I hate that people are making this about politics. Once he hit the ground most of us stopped caring about his politics. We wanted him to kick ass and take names and we hoped that maybe he could actually play the political game with desantis to ufs advantage. he kind of did that last part, but like I’ve said from day 1, the guy was in over his head, was a piss poor communicator, and never communicated any kind of strategic vision. And while he was there central admin was an effing clown show. I have friends working there and central admin is literally on fire. Fuchs has already started cleaning house a bunch of the sasse appointments have already been let go.
Word on the street is that this stuff is great and peaty/smoky. I'd try it in a pub and if you can score a bottle for less than it runs over here, might pick one up.
When a politician is appointed to lead a university and a governor puts his thumb on academia how can it NOT be about politics??? His very selection was political. It’s great that Fuchs is cleaning the mess up in his interim role to the extent he can, but I wonder if he’s ruffling some political feathers by doing that?
The day our collective heads explode? I am reminded of someone’s observation that to anticipate the decision of any large organization you must first assume the organization is controlled by a cabal of its worst enemies.
I'm attacking the timing. If someone knows this information and sits on it, they are no better than the person doing it. If you are working for the school newspaper, walk over and ask them directly, and if they don't respond, then write about it constantly until they do. They waited until the guy leaves before writing this. It's crap. What happens if he didn't resign? Were they going to let that story sit until when? UF knew about the payments because they have too. Park yourself in front of Criser until you get answers if it's important. The timing and way it was written tells be it isn't serious and it's grievance vomit on paper. If it was truely a story, it would have been one a year or more ago.
They likely were waiting on public records requests. You can't just write a story based on nothing. I can empathize with them, as UF has been sitting on my PRRs for months. If UF is stalling PRRs, I guarantee they're not handing that information out to students just because they asked in person.
Not only did Sasse step down... Fuchs stepped back up. Was joking with my wife when he was tapped for interim, the board's gonna take their sweet time about finding a replacement.
Stop. The piece is bitching about 17.3 mil over 17 mos. That's a fraction of what we paid muschamp to leave.
One other thing I want to say - is that under Fuchs, central admin was running lean - I'm not saying that's good or bad, it is just what it is. A bunch of consultants came in while Sasse was here and my friends shared info from some of the reports with me that weren't made public. They weren't made public because they were unpopular. They were unpopular because they said relative to other near peer universities and high ranking Ivy's, UF's central admin was like 50% smaller, and some cases, even smaller than that, and that we had not enough people doing too much work. Basically they said UF needed to hire a lot more admin staff. That is NEVER popular in higher ed - everyone complains about administrative bloat. But to be a top university, you have to offer lots of services and programs, etc. Kind of a spend money to make money thing. But no one likes talking about that business side of higher ed. My feeling is that this is what Sasse was trying to do - but as a politician, he made a pretty simple mistake. The optics of his hires were TERRIBLE. He hired all his former friends and colleagues. Now listen, I get it. He hired people he know and trusted and felt were really good. That's not crazy - the problem was all of them were Higher Ed Newbies, and he paid them HUGE salaries and then didn't make them move to Florida - so they were all working fully remote while he was simultaneously telling everyone in central he would prefer if they came back to the office. So yeah, bad optics. But the spending, in and of itself, isn't all that bad. He just did a piss poor job explaining himself.
I was pulling for the guy and defending him to let time render its verdict. Not liking the spending, nor the possible cronyism ( to the extent that it yielded bad results), but his enduring legacy to me, is and will remain, as the guy who took the right stance when the academic world went sideways woke stupid taking up for the Hamas terrorists AFTER they attacked Israel.... ....while Sasse had the sack (and common sense) to stand up for the Jews, especially our own, and boast of our largest in the nation Jewish contingent. The rest is minor, and will fade. He probably won't get a building named after him (Fuchs, prolly 2), but I think his legacy will be mostly benign and net positive--pretty much held serve - though not exactly legend. Jmho/fwiw.
ever think that maybe UF sat ont eh FOIA until he announced his resignation and the results of the FOIA were what pushed him out the door? sitting at Criser isn't going to speed up the FOIA timeline
bad part is Fuchs will likely not move on SS and BN even if this is another chitshow of a season. G'ville chamber of commerce going to lose their collective minds if attendance continues to decline
