Googling Donald Shelton

And then, there’s “the judge.”

Donald Shelton has been mentioned around campus and on this blog for months and months as a possible candidate. Shelton has been mentioned/floated on EMUTalk.org as a candidate for the job of EMU President since at least late October 2007, Shelton alone was the subject of a late February AANews article speculating on candidates for the job, and it was the mysterious Alum (I honestly don’t know who this person is, by the way) who wrote this back on October 27, 2007:

Don Shelton will be your next President. Qualifications: Attorney, Circuit Court Judge, past EMU Regent, Democrat. The Regents don’t seem to be listening and are still pulling strings behind the scenes for very important hires at Eastern.

So, what does a Google search turn up on the man who is easily the best known and discussed candidate?

• Here are some links to some of Shelton’s publications. One of interest to me is “Equally Bad is Not Good: Allowing Title IX “Compliance” by the Elimination of Men’s Collegiate Sports.” Here’s the abstract: “Athletic participation is an important part of the educational process, instilling important lessons about discipline and teamwork. Title IX was intended to address the historic lack of opportunities for women and girls to participate in school athletics. Unfortunately, the current administrative interpretation of Title IX permits the elimination of male athletic opportunities as a means of complying with the statute’s equality standard. This result undermines the purpose of Title IX and the role of athletics in the educational process for all students.” Hmmm….
• Here is Shelton’s Ratemyprofessor.com page. The good news is that he is well-reviewed. The bad news is that there are only two reviews available.
• Shelton’s best known publication has to do with the CSI effect, a topic discussed here as it related to the hung-jury trial of Orange Taylor last year. Shelton’s research suggests that the CSI effect is a myth. This piece shows up in lots of places on the web.
• Last but not least, Shelton was a member of the EMU BoR (though I’m not exactly sure when), and rumor has it he was a candidate for the EMU President’s job during the search that brought us Fallon.

So there you have it: ironically, the candidate that we have heard the most about to date doesn’t have much out there about him on the ‘net.

Personally, my pre-visit take on Shelton remains the same as it was before: it sounds like he is a smart guy, a good teacher, a good colleague, a legal scholar, etc. Given the rumors and everything else, you’d have to say that he is the leading candidate before coming to campus. But Shelton is also someone who doesn’t have any hands-on experience in academic administration, I don’t see what sort of connections he has with Lansing, and as the “insider” candidate, he might be just a little too close to the old-school/old-boy members of the BoR.

I guess we’ll see if previous predictions come true.