DEAN DRAMA

Manship interim dean violated policies, ‘dismissed’ faculty input

BY CLAIRE SULLIVAN @sulliclaire

The interim dean of the Manship School violated college policy and shut out faculty input at several turns in his push to lower admissions standards for the college, a Faculty Senate investigation concluded.

Josh Grimm, interim dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication, framed his plan as an effort to bolster diversity in the college. It would remove the preference for 3.0 GPAs, reduce credit hour requirements and admit highachieving students straight from high school in an effort to recruit and retain students.

The Manship faculty passed the plan in September in a contentious 16-12 vote, but an investigation by the Faculty Senate Adjudication Committee says the vote should be thrown out and the process vetting the policy redone. The adjudication committee is made up of faculty and hears complaints alleging violations of policy and procedure; it does not rule on the merits of policies.

The committee found Grimm repeatedly strayed from faculty governance norms and policies. He dismissed faculty concerns over the plan, created a special committee against university bylaws and stacked with those who reported directly to him, and held a vote over the proposal that violated the college’s policy, the committee found.

The committee spoke with five members of the Manship

CULTURE

School who witnessed relevant points in the process and compiled dozens of documents during its investigation.

A member of the adjudication committee, sociology professor Ed Shihadeh, said what happened at Manship was unlike anything he had seen in his 30 years at the university.

“I don’t know of a precedent like this that has ever happened,” Shihadeh said in an in- terview, noting that he is new to serving on this specific committee but has spent decades at LSU as faculty.

Grimm defended his handling of the admissions proposal in a rebuttal included in the adjudication committee report and in a statement Friday.

The proposal had split the Manship School faculty from the start. Members voiced concerns that lowering standards without increasing academic support would hurt students. Some said the plan implicitly reinforced negative stereotypes.

But it wasn’t the policy itself that launched the investigation: It was the process that preceded it. Two Manship faculty, professors Len Apcar and Jack Hamilton, wrote a scathing complaint in January that kickstarted the review.

“The vote not only symbolizes a deeply-divided faculty but is the culmination of a process that was so rushed and biased that it crushed every tenet of faculty governance,” Apcar and Hamilton wrote in a letter addressed to Faculty Senate President Inessa Bazayev.

They felt a consensus resolution could have been reached among faculty had the interim dean acted differently.

“Our concern here is not the admissions policy or goals that the interim dean wished to achieve, but with the methods by which he did this,” they wrote in a March letter to the adjudication committee. “Had he worked toward a consensus, he could have avoided a divisive vote.”

If Manship’s policy not allowing absentee votes had been followed, Grimm’s plan would not have passed. The vote among those present at the virtual meeting last fall was 12 yes, 12 no and one abstention. A tie would mean the plan fails.

But Grimm said, after the vote of those on the Zoom call, there were four absentee votes in favor of the proposal. These votes, the adjudication committee found, were in violation of college policy, which does not allow absentee votes on policy matters.

The committee pointed to Manship’s policy, included in the handbook distributed to staff just a month before the vote: “Except for personnel