Okay, just to recap a bit:
- Way back in late October/early November, Jerry Gemignani sent and I posted “An Open Letter Regarding the EMU Chief Government Relations Search,” which raised some serious questions about the process of hiring for this position. Many comments ensued.
- In mid-November, EMU had a press release I posted about here, “Eastern Michigan University selects finalists for Chief of Governmental and Community Relations.” Four finalist were initially announced, but two dropped out. Hey, that happens; anyway, we were all set to have interviews in early December.
- Then the powers that be move up the interviews to November 20, just a shy less than a week after they announced interviews in the process. It struck me as a little fishy, but okay, at least they were conducting interviews.
- I actually went to the faculty/staff/student session for these two candidates, and it was pretty clear to me that the best candidate for the job was Felicia Wasson. And someone who is in the know told me that this seemed to be the opinion of everyone involved.
- And now, rumor has it, the regents/president/powers that be have apparently decided to not hire either one. Perhaps that means that they (and by “they,” I don’t really know if I mean Martin or Wilbanks or who) will just hand-pick someone, which would of course invalidate the whole idea of doing a search in the first place.
I don’t know. On the one hand, I don’t feel like I have a huge stake in this process for all sorts of different reasons, but mostly because it is kind of above my pay grade. Freeman Hendrix wasn’t hired based on a search, right? On the other hand, if the BoR, President’s office, and this hypothetical government relations officer wants to create “buy in” from the EMU community, wouldn’t it make sense to have a legitimate search process?
