KIESLER IN OR KIELSER OUT?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an editorial by Hank Waters III in the Columbia Daily Tribune:

If the governor and University of Missouri Board of Curators wanted to concoct a test for business management majors, they could have done no better than to present the high jinks surrounding the resignation/firing/reinstatement of MU chancellor Charles Kiesler with the question: How many things can you find wrong here?

I'm having a hard time finding anything they did right.

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It was no secret that UM president George Russell was not entirely happy with his Columbia campus chancellor. Kiesler also had made enemies among the Columbia ranks, mainly because of his abrupt personality. Fair enough. It is legitimate for faculty and staff to develop opinions about their leadership, and it is the job of the president to judge chancellors and decide their tenure.

I would not have been surprised to learn one day that Kiesler had resigned or been asked to resign or had been fired. No matter where advice might have come from, the deed should have been done by Russell, and he should have been supported by the curators.

And that appears to have been roughly the sequence of events until early last week. The governor began to indulge in management meddlings at its worst by getting directly involved in what above all should be the purview of the president of the university system.

Consider these events: Rumors began to fly about Kiesler's shaky status. Curators in May had accepted Russell's negative performance review of the chancellor. On June 10, Gov. Mel Carnahan, concerned about Kiesler's status, called curators president Fred Hall and Russell into his office. But negotiations ensued in the following days to arrange Kiesler's departure. Before an ax could fall, Kiesler agreed late last week to step down.

That much would have been a bad enough example of management meddling at the wrong levels, but the story continues. As curators were poised to accept Kiesler's resignation, Carnahan says publicly, "Wait a minute," and flies into an orgy of manipulation that would have made Rasputin blush. He pulls the plugs on the lame duck curator Dave Collins, whose term had expired and who was serving only until the governor named his replacement. Collins was prepared to accept the resignation. Then, with the blessing of retiring state Sen. Joe Moseley, who emerges as a co-conspirator Kiesler fan, Carnahan names as Collins' replace Hugh Stephenson, who apparently is willing to see Kiesler stay on.

With these exercises, Carnahan fulfills in spades his reputation for being more than willing to whisper, or even shout, in curators' ears about how they should run the university. So much for the institution's famous constitutional independence.

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Our bemused business majors can find all sorts of things wrong here. The issue of Kiesler's fitness for office is buried in a sea of arm twisting and out-of-order bulldozing by the governor. Russell is not even being allowed to appear to be in charge of this crucial matter.

The president not only should have appeared to be in charge, he should have been in charge. The alternative mismanagement spectacle is bad for the university, confirming an all-too-readily-held belief that politicians really run the place.

Let us pray that Russell emerges as the person who really is making the decision about the chancellor. If that facts does not become abundantly clear, credibly clear, the damage done to the university will be palpable. After all, who of any stature will want to be a president or chancellor if the University of Missouri is known everywhere as a place where top administrators are flicked away by a phone call from the governor.