past. If you’re of a religious bent, you might think it’s “prophesy”, if it helps you deal with it (it’s not).
So let me state this right now for absolute clarity, especially for ABOR*: what’s happening in the ‘Dirty T’ with your guy Dr. Garimella is now starting to go off the rails in the same fashion as Doc Robbins, MD and the UA Diva-Baroness Hart. If you can’t fix it pronto, what’s coming won’t cut you any slack.
Just recently, the conspiratorial Dimshevik contingent in UA’s Faculty Senate openly declared war on the executive branch, demanding their “rights” to re-enter the local political sphere. The amazing arrogance of these state government employees! And these are the same disastrous, self-entitled pooh-bahs that consistently destroyed Tucson’s urban future, in numerous ways after the Cold War ended. We certainly have those results today, huh?
Also, the moochy Tucson elitist weed-sprouts, termites, and foxes are working their magic; more rot awaits if you don’t hose down this crowd with some Round-Up & Raid, and get better guard dogs. I would recommend the following overall general guidelines:
- You—ABOR—need to encourage the Legislature to renew their (failed) efforts to abolish the “Shared Governance Doctrine”, vis-à-vis that disastrous 1992 law, ARS § 15-1601B. It helps your man Dr. Garimella, and sends a clear message to UA’s increasingly feral domain of egotistical academic flakes.
- You—ABOR—need to mandate no more cozy local “volunteer” gigs at any of Tucson’s major civic organizations, none…that’s right, none. All the higher-level executives, Deans, Asst. Deans, Dept. Heads, etc. at UA that have been placed by locals in Tucson govt or quasi-govt organizations. Get ‘em outtathere, ASAP!
- You—ABOR—need an intensive audit & review of all the books, not just the educational books, but the sports book, the residuals/endorsements book, the branding books, the overhead (skim?) books on R&D grants, i.e. HHS, NIH, NSF, NASA, et al, the offsite commercial real estate book, the whole 9 yards. Do it before the Feds do.
This would made a great start; isn’t Dr. Garimella the guy you quickly hired, without a single other interview, here to do this?
CC: Petersen, Montenegro, Carbone, Farnsworth, Gress…. Arizona Statehouse.
Sellers is a Southpark, Roosevelt-Republican (TR) living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization, and administers the private group, Tucson E-P-T News, on Facebook