If you had asked me a very few days ago whether I thought there was any vestige of Lu Hardin’s arrogant, greedy, insular and self-serving practices remaining at the University of Central Arkansas, I would have said no. I would have said that I was certain everyone understood the moral imperative, or at least the political one, of moving singularly toward basic reform.
But now I’m hearing from varied sources that Tom Courtway, the thoroughly competent interim UCA president, is despairing that he keeps getting blistered in typically uninformed editorials in the Democrat-Gazette because he won’t — i.e., can’t — unilaterally pull the plug on any and all policies and practices of Hardin’s that run into yet more bad publicity.
I’m told that Courtway would like to pull some of these plugs, but can’t in a few cases because a couple or three of UCA board members, who, after all, make policy, oppose changing some of these things — such as tuition breaks for their kids. And other UCA board members aren’t forceful enough or engaged enough to prevail over these two or three.
In fact, I’m advised that Courtway, who works uncommonly hard and takes criticism uncommonly to heart, may be thinking of doing one of two things: One is quitting, because it’s not worth the static or the blood pressure readings. The other is forcing a public board discussion and vote on a few of things — to shine a little light on who’s where, if you know what I mean.
The second option is much preferable.
Courtway is a lawyer and former leading state legislator who did a vital interim directorship of the state Education Department through troubled times, and is the ideal person to get the UCA mess straightened out for a new president, which he does not want to be. By the way: I believe Courtway is right and the Democrat-Gazette editorials wrong on releasing the names of students receiving discretionary presidential scholarships under Hardin. Courtway, a careful attorney, believes the disclosure — though clearing the air of rampant suspicion — would invite a lawsuit about invasion of federal privacy laws for students.
