Presidential hopeful Burns Hargis is an attorney and newly resigned OSU regent.
Friends tell me faculty will oppose him — they want a president with an academic doctorate and experience.
I have known five OSU presidents. All had a Ph.D. and considerable academic experience. Robert Kamm and James Halligan contented themselves competing with the University of Central Oklahoma for student numbers. Lawrence Boger ignored athletic cheating. John Campbell and Dave Schmidly generated damaging controversy before resigning.
We won’t have a president whom Boone Pickens opposes. Pickens is passionately involved with OSU athletics. He and Athletic Director Mike Holder are confident that future athletic facilities will move OSU to the nation’s elite.
Pickens and Holder share the excitement, work well together and have each other’s confidence. We need a president who can do for education what Holder has done for athletics.
Pickens came to OSU academics long before athletics. Twenty-four years ago, back in Boger’s day, Pickens gave $1 million to build the T. Boone Pickens School of Geology. OSU administrators had no interest in academic excellence and no understanding of what an elite geology department might be. With no leadership, enthusiasm or vision, the T. Boone Pickens School of Geology languished. Boger, followed by Campbell, Halligan and Schmidly, delivered mediocrity. Pickens moved on.
OSU needs a president who, as Holder says, under-promises and over-delivers; inspires donors and regents with solid, mainstream academics, not fringe fluff; has stature in Oklahoma; and is able to communicate, not in empty platitudes, but with words that move.
OSU has enormous strengths. Our precious students dream of national and international achievements. We owe them our help. OSU has wonderful, dedicated faculty who, despite poor pay and dysfunctional administration, manage to inspire and nurture while individually achieving national and international stature.
We need a president who will give students a degree respected with the best, not a president who will yet again make OSU a laughingstock.
I’m not bothered Burns Hargis has no Ph.D. My questions are about how someone who could not accomplish anything as a regent expects to move OSU as president. I am ready to listen.
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