Bloodless Coup

The AP has a basic report, and lots of newspapers are picking it up. It even hit the front page of the Washington Post (down towards the bottom, but still).

I'll be curious to see what happens tomorrow (being a school day and all).

The part of this that I will note, is that the spin is in full force (emphasis mine):

Garrison also said he has spoken with Gov. Manchin--Bresch's father--just once about the controversy, and that was in December when the story first hit the press and two month after Dean Sears and Provost Lang reached the decision to award the degree.

Hmmm - not exactly the way the decision to award that degree is described on p. 8 of the Bresch report, is it?

I'm finding this more maddening by the day. I'd swear I read somewhere that Garrison believes he already got a no confidence vote from the faculty last year, so one this year is of no importance - which means 1) he's making semi-jokes about an incredibly serious manner, and 2) he has no interest in what the faculty says, ever. Nice. And of course he's being highly misleading about what the Bresch report actually says.

And Garrison groupies like Kevin Leyden are taking up that banner and saying that what's really at issue here is that Garrison's critics just don't like Garrison, it's not the Bresch matter that's really driving this. Which is both 1) deeply insulting to Garrison's critics and 2) flatly wrong. Instead we should look at Garrison's overall record - like, you know, a child care center and a raise ... which are of course things any university president should be able to achieve. Happily most university presidents though don't throw in tearing down the reputation and integrity of their university into the mix though with a new child care center.
Talk about the poverty of low expectations. Is it such a hard thing to expect a university president to both secure raises and NOT to oversee offices that behave like his has?

Apparently the "coming in with a no conifdence vote" is something he said on camera. You could check the video at WV Metro News or maybe KDKA has streaming video.

And as another comment said, Sears and Lang had no prior relationship with Bresch, so what motivation did they have other than Garrison?

This just in: Lang and Sears have resigned from their administrative jobs, not from the university, and will return to teaching starting in the fall.

No, I'm not kidding; it's the lead story/blurb at West Virginia Public Broadcasting's website (not worth a link; it just says what I said).