USC board on track for overhaul after SC Senate panel moves to kick out incumbents
The University of South Carolina Board of Trustees is on the verge of being completely overhauled for the first time in years.
But what that change will look like is uncertain.
On Thursday, a state Senate panel advanced bipartisan legislation that would kick out all current board members in 2023, and narrow the board to 15 from 20 members.
It’s a change from the House proposal that calls for 13 voting members.
Under the Senate proposal, three members would be appointed by the governor, one of whom would be at the recommendation of the alumni association, and one person from a county of 75,000 or fewer people. Richland, Beaufort, Aiken, Spartanburg, Lancaster and Sumter counties, which have USC campuses, would each have a member. The other six members would be at-large members.
The governor and president of the student government association would sit on the board, but as non-voting members.
“This is a system board, this is not a USC-Columbia board,” said state Sen. Tom Young, R-Aiken. “When you try to include representation from the system campuses, we believe the optimum number was 15 versus 13.”
The House proposal calls for 13 members: One from each of the seven congressional districts, four at-large seats that represent counties of the state where the university has campuses, and gives the governor the power to appoint two at-large voting members.
The governor, the president of the university’s alumni association and the Columbia campus’ student body president also would serve as non-voting trustees under the House plan. No longer would the state superintendent of education be an ex officio member.
Now the full Senate Education Committee will take up the bill.
However, state Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, wants additional changes to the legislation, including preventing current board members who most likely will be replaced from serving as leaders on the board. He also questioned whether elections for new board members could happen sooner rather than the spring of next year.
“I think that’s very important because I will tell you from my experience, there’s nothing worse, or in some cases more dangerous, than a lame-duck person with vengeance on their mind,” Jackson said.
The overhaul is in response to legislative frustration that has spilled over in public over the course of two-plus years after legislators erupted in a hearing last month at five current board incumbents over, in particular, hefty buyouts to two former athletic coaches and a 2019 bungled presidential search.
The General Assembly will vote May 4 to confirm college and university board members, but those five USC board incumbents — Chairman Dorn Smith, Edward Floyd, John von Lehe, Thad Westbrook and Charles Williams — will not get a vote.
Lawmakers on the joint screening panel have refused to approve and send those five to a vote next month for new four-year terms, putting their decades-long stay on the board and future reelection campaigns in serious jeopardy, if they choose to run.
The panel that includes Senate President Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, and House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, approved USC board member Alex English, who is running unopposed to keep his seat on the board of trustees.
The five all-male incumbents will continue to serve on the board, though they’ll sit in what’s known as “carry over status” until the Legislature’s College and University Trustee Screening Commission takes any action. Lawmakers can call the five men back to the State House any time, screen them and reopen their seats after July 1 for new candidates.
“Even if you’re not a USC grad, you’re concerned about that. You want that university to be successful. You want it to thrive,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, told reporters earlier this month. “And there’s been a lot of concern about decisions that have been made at the university over the last several years, and so this is kind of been building to the point of where we are.”
Lawmakers spent hours last month grilling the five USC board incumbents, peppering them with questions about everything from tax liens to the lack of diversity on the state’s flagship campus and also whether a trustee used his influence to get people into the university.
Most of their questions, however, focused on why the university doled out millions of dollars worth of buyouts to former football coach William Muschamp and men’s basketball coach Frank Martin, and asked how the board managed to shove the school into two messy presidential searches.
In 2019, the board chose Bob Caslen, a retired three-star Army general and former superintendent at U.S. Military Academy at West Point, to succeed outgoing President Harris Pastides. Caslen was one of four original finalists.
The board decided to reopen the search, but Gov. Henry McMaster, an ex-officio member of the board, forced a decision on Caslen, who was chosen on a split vote. Caslen resigned last year after he plagiarized part of his graduation address and mistakenly called the University of South Carolina the University of California.
Later emails surfaced from Caslen in which he wrote, “This place sucks so bad. I don’t know how anyone can stand it.”
“That search was a mess,” Westbrook told lawmakers last month. “We were not healthy as a board.”
Pastides rejoined the university as interim president, and, after a monthslong search, the board named Michael Amiridis, the university’s former provost, president-elect in January. That search didn’t go unblemished, after the name of a top candidate, Mung Chiang, was leaked and university mega donor Lou Kennedy left the presidential search committee in protest after a verbal blowup with the board chairman.
The State’s senior politics editor Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 12:08 PM.
