[Vision2020] OP/ED @ Daily News

[Art Deco]

The Daily News gives us another edgy, well written, timely editorial.

Now if they had only done their homework/investigation on yesterday's piece on WSU, who now really wins the local smoke and mirrors contest, their conclusion and tone would have been very, very different.

Rozen has added some much needed guts and reporting supervision vigor to the DN.  I hope he will be allowed to continue.

The editorial below raises the question about who is really running the UI.  If Nellis doesn't make some very obvious, much needed personnel changes/deletions soon, he will have lost his chance of becoming a memorable president and will be awarded the Tim White Trophy for Mediocrity.


Wayne A. Fox
1009 Karen Lane
PO Box 9421
Moscow, ID  83843 

waf at moscow.com
208 882-7975


  
OUR VIEW: Digging a deeper hole at the UI
Lee Rozen
August 19, 2010

This past week the University of Idaho administration stonewalled reporters wanting to know more about an expensive contract for additional security there. 

Now, they are implying that even their president gets easily confused.

We can sort of understand their disrespect for the press. We get that from people a lot. 

But we find it more difficult to understand their disrespect for their boss. 

This week, in a getting-to-know-you session at the Daily News, President Duane Nellis, who has been at the UI for about a year, sat down with the paper's new managing editor, who has been here about six weeks, and its Idaho education reporter. 

It was a wide-ranging and friendly discussion. President Nellis spoke knowledgeably and with depth of detail on program after program and on the many initiatives he has under way to improve the university.

Then, toward the end, in answer to a question, he noted that the contractor who had caused the pipe break in the J.A. Albertson Building in June had insurance that would pay to clean up the damage, that work was proceeding apace and that classes would be held there when school opened. 

That was a little bit of news.

But by the next day, Tania Thompson, the UI spokeswoman who accompanied Nellis and took notes on everything that was said in this "get-acquainted meeting," was walking the statement back into the murk.

"I don't know if it's possible that maybe the restoration work that's moving so quickly and so collaboratively led him to an incorrect assumption," she told reporter Holly Bowen. 

So, she seems to be saying, the president didn't really know what he was talking about. 

We find that hard to believe. We find his handlers' paranoia about anyone outside their circle getting information on questions of concern in the community baffling. 

The free flow of data, the give and take of discussion, are cherished principles in the academic world. The university's administration apparently doesn't consider itself part of that world even in spirit, let alone in practice.

Until it does, this newspaper will continue to point out the absurdity.

- Lee Rozen, for the editorial board

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