Arkansas Blog

Harding was Lu's partner in crime. When can he be booted off the UCA board?

Mr. Harding and the UCA Board, in total, can try to spin it anyway they want. And all the post-episode explaining and justifying in the world really won't change the fact for those who were paying attention that they handled it feebly from day one. It was only continued pressure from outside that even made the Board wake up and smell the coffee and even then they never really got it--not even close in my opinion. They (board members) should probably just stop talking about it because it just makes their take on it--pre and post resignation- all the more silly sounding. Please. Just stop it. Thank you.

More to the point: Go Obama Go. Please. Those evangelicals scare me so. Man, when you see them en masse tell me you don't get the willies a bit. So does the far far left (scare me) but not quite in the same way. Something about that look in their eyes.

Brummett's average guy got it right: From the outside looking in this nothing but good ol' boys/gals covering another's ass and rewarding bad behavior. Plus it does NOTHING to get at the crap that allowed such a situation to ferment. The same Board is left to bring in another Lu. (Perhaps...just perhaps Rush might have learned all the legal necessities of his position...stuff like hiring/firing within state law.)

They (the Board and its state enablers) toss our money around like it's a bottomless pool and they toss law-breaking around like it only applies to 'regular' folk. I'll take the 'shame of being caught' punishment plus a million bucks to real/legal punishment and the accompanying firing any day. But being 'regular' folk I'm gonna get fired for forging memos/handing out company resources through nepotism and the state is going to come after me for fraud if I lie to get state money I wasn't entitled to.

Hey, folks, remember this is just UCA.

Excerpted from NWA Morning News:

"What's the point: What's right about Lu Hardin getting a buyout from the University of Central Arkansas worth twice the controversial "bonus" he sought and gave back?

It's unclear what's going on inside the heads of five members of the University of Central Arkansas' board of trustees. What's clearly not there is any thought of rebuilding trust with the faculty, patrons and students at UCA.

...Kudos to the one trustee who saw the move for what it was. Michael Stanton of Greenbrier voiced the lone dissent for paying off Hardin. Stanton called it "business as usual" for UCA and lamented the lost opportunity to regain the trust of the school's faculty and students.

If that's business as usual at UCA, then the school needs a new model. And, apparently, some new trustees to go along with a new president."

It does sadden me that the board rewarded Hardin's unethical behavior. It further saddens me that he will receive monthly what many of the hardworking men and women on the UCA campus don't make annually.

It would be an honorable thing if the entire UCA Board of Trustees resigned.

I sincerely hope the search for the next UCA president is legitimate. S/he needs to have the full confidence of the faculty, staff, students and citizens of Arkansas.