Posted on 01/11/2004 9:26:14 PM PST by I still care
Ex-regents say they coddled FAMU Education leaders acknowledge the historically black university used race to seek and receive special treatment, and the school is suffering for it.
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TALLAHASSEE - Any time a red flag was raised about a problem at Florida A&M University - and it happened a lot - there was a good chance race would become an issue.
FAMU administrators and supporters often complained that the historically black school was singled out for criticism. They invoked past inequities, broken promises and special needs.
Such arguments were understandable, but not in FAMU's best interests, say many of the two dozen state education leaders interviewed by the St. Petersburg Times, most of whom are white. Some think the focus on race is a reason the school is still careening from one financial mess to another.
Several members of the former state Board of Regents now acknowledge they sometimes took it easier on FAMU, or granted requests not available to other schools, in part because they had become wary of the emphasis on race.
Much of that dynamic, they say, took root during the long tenure of former FAMU president Frederick Humphries, who often used race as a lobbying tool or let alumni and legislators do it for him.
"Other schools wouldn't have gotten away with this," said Steve Uhlfelder, a former regent from Tallahassee and current member of the group's successor, the Board of Governors. "It was as much our fault as his fault. You could only take so many body blows from the guy."
Many of the former regents are reluctant to criticize a man still considered an icon. Humphries has been widely praised for raising FAMU's national profile and for recruiting top students.
But his 16-year reign, which ended in 2001, was riddled with fiscal and management problems.
An FBI investigation of the FAMU financial aid office led to criminal convictions. The school at times failed to pay teachers or graduate assistants. There were late reports, poor accounting and problems with the spending of federal grant money.
"We were not held, in my opinion, to the same kind of rigorous standards as the other universities," said James Corbin, chairman of the FAMU Board of Trustees and one of the few African-Americans to serve on the Board of Regents.
The school's most recent problem, which involved late financial records and $1.8-million that was unaccounted for, may yet topple FAMU president Fred Gainous, Humphries' embattled successor. It already has brought the school national embarrassment.
Humphries, who now leads a Washington organization that supports historically black schools, declined to comment for this article. But he has said in previous interviews that he is not responsible for the school's latest problems. He also said he didn't push for anything that FAMU didn't deserve.
But it was the way he pushed that raised eyebrows.
"He didn't say "black.' But that's what he meant," said Hank Watson of Fort Lauderdale, a regent for eight years. "He knew how to work the system."
Despite the school's many problems, Humphries' reputation never suffered. Some regents said they didn't want to come down hard on him - at least in public - for fear of a backlash. They would instead ask the university system chancellor to speak to him privately. Or they would dispatch state employees to help the school.
"There were times we had uncomfortable conversations, and we backed off," said Carolyn Roberts, a former regent from Ocala who is now chairwoman of the Board of Governors.
State Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, a FAMU graduate and Humphries' friend, said the former president invoked race only when he thought it would help the school get a fair shake from the state.
"Instead of running from it, he came out and said what's wrong," said Lawson, an African-American. "The way people resolve racial issues is to talk about them. ... (But) if you're the Board of Regents, you don't want to hear it."
Cutting corners For much of its 117-year history, FAMU was a victim of legal segregation. The school received less attention than Florida's other universities and far less money.
Administration and classroom buildings were allowed to crumble. The library leaked. The final indignity came when the state closed FAMU's law school in 1968. About the same time, the state opened a new law school at Florida State University a few blocks away.
Humphries, a graduate of FAMU, changed all of that after he arrived on campus in 1985.
Enrollment more than doubled during his tenure, fueled by the millions of dollars in corporate scholarships he helped attract. The school received almost $90-million for building renovations and new construction. By the early 1990s, FAMU was educating many of the nation's brightest black students, competing with Harvard University every year to see who could enroll the most.
The crowning achievement came in 1997, when the school was named the nation's College of the Year by Time magazine and the Princeton Review. An eternal flame on campus still celebrates the designation.
In 2001, Humphries stunned the school and the state when he announced his resignation. The regents praised him mightily, describing his work as "miraculous."
They didn't mention the many corners he was allowed to cut.
Unlike the state's other university presidents, Humphries was allowed to create student scholarships with money that was supposed to attract faculty. He was allowed to take in a much higher percentage of out-of-state students - some years as high as 30 percent - while graduating the lowest percentage of those students in the state. And during part of his tenure, FAMU received the highest per-student funding in the university system.
Some higher education officials say FAMU got more because it needed more. But they also admit to concerns about perceptions, especially those of African-Americans. Those concerns preceded Humphries' arrival at FAMU.
"There was nothing overt, but it was always there," said E.T. York, who was the university system chancellor in the 1970s. "There was a degree of sensitivity about how to deal with FAMU because the race card could be blamed."
When the school had significant problems - as it did dozens of times in the past decade - Humphries and his administrators faced few consequences.
There were no penalties when the school failed to pay adjunct professors or graduate assistants several times over several years. And when the school hired an associate dean it later learned had been convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl, several regents had sharp words for Humphries, but then decided to convene a special committee.
The committee eventually declared the incident a "once in a lifetime" circumstance. Some members, however, wondered whether FAMU officials should have been more suspicious, since the dean had spent the previous three years working in a pharmacy, not a university.
Bill Tucker, the faculty union president at FAMU, said few problems got fixed when Humphries was president.
"I always felt it was wrong for the board to look the other way," said Tucker, an African-American. "I've always felt that they didn't deal with the issues going on here."
There were reasons for discretion. In 1988, for example, the regents publicly chastised Humphries for a poor athletic department audit. Alumni and faculty demanded an apology. They said the board was rude to Humphries and would never treat a white president that way.
"You may have problems. You may want things corrected, but you don't talk to him like he was a little boy," said FAMU graduate Carrie Meek, then a state senator from Miami who later became one of the first African-Americans from Florida elected to Congress since Reconstruction. "You don't let it be a demeaning thing."
Guilt complex Watson, the former regent, said Humphries was particularly skilled at feeding what he called the board's "guilt complex."
When the regents considered curbing the number of FAMU students who did not meet the state's minimum admission requirements, Humphries warned against doing anything that would reduce minority participation in higher education. When the regents asked for a review of FAMU's educational mission, he asked why the school was being singled out.
And when FAMU lobbied to have its law school restored after three decades, Humphries told the regents it was the least they could do. "This is a chance for the state to wipe out an onerous act, to rectify a wrong," he said.
That was classic Humphries, who often fought for FAMU's growth by reminding regents of the racial prejudice Florida leaders had inflicted on the school for decades.
"Fred Humphries comes out of a different era in which the black community did suffer," said Cecilia Bryant of Jacksonville, a regent from 1982 to 1989. "If you are him, maybe you always wonder if someone says no, you always wonder if it's because of race. ... Those who didn't come from that, they can't understand."
Humphries often worked through surrogates, influential alumni or black legislators such as Lawson and former state Sen. Betty Holzendorf of Jacksonville.
Lawson said Humphries repeatedly had to remind the regents about a federal Office of Civil Rights order that required the state to spend millions of extra dollars on programs and buildings at FAMU.
The regents understand the need for extra money, but some wondered when it would end.
"At what point do you say you're caught up?" Bryant asked.
Jon Moyle, a regent for a decade from West Palm Beach, said he was never offended by Humphries' tactics. Presidents, he said, were expected to lobby hard for their schools.
Betty Castor often spoke of the University of South Florida's urban mission. John Hitt stressed the University of Central Florida's close proximity to the Space Coast. Mitch Maidique emphasized Florida International University's predominantly Hispanic student body in Miami.
"He did what was necessary," said Cecil Keene of St. Petersburg, an African American who served as a regent from 1987 to 1993. "He brought it up, but I was never afraid of it. I wasn't going to be embarrassed about it."
Charles Reed, the university chancellor for much of Humphries' tenure, said Humphries never invoked race in any of their conversations. He said he wouldn't have allowed it.
"I would have kicked Fred's a-- till his nose bled, and Fred knew that," said Reed, now a university chancellor in California.
Adam Herbert, the state's first African-American chancellor and Reed's successor, had a different experience.
Soon after taking over, Herbert announced a plan to place each of the state's universities into a category suitable to its size, status and mission. He put FAMU in the "comprehensive" category, a designation that placed it among the state's smallest and newest schools.
Many FAMU supporters called the plan racist and accused Herbert of being insensitive to the effects of segregation. Students took to the streets in protest. Some said the plan was really designed to protect predominantly white FSU by limiting FAMU's growth.
Humphries was conspicuously quiet during much of the clamor. When asked whether he thought there was any validity to the FSU theory, he said he didn't know. But he said he would be interested in finding out.
Herbert declined to be interviewed for this story. In the end, he agreed to reclassify FAMU as a "comprehensive/doctoral" institution.
The category was created especially for the school, which had it all to its own.
Crisis mode FAMU made national headlines in November after the Times reported its latest financial mess, which came to light after the school missed the deadline to turn in annual financial statements accounting for more than $100-million of taxpayer money spent last year. Without those reports, Florida's bond and credit ratings were in jeopardy.
State officials refused to issue paychecks to 19 top FAMU administrators until the school turned over the records. It complied - six weeks late - but its books were still out of balance by $1.8-million. That money was finally accounted for last month.
Gainous, Humphries' successor and a FAMU alumnus, said he is working to solve the problems. But it will take time to turn around, he said. Meanwhile, his job remains in jeopardy, and the criticism keeps coming.
Just last week, state Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa, grew frustrated when questioning Gainous at a Senate education appropriations committee meeting.
"To have people continuously say FAMU can't do things because it is a predominantly black university is a bunch of bull," said Miller, the committee's only black member. "FAMU will have standards, and those standards will have to be in place just like any other university."
- Staff writer Lucy Morgan and researchers Kitty Bennett and Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
Problems at FAMU Here is a partial list of the financial and administrative problems that have dogged Florida A&M University in recent years:
1995: A state audit into FAMU's financial aid office shows missed deadlines, overpayments, reporting errors, mathematical miscalculations and trouble tracking the status of student borrowers.
1995: The school loses track of 22 campus cell phones, leaving them open for abuse.
1996-97: The administrator of a federal grant hires her live-in boyfriend to be the program's computer specialist. Despite a state report outlining the problem, he continues to work for the school and be paid by the grant.
1997: The state threatens to decertify the FAMU Boosters because the fundraising group fails to give audited financial statements to the state for two years.
1997: A number of adjunct professors go without pay for several weeks because the school has overspent its $1-million adjunct faculty budget by $500,000.
1997-1999: A state audit shows poor accounting methods and spending guidelines that cost the foundation $350,000. The report also raises questions about Humphries and other top administrators using money for Christmas gifts and jewelry.
1998: A number of graduate assistants are paid two or more weeks late.
1998: The FBI, U.S. Department of Education and Florida Department of Law Enforcement launch an investigation into missing money at the financial aid office.
1999: A number of adjunct professors go without pay for six weeks.
1999: A state audit shows the financial aid office awarded $300,000 more than was authorized by paying students who weren't qualified academically and by giving too much money to students who were qualified.
2000: Federal authorities arrest a financial aid officer charged with soliciting and accepting bribes from students in exchange for submitting fake records for extra aid. At least two other employees and 13 students are thought to be involved in the scheme, which dates to 1996.
2000: The school hires an associate dean, then learns he has been convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl in Texas. He resigns when it becomes public.
2001: FAMU's longtime education dean is charged with stealing $60,000.
2001: State auditors launch an investigation into why Humphries used most of the money in accounts for two $1-million chairs at the business school on student scholarships and not faculty.
2003: New FAMU president Fred Gainous fires the administrator of a federal grant after an internal inquiry uncovers questionable spending, including tens of thousands of dollars spent on trips for Humphries, who is working as a consultant.
2003: Gainous discovers Humphries' construction budgets since 1990 are off by more than $3-million. About $1.5-million is used to pay contractors who have not been paid in years.
- Sources: Interviews, inspector general reports, meeting minutes and Times archives. Compiled by staff writer Anita Kumar and researcher Kitty Bennett
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