USC AD Tanner to add role as student mentor

The University of South Carolina has called Ray Tanner’s number to coach up the school’s student body about proper behavior.

The USC athletics director, who led the Gamecocks’ baseball team to back-to-back national championships in 2010 and 2011, has accepted an additional role at USC as a student mentor, president Harris Pastides said Wednesday.

“When he does talk to the broader student body, he has huge respect,” Pastides said after his State of the University address Wednesday. “I’m looking for someone who is impactful.”

The announcement comes amid increased attention to poor student behavior at USC and nationwide. However, Pastides and Tanner said the move is not a reaction to recent incidents at USC.

In his annual address Wednesday, Pastides also said:

▪ USC’s public health school would open its first satellite campus in Greenville next fall

▪ The location of USC’s new Columbia medical school campus will be announced “very soon”

Much of Tanner’s new role will include speaking to on-campus student groups, including fraternities and sororities, about navigating college life and staying out of trouble, Pastides said.

Pastides said Tanner, who has a reputation for being demanding and earlier this year spoke to residence hall mentors, will explain “that there will be consequences to behavior that is demeaning or dangerous.”

“I’m hearing from the community that that’s what they expect from us,” Pastides said.

Shortly after the school year started last month, two USC fraternities were charged with alcohol-related misconduct violations and placed on probation. Another is suspended while school officials investigate an “allegation of chapter misconduct.”

This week, USC’s Sorority Council also proposed banning liquor at social events and barring events in the Five Points entertainment district. The moves come after “our community has seen a significant increase in high risk behaviors,” according to a statement from the council.

Pastides said he does not know if student behavior has worsened, adding the problems are not unique to USC.

Tanner, USC’s athletics director since 2012, said he was not being called in to solve a crisis but has discussed expanding his role with Pastides for a while.

“I like to think that I’m a great listener and that I understand,” Tanner said. “I’ve been on a college campus since the day that I was a freshman, so I’ve seen it evolve. I think I understand the pressures and the anxiety and the stress that students are under all the time, and it’ll give me a great opportunity to have that engagement.”

Pastides said USC student affairs vice president Dennis Pruitt proposed the idea, telling Pastides “when Ray speaks, students are really plugged in, like hear-a-pin-drop type thing.”

“He told me over and over again that Ray’s comments and speeches were making an impact, so I said, ‘Let’s go forward,’ ” Pastides said.

USC to announce med school site

Pastides also said USC will open a new public health satellite campus in Greenville, where USC it already operates its second medical school.

The goal, he said, is to make USC the Southeast’s premier school for health sciences.

“Our graduates are very successful,” Pastides said. “But what we haven’t done before is marketed it to the high schoolers and said, ‘You want to be a health scientist? Let me tell you why USC is the best place around.’ ”

Pastides also hinted at a “major announcement” to come about the location of USC’s new medical school campus in Columbia.

Earlier this year, USC unsuccessfully lobbied S.C. lawmakers for $50 million to jump-start the construction of a new $200 million campus for its medical school.

Plans called for moving the medical school to 14 acres that USC owns near Palmetto Health Richland hospital from its current site next to the Dorn Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

But USC might have a second option.

In January, Greenville developer Bob Hughes was considering offering USC room for the school at his Bull Street development, which abuts Harden Street near the hospital.

Efforts to reach Hughes Wednesday were unsuccessful. A USC spokesman would not say Wednesday which location had been chosen.

This story was originally published September 14, 2016 at 12:22 PM with the headline "USC AD Tanner to add role as student mentor."