USC’s last presidential search was a mess. Alumni and faculty want a better process

The University of South Carolina is again set to conduct a nationwide search to replace Harris Pastides.

But alumni and faculty say this search must be different than the messy and controversial 2019 presidential search that drew scrutiny from the school’s accrediting body, divided the board and drew protests throughout campus.

“This search needs to be a lot more transparent,” said Lyric Swinton, a USC alumna who helped organize protests against the 2019 presidential search. “Last time we found out more from the media…than we did from the board of trustees.”

The 2019 presidential search process drew scrutiny when none of the four finalists to succeed Pastides was a woman and only one was a person of color. Months after a divided board of trustees re-started the presidential search in April 2019, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster forced a vote on Robert Caslen, who was chosen on a split 11-8 vote.

The decision led to widespread protests from students, alumni, faculty, donors and more. USC’s accrediting body investigated and found there was “undue political influence” — something academic accrediting bodies forbid — in the presidential search.

Caslen announced May 12 he was resigning. Days earlier, he admitted plagiarizing a section of the commencement address he delivered to 2021 graduates. The school said Pastides agreed to return as interim president, and the board is expected to appoint him to that position on Friday.

“We’ve got to realize that we all love this institution...and then we’ve got to make good decisions in the board room, and by that I mean the board of trustees,” said Trustee Emeritus and Gamecock Football Hall of Fame member Chuck Allen. “We’ve got to get back to normalcy.”

Allen criticized USC’s board after he was ousted from his seat in 2020, saying a system of “good ol’ boys” retaliated against him for voting against Caslen in 2019.

“We gotta heal. This is serious. It’s damaging. It created divisions. It created significant division that was patently clear,” said Allen, who was on the board of trustees during the 2019 presidential search.

Others, such as former USC student body president Taylor Wright, who served on the 2019 presidential search committee, were also critical of the board.

“I think governance at the board level is, and will continue to be, an issue at the university,” Wright said. “The current way the board is conducting itself is not working in the best interests of the university, so whether that means they need restructuring or (have) turnover in members I’m not sure, but the same board that did what they did two summers ago is basically the same board with one or two differences. So (USC is) doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

There’s no guarantee politics won’t play a role in the search this time. Asked on May 13 if the governor’s office should be involved in the presidential search, McMaster — an ex officio member of the board of trustees who as governor has never attended one of its meetings — sidestepped the question.

“I think the university is going to do just fine,” McMaster said. “I think that it is growing, it is in strength and I’m sure they have processes in place now to make it very clear as to what is happening that should eliminate some of the questions that should come up.”

USC’s Faculty Senate approved a resolution May 14 calling for this presidential search to be handled differently than the 2019 presidential search.

That resolution called for the presidential search to: be transparent, have diversity on the search committee, nominate diverse candidates, allow search committee members to speak out publicly if search protocol is not being followed and consider input from students, employees and alumni, according to the resolution.

“It’s important to follow process and procedure,” said USC professor Marco Valtorta, who served on the 2019 presidential search committee and said he agreed with Faculty Senate’s recommendations.

While the Faculty Senate can’t force the search committee to comply, the group does wield a degree of soft power. In the higher education community, the concept of “shared governance” — meaning professors have a say in how the university is run — is a sacred and longstanding part of the industry.

In 2019, USC’s Faculty Senate cast two separate “no confidence” votes connected to the presidential search. One “no confidence” vote was for the board of trustees and the other was for Caslen, The State previously reported. Faculty votes of no confidence in an institution amid a presidential search has led to sanctions from the American Association of University Professors at other universities.

Araceli Hernandez-Laroche, a modern languages professor at USC Upstate who served on the 2019 presidential search committee, said the most important thing she would like to see in this presidential search is more diversity.

“What USC the system and USC Columbia needs to look at is the population of the state and its leadership and its leadership needs to be more reflective of that population,” Hernandez-Laroche said.

Hernandez-Laroche pointed to USC Upstate, the university’s largest campus outside Columbia, as an example of how USC can — and, some ways, has — made strides in diversity in its top offices. In March, the USC board of trustees hired Bennie Harris to be USC Upstate’s first Black chancellor. Harris’ first day will be July 1, according to USC Upstate’s website.

A frequent issue university officials confront in pursuing diversity for top positions is the lack of minority candidates with the qualifications to lead a university with more than 51,000 students and more than 6,000 employees, Hernandez-Laroche said.

“I think we have a problem of a pipeline, a leadership pipeline,” Hernandez-Laroche said. “So that’s why we have to be more proactive, so we have to encourage leadership opportunities for minority faculty… because if we don’t have that pipeline, it’s hard to expect a lot of candidates.”

While many have called for USC’s search to be more visible to the public, Trustee Eddie Floyd said releasing too much information to the public too early could deter qualified candidates from applying.

“I think it’s hard, if you take everything out in the open, to get a lot of qualified candidates. A lot of people wouldn’t put their names out there if it was public,” said Floyd, who has been a board member since 1982. Since then, USC has had six different university presidents.

Asked if the controversy following the last presidential search and Caslen’s abrupt departure would hurt the chances of USC recruiting quality presidential candidates, Floyd said it wouldn’t.

“I think we’ll have a lot of good, qualified candidates to be president of USC,” Floyd said. “We’re going to come out of this extremely well.”

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 10:31 AM.