Lucas Gebhart
Editor-in-Chief
When Charles ‘Chuck’ Wight withdrew his application to become ISU’s next president over the weekend, the Idaho State Board of Education lost who should have become ISU’s next president.
Wight was the clear favorite among most students, staff and faculty. But instead of potentially turning around an institution that resides in a town that doesn’t want to be a college town, deals with declining enrollment, has been rocked with scandals that detail embezzlement, sexual harassment and the mishandling of Middle Eastern students, Wight will now assume a presidential position at Salisbury University in Maryland instead of ISU.
A quick glance at each candidate’s resume would tell you that Wight was the guy. He was the only one of the remaining candidates who was already a university president, which alone should have been enough for the State Board of Education to pull the trigger when it had the chance.
I get it: there’s a process, but what happened over the weekend is a clear flaw of that process. The State Board of Education waited too long to decide and they lost their guy because of it.
If you know what the right choice is, why wait? If you know who the students, faculty and staff want, why wait? If you know one candidate is way more qualified than any of the other candidates, why wait? When you know what the right decision is, make it, so you don’t lose your guy.
President Arthur Vailas is set to retire on June 17. That’s a little more than three months away and ISU still doesn’t have its next president lined up even though Vailas announced his retirement in early August.
So now the State Board has two options: Laura Woodworth-Ney and Kevin Satterlee. Both interviewed for the job on Monday.
Woodworth-Ney is currently the executive vice president and provost at ISU and Satterlee is currently at Boise State serving as the chief operating officer, vice president and special counsel.
I think it’s pretty obvious to anybody who has spent enough time on the Pocatello campus, this being my third year, that ISU is in desperate need of a change in leadership. It’s for that reason that I say Satterlee has my endorsement. But I make this endorsement out of frustration because the top guy, the guy who should have been picked, was a victim of the waiting game.
ISU can’t afford to have an in-house hire. It can’t afford to hire somebody who has been subjected to this accepted C-minus mediocrity this current administration has bestowed upon its students, faculty and staff.
I acknowledge that ISU has gotten “better” in the last decade or so, but that still doesn’t mean it’s good.
This school needs an outsider, a person who has new and fresh ideas on how to turn things around.
Madeleine Coles, former Co-Editor-in-Chief and News Editor for The Bengal, described ISU as a “university sitting directly on the edge of a cliff, inching closer and closer to imminent destruction each passing day.” I think she’s right. That’s why Woodworth-Ney is not the right choice in my opinion.
It’s time for a change. ISU needs it.
