April 5, 2007
 
EDITORIAL: Garrison's Big Slip
 
Throughout a process that has been filled with political chicanery and some significant fighting amongst WVU alumni, the subject of all the fuss, WVU Presidential finalist Mike Garrison, has been calm.
 
No doubt Garrison has had confidence that his handlers on the WVU Search Committee will shield him at least enough to get through the gauntlet.
 
But a significant error appears to have been made by Garrison, perhaps throwing the entire WVU Presidential Search into ruins. When Federal Judge Robert King suggested that a whole new search may be in order, perhaps facts like the following blunder were on his mind.
 
Garrison, until very lately, was the Chairman of the state's Higher Education Policy Commission. This is the most powerful higher education committee in West Virginia, one which oversees all four-year public colleges and universities in the state. The WVU Search Committee would have to be sensitive to the desires of the Higher Education Policy Commission, as the latter group ultimately must approve the decision made by the WVU Search Committee.
 
Up to this point, all one can say is that it would be reasonable to assume that Garrison would have a likely edge out of all this. Garrison has probably managed to befriend his colleagues on the Higher Education Policy Commission. So while this certainly reeks of insider power politics, as long as Garrison is not on this commission when the selection for President is made, all is technically all right.
 
But wait a minute. If Garrison had wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety, why didn't he resign as Chair of the Higher Education Policy Commission at the beginning of the process, when he first applied for the position? Probably because he loathed the idea of giving up any power before he deemed it absolutely necessary.
 
But most revealing of all, how did Garrison know to resign from the Higher Education Policy Commission exactly one day before he was named as a finalist? He certainly appears to have had advance word from someone in a position to know who the finalists were, and that could only be a member of the Search Committee.
 
As WVU Presidential Search Committee Chair, attorney Steve Goodwin made the formal announcement regarding the three candidates who made it as finalists. Did he or someone else on the Committee give a heads-up to Garrison before anyone else knew the results, so that Garrison could depart from the Higher Education Policy Commission just in time to avoid an obvious conflict of interest?
 
Goodwin has been publicly jeered by WVU faculty when he recently called this chaotic mess of a search a "valid, open, and conspicuous process."
 
If the process has been truly open and fair to all of the applicants for the job, then surely Goodwin can explain how Mike Garrison got tipped off just in time to resign from one powerful public post to look ethically pure as a finalist for the WVU Presidency.
 
The fact is, Goodwin can't even begin to explain this. Whether he realizes it or not, his credibility and that of the search committee he leads is in tatters. WVU alumni, faculty, and staff should be seriously worried about the image of their otherwise fine institution. Judge Robert King knows this and as a distinguished alumnus has sent out the alarm.
 
This is not the way a top-flight research university chooses its top leader.
 
This is the way a bumbling Jackson County Democratic family appoints one of their own.