ASU Students, Trustees React to New Chairman and Vice Chairman
Alabama State University is under new leadership tonight with two new trustees being sworn in at today’s board meeting and a new chairman and vice chairman getting elected for the board.
It didn’t get off to the best start. Friday afternoon’s board of trustees meeting at Alabama State University almost came to a halt when several members of the board did not want to adopt the agenda. But after a vote to move forward, that’s just what the trustees did.
Larry Thornton was elected chairman of the board while Locy Baker elected Vice Chair. Governor Robert Bentley, who attended the meeting, says he’s confident that both men will help improve the university’s dire financial situation.
“They will address it and we will get to the point where hopefully we’re in the black,” he says.
Chairman of the Faculty Senate Charlie Hardy once called for the resignations of former trustees Marvin Wiggins and Elton Dean. Now, he says the university is moving in the right direction but must make things right with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or SACS. ASU was placed on a six month warning period with SACS for failing to comply with accrediting standards back in June.
“I think we’re going to show credibility with SACS,” Hardy says. “We have a great team working on that to give good answers, true answers and to the sincerity of doing the right thing.”
And students at ASU say they’re looking forward to what’s ahead.
“It’s been exciting and yet depressing,” says Sharrod Campbell. “I think trustees Dean and Wiggins have done great things for the university but I guess the students feel it was time for a change and the university is going now into a new direction.”
“I believe that everything that was done today was done for the good of the university,” says Miss ASU Taylor Edwards. “I think the leaders that were elected are really going to push the university in a forward movement.”
