Posted on 03/14/2005 11:55:32 PM PST by ajolympian2004
By Kevin Vaughan And Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News March 15, 2005
The University of Colorado's governing Board of Regents has retained a $350-per-hour public relations consultant as they continue to deal with the fallout from a football recruiting scandal and the ongoing saga surrounding controversial professor Ward Churchill.
The regents signed the contract with Christopher Simpson, of Williamsburg, Va., on Feb. 28, just hours before a TV report aired based on a leaked copy of a grand jury report that criticized university leaders and raised allegations that female trainers were subjected to sexual harassment and sexual assault.
The contract called for Simpson to be paid $24,000 for an initial round of work, which included a workshop on marketing, communications and media issues for the regents and other university officials.
Any follow-up consulting work will be billed at $350 per hour, university spokesman Mike Hesse said. Simpson will be paid from the regents' budget, which is funded by the university. The elected board has nine members.
The decision to hire Simpson came as CU dealt with the fallout from a football recruiting scandal that spawned federal lawsuits, and with the criticisms of Churchill's writings. It came just before CU was hit with the critical grand jury report and, ultimately, the resignation of university President Betsy Hoffman.
"They just felt that with all that the university has been going through in the last year - again our goal is to get past this rough patch - the feeling was that, particularly somebody who has the expertise in the area of crisis communication in higher education, would be very helpful to us," Hesse said. "It's kind of a whole different monster."
Simpson, a former Washington Times reporter, was vice president of communications at Indiana University from 1994 to 2001. During his time there, he was the university's chief spokesman and the architect of its public relations efforts during the seven-month controversy that led to the ouster of men's basketball coach Bobby Knight.
Simpson said Monday he hopes to shift the focus of CU's image away from controversy and toward its efforts as a research institution.
"I think it's one of the better public research universities in the country, and for the last 12 to 15 months, what I have seen and heard nationally is not that positive side of CU," Simpson said. "It seems that everything you hear nationally about CU has been involving controversy.
"Where I am concerned, in the small amount of work we may be able to help them with, is how do we get back focused on the tremendous attributes of that institution?"
The decision to hire Simpson was reached without a formal board vote.
Regent Cindy Carlisle said Simpson's work with the board covered "pretty elementary kinds of things."
"But at the same time," she said, "the man speaks from a wealth of knowledge and background, and he seems to be quite good.
"I think if you were to ask anybody in the state of Colorado who's been paying attention lately whether or not the regents have communication problems, they'd probably say yes. Whether or not that can be fixed, externally, remains to be seen."
Regent Pat Hayes said that after the initial training session Simpson offered advice on a number of fronts, including on how to deal with Hoffman's resignation.
Asked if she felt the board got good advice, Hayes said, "absolutely."
In particular, he helped Hayes and board Chairman Jerry Rutledge prepare for the announcement that Hoffman would step down at the end of June.
"He helped us, Jerry and I, with the press conference that we did a week ago, and we're not people who are usually followed around by cameras and the press," she said. "How you deal with that, how you have a message, how you stay on message. He's really good."
The money being paid to Simpson is on top of a contract with local public relations firm GBSM, and in addition to the combined salaries of several people on the university's staff who handle public relations, including two associate vice presidents, Hesse and Ray Gomez. The two men are the chief spokesmen for CU, and each is paid a salary of $150,000 per year.
Details of CU's contract with
GBSM weren't available Monday.
State Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, said he wasn't surprised that CU went looking for some outside help.
"If you've ever seen an episode of Extreme Makeover, it's never cheap," Tupa said. "However, if this person . . . will provide CU the opportunity to put on a new face, I think it's money well spent. Let's hope he can do good work up there; obviously, CU's image has taken some hits as of late.
"Given some of the missteps CU has had recently and the damage to their image, if this gentlemen helps turn it around it will probably be the best bargain they've had all year. But that's a big if."
CU DRY UP AND BLOW AWAY BTTT
This is hilarious except to those paying tuition at CU.
What I heard today on KHOW during the Caplis and Silverman show is that former US Marine Corp vet Mike Feeley is in the running to become president of CU. Now that would shake up the halls of education in Boulder! Can CU students say "Semper Fi!". ;)
Serves 'em all right. That place has been a rats' nest of flaming hippiedom for a generation.
I do not know anything about him. He was just mentioned as a candidate and former Marine.
Wow, $350.00/hr to try to spin Ward Churchill from "Turd" to "Pillar of the Community" seems like a Herculean task.
Now that I think about it, wasn't Churchill washed out of the Augean Stables?
bttt
Sumsabitches! Their using up all the money that was supposed to go the mikey moron! How the heck are the gonna get all those liberal scumbags to speak at CU for $30.000 a pop if they use it for public relations. Oh wait I know how......raise tuition! My children will NEVER attend that whorehouse of a college.
these decision makers need some reality ...
they need to see how many people in the state of colorado earn the tax monies that they waste.
i'd volunteer for free to escort them out to a dairy farm, to a trucking firm, to a slaughter house, to flip burgers, to asphalt the roads they drive on, etc.
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