Recent developments in the search for a new president at Jackson State University provide yet another example of how Mississippi’s secret searches mar the process and increase the risk of a poor choice being made.
Last week, word leaked that one of the three finalists for the job is Roslyn Artis — a report that higher education officials would neither confirm nor deny.
The public scrutiny Artis is now receiving is the kind of close examination that all the finalists should get. It’s the kind of scrutiny they would have gotten a decade ago, before Mississippi went to a hush-hush process that keeps all but a select group in the dark until it’s too late to do anything about it.
If Artis is a finalist, she carries a lot of baggage from her troubled tenure as provost at Mountain State University, a private university in West Virginia that closed in 2012 after losing its accreditation. During the upheaval, Artis was accused of trying to keep students from finding out that the value of their degrees was in jeopardy.
Although Artis’ more recent tenure as president of historically black Florida Memorial University has reportedly been without controversy, the faculty, students and other JSU stakeholders have a right to be concerned about what transpired at Mountain State. The College Board and its search committee may already know most of this about Artis’ background, but the public is left to take on faith that the vetting is as thorough as it needs to be. There would be no doubts about it if the names of the finalists were released.
The argument against a more open process has been that it would reduce the number and quality of applicants. That claim has been refuted in this state by a couple of former university presidents and even a former higher education commissioner, all of whom applied for jobs at places where they knew their interest would become public knowledge if they became finalists. The possibility of public disclosure didn’t keep them from seeking employment elsewhere, nor did it jeopardize their jobs here.
There’s another problem with secret searches that the Jackson State case has also just exposed. It allows for selective leaking.
Whoever disclosed Artis’ name may have done so not because they object to secrecy but because they didn’t want her to get the job. That’s not fair either.
All finalists should be treated the same. Releasing their names would also ensure that.
