Was Robert Caslen a good president of USC? We examine the highs and the lows

Once everything is considered, did Robert Caslen do a good job as the president of the University of South Carolina?

Or perhaps the better question is, given all the controversy that surrounded him becoming president, was it even feasible for him to be a popular or effective president?

Was Caslen set to fail from day one?

Caslen’s reputation at USC suffers from the truth that people tend to remember the first and last pieces of information they’re presented — not so much the middle. Caslen’s USC legacy began during his candidacy for the job with a poorly worded statement on sexual assault. His candidacy delved into turmoil after S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster forced a vote on his candidacy, which resulted in a split 11-8 decision to hire the retired three-star Army general.

The governor’s involvement drew a formal inquiry from the university’s accrediting body.

Because of the how the board of trustees handled the search and McMaster’s involvement, many started off with a bad impression of Caslen, said trustee emeritus and Gamecocks Hall of Fame football player Chuck Allen, who served on the board when Caslen was named president. Allen voted against hiring Caslen, but said it was because of the process and not because of Caslen.

“Any mistake that he made was magnified, and (the mistake) drew more attention than it would have otherwise,” Allen told The State.

The last five months were tough for Caslen, who oversaw a university that: faced criticism for its handling of sexual harassment complaints; alienated the school’s largest donor, Darla Moore, and lost its top health official and provost to other jobs. That all preceded a disastrous graduation speech on May 7 in which he congratulated the latest graduates from the “University of California” and, he later admitted, plagiarized several sentences.

With all the controversy, it may be easy to forget about the middle of his presidency, in which Caslen’s achievements earned him praise.

During his tenure, Caslen twice led an ambitious effort to freeze tuition, a rare but crucial feat in reducing the burden of student loan debt. The last time USC did that was in the mid-’80s, when tuition cost $1,440 per year, according to data from the S.C. Commission on Higher Education. Today, tuition is and mandatory fees cost $12,688, according to USC’s website.

Caslen guided the state’s largest university and its multiple regional campuses through a deadly pandemic with a bold plan for in-person classes when other colleges were online-only. He mended relationships with the same critics who opposed the process by which he was hired. Under Caslen’s watch, USC hired its first Black provost, William Tate, and recruited a more diverse and in-state freshman class. In 2020, the freshman class had 103 more Black students than the prior year and 9% more minority students overall, The State previously reported.

Caslen’s biggest success at USC

Caslen’s ability to act decisively, build partnerships and think big equipped him to handle a university during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to his supporters, alumni and board of trustee members.

Throughout 2020, Caslen was ahead of his peers in responding to the once-in-a-century pandemic. As a result, not a single COVID-19 case among USC’s 51,000-plus students and 6,000-plus employees resulted in a reported death, USC spokesman Jeff Stensland confirmed.

“I think he happened to come in at a great time for his abilities. With the pandemic and everything, I think he handled that beautifully,” said USC’s longest-serving trustee, Eddie Floyd, who voted to hire Caslen.

USC was among the first universities in the country to implement “game-changing” saliva testing for COVID-19 that promised accurate results in a fraction of the time as other tests. Even amid a brief surge of cases on campus, USC’s percent positive rate was consistently lower than the state’s overall rate. When cases surged in September, surging past 1,400 active cases on campus, Caslen faced calls to shift to online-only classes, but he kept the university open and increased safety protocols. Soon after, coronavirus case numbers receded.

Neither Caslen nor USC did this alone. Mask-wearing was encouraged by the “I Pledge Columbia” partnership with the university and the City of Columbia. A partnership between USC and West Columbia’s Nephron Pharmaceuticals netted USC a robot that boosted testing speed, according to USC’s website.

Under Caslen’s watch, USC also managed the byproducts of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as threats to the budget and enrollment.

Within a month of COVID-19 striking, Caslen delayed the construction of the $240 million Campus Village dormitory project, deferred $88 million in maintenance, and implemented a hiring freeze to brace for a projected fiscal crisis caused by COVID-19. Despite projections USC would lose 10% of its enrollment amid the coronavirus pandemic, USC, under Caslen’s watch, actually increased enrollment slightly while boosting diversity in the freshman class compared to 2019.

Caslen’s response to COVID-19 was “clearly his biggest success,” Allen said.

“I was very impressed with the competency he showed during the virus,” said Allen. “That was kind of a natural disaster sort of situation and he seemed so well suited, and he seemed very comfortable handling those circumstances that were unprecedented. There was no guidebook to reference and research and find answers. That stuff was being done very spontaneously.”

Caslen’s biggest weakness

As the Pulitzer-prize winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote: “A person’s strength was always his weakness, and vice versa.”

The same traits that made Caslen wildly popular across branches in the military — his willingness to talk off-script and let the results of his actions speak for him — hurt him at USC.

“I am not the best speaker,” Caslen told WIS after his ill-fated commencement address. The former West Point superintendent recounted to the TV station an instance when he was at a gala before an Army/Navy football game. He accidentally said “Go Navy; Beat Army,” which elicited laughter from the crowd.

Even before Caslen became president, he drew criticism for comments he made about the connection between alcohol and sexual assault. Caslen’s comment, made when he was still a presidential candidate, called binge drinking one of the “contributing measures” to sexual assault. Those comments, which some interpreted as Caslen blaming the victim, were taken out of context, Caslen said at the time.

In an interview after the comments, Caslen, who chaired the NCAA Commission to Combat Sexual Violence, said he was not blaming the victim, but acknowledging the documented fact that nearly half of sexual assaults involve alcohol.

When testifying before Congress on sexual assault in the military, he blamed “toxic masculinity” for sexual assault, using a term — which one might expect to come from a gender studies professor and not a three-star Army general — that is critical of hyper-macho attitudes.

Shortly after becoming president Caslen told the Florence Morning News that Athletic Director Ray Tanner talked to Florida State University about how it managed a multimillion dollar payout necessary for ousting a football coach, leading many to believe Caslen would move to fire Will Muschamp, who was USC’s football coach at the time. Caslen later walked back that statement, saying he “misspoke.”

Muschamp was fired during the next season, when the Gamecocks finished with a 2-8 record.

Marco Valtorta, a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering who served on the 2019 presidential search committee, said he often felt Caslen was uncomfortable in academic settings.

“Occasionally he would not seem very comfortable and that came out very clearly in commencement, in situations where he had to deal with the academic community at large,” Valtorta said.

Set to fail?

The lasting damage to USC’s reputation during the 2019 presidential search was not caused by Caslen, but by political interference and the board of trustees., USC alumna and activist Lyric Swinton told The State.

“I actually don’t see Caslen as the problem. I see him as the symptom.” said Swinton, who led protests against the process by which Caslen was named president. “I see the board of trustees, as well as the governor, set him up from the beginning to fail. What we’re seeing is just two years coming to fruition.”

Former student body President Taylor Wright agreed.

“I think that was a big issue with the last search...the end result was destined to have complications. It was an unwinnable situation the president was put in,” said Wright, a member of the 2019 presidential search committee.

Given Caslen’s controversial hiring, he lasted longer as president than it may have been reasonable to expect, Valtorta said.

“It is really difficult for a president elected without the support of faculty and staff… and a large portion of the trustees to succeed,” Valtorta told The State. “Starting off the way he did he had a tremendous handicap.”

S.C. Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said the process that made Caslen president also made him “doomed to fail,” The State previously reported.

Asked if Caslen was set to fail from the beginning, Trustee Floyd said he wasn’t sure.

“But I know it was very difficult under the circumstances he came in,” Floyd told The State. “With all the controversy, it really didn’t help him to get off to a good start.”

It wasn’t just faculty, alumni and SC power brokers who thought Caslen was kneecapped from the beginning. Caslen’s son Nick tweeted Saturday that his father was in an impossible position.

“Nothing he could do would ever be enough to satisfy a critic,” Nick Caslen said. “He led the school through the COVID-19 pandemic setting a standard for universities across the country to follow. Even that wasn’t enough to gain respect. It is clear to me the (board of trustees) set him up for failure from the start.”

This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.