Arkansas Blog

Typical politician.

No questions or mention of the website that he apparently thinks his University staff are incapable of handling. In addition to ignoring the high price, the press should be ashamed for not at least asking why the UCA staff can't take care of its own website.

Listened to the interview. I normally would never take the time but I thought, ah, what the hell, see what he has to say. Lou speaks to the recent hiring and IMO, still doesn't get it. Not even close. Lame response to Ron Breeding's question. Breeding should've followed up, not let Lu leave it at that. He let Lu off easy.

Lu says it was a "rehire" as she worked for the University previously" and that she was top 25% of her law school class and 3.9 GPA at UCA as an undergrad. And that matters how Lu as to the bigger issue?

Not a "rehire" if she was an admissions officer pre law school and now you are hiring her post law school for a completely different position. Good try though. "Rehire" almost works as one of those slippery words that you go, "Hmm, oh, yeah, a rehire."

C'mon Lu. I feel for you man, you've had a tough couple of weeks but you just need to step up and and take these things head on.

I hate to beat a dead horse but it's not dead. You won't let it be dead because you keep it alive by not getting to the heart of it. Geez, address the real issue. State that the woman is qualified for this specific position and back it up with the goods and unequivocally state that you have no doubts, based upon her short but impressive legal experience directly related to the qualifications and responsibilities and duties of our newly created Associate General Counsel position. Speak about how her ability and her past experience, as in legal experience, makes her ideally suited to the job (suited now and not something she will grow into at 70k with no wider search) and in our opinion she was such a fit that we didn't feel a need to broaden the search. That's the deal Lu. It has to pass that test and with flying colors. Otherwise, all you did was hire the daughter of a Board Member. Not nefarious. Not horrible. Understandable even. But not acceptable because the bar is higher and for a good reason.

Needing someone right away is not an excuse either that can justify it. That just shows poor planning and is not an excuse. And maybe the reason you needed someone right away was partly your own doing. Keeping the one man UCA Legal Dept. a bit busy lately?

I hate to write this and thought about not but just feel like you have to speak to the issue, face it head on and if you don't well, it just stays out there until you do. You'd think you would've learned that the last few weeks.

Hell, she may be qualified. I hope she is. I hope she is and has a great career at UCA. But the larger point is important and so I'm throwing this out there and I think others will as well. The point is Lu, given all that surrounds this hire, you have to lay the specifics out there. Otherwise, again despite the best PR speak and spin you can attempt, no matter what you say, you just gave the job to the daughter of a Board Member. Doesn't pass the rehire test. Good try. Admirable try. But not going to work. Thats all you did and that's all that it will look like.

What tipped me to write this and hopefully keep the ball in play? Why do I give a shit anyway. Good question. I take it personally when you and other publicly accountable "leaders" put out statements that assume we're idiots. And I think when you don't address the real issue, and just kind of gloss over the very real issues, then that is what you do.

For the recrod, I think what you've done for UCA and by extension for Arkansas has been great. I think someone needed to stand up and say we're building a great school here, we're doing great things and attracting great students, and making people excited about the school and increasing admissions requirements, and making students proud to stand up and say they are UCA students and Alums. I've sen that happen on your watch. I applaud you for that. I'm on your side.

But you're losing me when you handle things like and the recent money issue so amateurishly, or maybe woodenly is a better way, when weighed against the position you are in. Just bad luck for you that in today's world, for better or worse, probably both, there are blogs out there. That sucks huh. I think you can salvage this hire, if it truly passes the smell test, maybe, but you won't if you don't face the real issues head on. It's not going to go away if your response on the interview above is your best shot at it. It won't go away because as I said, I'm on your side and and predisposed to giving you the benefit of the doubt and you haven't won me over on this.. imagine if it were someone who might not be so favorably disposed. And we all know that university president's always have someone looking over their shoulder keeping score. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

Good luck to you and the new UCA attorney. I hope it works out. Truly. But remember, perception is reality.

And not a single reporter to my knowledge has even asked the other universities whether or not they handle their web sites internally or outsource the work. The people deserve a press that asks questions even when one of their own is involved.

Yup, I heard the interview (kudos to Max) and Lu still doesn't get it...or perhaps he gets it too well. I particularly like how many times he mentioned her GPA and the word 'rehire.' From what he said about the hire being legal, I gather there's an 'emergency hire' exemption to those state hiring rules. But my little mind is having trouble imagining a state university having an emergency need for legal help. And now that we know (from last night's thread) that she's not the only connected relative who's been hired by UCA, I ain't buying what they're selling. It's nepotism...it's good-old-boy crap. I'll also bet there's a bunch more stink out there...

The hiring raises a couple of important issues:
- EEOC issues with the hiring
- The hiring sets a precedent for future positions
- The salary is 70k but what about bonuses LU? Maybe if she stays 6 months we can give her a raise and a 200k bonus. BTW she graduated with a 3.9.
Maybe this young lady can make a legal decision about her own job appointment as her first point of business there at the Center of Earning. Does UCA need this emergency legal help because the administration is out of control?

Also, did you catch D-G's front page article where Hardin said he was going to give the money back 2 weeks ago and then opted not to do so, and then he admitted this week that he underestimated the resulting media attention and disapproval from the UCA faculty. Luther "Let them eat cake" Hardin just doesn't get it.

Blogs are here to stay, with their influence growing in important ways, for better often, and for worse, sometimes IMO.

The tendency to pile on small, relatively minor infractions, resulting in a laundry list of grievances, can almost make one want to throw the baby (important issues) out with the bath water (the laundry list).

Heaping on every little perceived slight or imperfection under the sun, which I believe is starting to happen here, in a sense with the piling on of Website issues, other possible insider hires, when Lu did or didn't give the money back, etc., tend to take away form the real issues, the serious issues that actually do deserve scrutiny. No one, not even Mother Theresa, would withstand the never-ending scrutiny that goes on on in today's world of instantaneous griping, carping and yes, exposing of legitimate issues as well. And some of this, reminds of the Wild West, where the more trigger happy gunslingers would shoot first and worry about who or why they shot later.

Hell, I fully expect that Lu is going to be blamed for Global Warming here sometime today, and probably, IRAQ and the mortgage meltdown if it goes on a few more days. Next time my wife gets pissed at me I'm going to be tempted to see if I can pass off whatever I surely did on Lu.

I guess my point is there are issues, and there are ISSUES. Sure, maybe someone or a few are twisted over some little thing, just an example but sure, maybe, in a perfect world, the UCA website could've gone to another firm or been completed for less money. Anything can be second guessed. Where do you, where do we, individually and collectively, draw the line. I don't know. But you can't go looking under every rock and fling every little thing out there. Maybe that is counter-productive. I'm thinking it is.

Just throwing that out there. I think Lu deservedly took his lumps on the money thing and the hiring thing raises issues that I think deserve some clarity around. For important reasons. But the rest? I dunno. Just seems like you can throw too much shit at the wall and in doing so you can tend to trivialize the SHIT that needs to hit the fan before it just gets slopped up on the wall with all the other shit.

Not just with the Lu threads of past days. but in general I'm raising the issue in this, the brave new world of blogging as it continues to evolve and to find its footing as the amazing, legitimate, real-time, democratic, powerful conduit of information that it is.

And sure, how does one know what is trivial sometimes. And what seems trivial at first, may blossom into the real deal--an issue that deserves further scrutiny and needs to be brought out into the light of day. No easy answers.

But worth thinking about I think.

ARK. BLOG: Great comment.

Come to think of it, IABL1969, Lu does drive that big Ford Expedition across Donaghey Avenue from his home to his office, even though he could walk the short distance quicker. Does that carbon contribute to global warming? I guess it depends whether you are a Republican or Democrat.

"The tendency to pile on small, relatively minor infractions, resulting in a laundry list of grievances, can almost make one want to throw the baby (important issues) out with the bath water (the laundry list)."

Good point IABL, but by now if you're not sick of being cheated and lied to by everyone wearing a suit or a badge, they're something wrong with you. We should be over-sensitive, we should be ready to go for the throat every time we're lied to or cheated or treated like we're too stupid to see what's going on. It's the backside of Bush World and in my view, we're not angry and ugly enough. Notice.....nothing changes. The doubling of the price of gas has killed Wal-Mart's Low Low Prices. And instead of going after the crooks behind this fake energy crisis, we're told to walk and turn our air-conditioners off by well paid, well dressed people who've done neither in their lifetime.

They kill our kids for oil, they jack up the prices so all their buddies will get another billion, Congress can't get anyone to answer their subpoenas, our Democrats vote Republican, our elections aren't honest, our colleges are infested with profiteers, utility company = Mafia, we have USSR's health care if you can afford it, our jobs are leaving the country, our kids have no future..... How can anyone wonder why we're a might testy? If we weren't so damn lazy, they're be rioting in the streets of every town in America-AT&T!

So maybe we've been a tad hard on Lu, but the Jews weren't very nice to their Nazi prison guards at the end of 1945 either and for similar reasons we should be on the lookout for every lying, cheating son of a bitch in the world today! I'm sick of being used like a roll of toilet paper and then told I'm a whiner when I complain.

Our savings will be gone when my oldest graduates in the middle of next year and I have a 16 year old warming up in the bull pen. Where will we find the money to send her to college? How many Lu deals and Jumbotrons have doubled and tripled the price of going to college for every kid? Hell we may have to move to Eldorado and beg the Murphy's to send our kid to college. Or, I hear they're selling healthy kidneys for 16 grand in the Philippines.....so there's our out. If I give my 2 and die and wifey gives one....that should pay for a college education....don't you think?

The picture of Lu in today's DoG must have been taken just after he was told that in addition to having to return the $300K, no one --- absolutely no one --- will be trying to take him away from UCA after all this turmoil. The UCA board should be congratulated. They get to keep their $300K and Lu, as well. What a deal!

Great comment for apathy (Warwick?)

"But you can't go looking under every rock and fling every little thing out there."

Why not? Isn't that our job as citizens and taxpayers? Isn't that the job of the free press?

If a decision is not a bad decision then the decision makers have a responsibility to answer questions and explain their decisions. They work for us and every single thing they do should be questioned. If you think a university hiring an outside company for $145,000 to do what is normally done by university staff, then you are either apathetic or protecting someone.

If this ordeal will FINALLY get him out of UCA commercials (self promoting grandeur and all) I say good bye.

IABL --- I like your posts on this - both of them.
In response to the last regarding the blogs and balance I offer the following.
In a recent NYT op ed piece the author argued about the perverted way the Cheney Bush Administration has destroyed what we learned in elementary school about our representative democracy, who was ultimately in charge, and that the social contract underpinning it all had been irreparably damaged. The author suggested we build a new social contract and fast. I think the blogs, at least this one, reflects the frustration of years of public abuse by people in power. The values we learned in school have been subjugated to the vicissitudes of money, corruption and license. So when I see these actions by a person given a high public trust I get exercised not only for his breach of our social contract but for all the others as well over which I have almost no control except at the ballot box. And I think most of us here know the frustrations attendant at the ballot box recently. Another piece of this puzzle for me is the corporate media's inability to play their watchdog role. They have joined the other power elites in the quest for fame.
So IABL, reactions here may be a bit over the top in respect to Lu's issues, but, if we don't react to the continuing debasement of our social contract, who will? And if not now, when? [My apologies to Rabbi Hillel.]

Thanks to IABL1969 for the thoughtful post. However, I can't help but interpret it as an eloquent version of NIMBY. Maybe these UCA dustups aren't ISSUES in your backyard, IABL1969, but by god, they're ISSUES in mine.

I, for one, am glad that the AT is taking these ISSUES on and staying with them until people are shamed into doing the right thing. I'm getting slap worn out fighting the abuses I see each week at my university.

Let's say, as Arianna Huffington put forth on the role of Bloggers, describing them as citizen journalists, then I think that implies that the bar is higher than just throwing every little perceived slight out there. My apologies to journalists. I do not mean to imply that we bloggers practice blogging anywhere near the level that professional journalists, the good ones anyway, ply their profession.

Look, I said no easy answers to this and the website issue was handy, though I do think it is one of those issues that is easy to second guess but doesn't rise to the level of the University necessarily having to answer to it just because someone throws it out there.

I don't think the University or any entity or person who happens to be in the cross hairs of a bloggers sights, has to answer to every little thing just because some well meaning, self appointed, overly caffeinated, guardian of all that is right and just and ethical thinks they should.

Where do you draw the line? What is legit and what is out of bounds? Sometimes bloggers lose sight of the real world, the sometimes messy but acceptable way that things get done in that real world more often than not. There is a fine line between accepting the messy, sometimes awkward and even questionable way things get done in the world and demanding that everything be 100% pure. You have to leave some wiggle room and know where to ease up in my opinion. Sometimes you just gotta give the mulligan. If you call BS on every little thing the world would come to a complete stop,no one would do anything or want to even attempt to anything in the public eye, and often the private sphere as well.

There's BS and there's bs. Pick your spots. All of us. Otherwise blogging, us, the bloggers, are probably more often than not no thing more than a pack of foaming at-the-mouth, deluded, holier-than-thou, sometimes, but only sometimes, well meaning, angry, largely anonymous band of self-righteous blowhards. And I don't think that is what Arriana meant when she put the term citizen journalists as the bloggers role out there.

Look, many of us left leaning bloggers have a little Don Quixote in us. Many of us like to flail away at windmills and save the world and right the injustices. But we have to be practical to some extent. Not to every extent and it doesn't mean rolling over. It just means picking your spots and actually realizing that just because something is messy and not pure as the driven snow that is may just actually be OK to have gone down that way.

Let the blogger beware. Or maybe better: Let the blogger be aware. And yes agree, when in doubt, get the issue out there. By all means we should err on the side of shining light on those things that may need it. But we need to strive to strike the proper balance.

To me, blogs, the good ones, those with a following, are the equivalent of what was once the role, way back when, of the town square. It is a shared communal space, with many purposes, many of them lofty and important and vital And I do believe they will exert much pressure and leverage on the world in ways large and small for the foreseeable future. I love them. I love them because they have upended the balance of power and put an enormous amount of power back in the hands of the people at the grassroots level. It's awesome and amazing and it will cause great things to happen. Blogging, has and will cause the powerful and the rapaciously greedy and corrupt to fall where needed and it will bring to the fore others--too often powerless or without a voice-- that deserve to be heard but would've never had their chance when media was held in the hands of a few. It is perhaps, to me anyway, one of the seminal developments in our world and its impact will be huge.

That being said I just think that we have to stand back form it once in a while and examine it, see how use it and just ask if perhaps we might also, in our zeal, sometimes misuse it, or even abuse it.

Sometimes good to take a step back and take it in.

Oh please...I'll not shed any tears over picked on Lu/Rush/UCA. In my experience when something like this comes to the publics' attention, it's not an isolated incident...it's just THE incident that got everyone's attention. And, for every 'nitpicking' story that bloggers toss around, there are hundreds, thousands that escape public scrutiny. So god bless blogs and citizen journalists everywhere. Sheesh....I'm tired of the excuses.

There are many wrongs committed by our public officials and most of em never make the light of day. And yet every time one of em is caught being a crook and/or an incompetent administrator, it's all about all the good work they've done and how people/the media are nitpicking. There's a reason we start looking for more crap when your crap comes to our attention...just like cops look closer when you have a record. If I get caught cheating on my taxes or speeding 100 down a city road, the police/IRS don't give a damn about my long list of outstanding endeavors or whether I think they're picking on me.

Again...GOD BLESS BLOGGERS and Lu/Rush/every other politician deserve all the scrutiny we can send their way.

Amen Zelda!

I'm so sick of those who try to make excuses for the EVIL DOERS!!!