News has reached us that ILL is not the only state that has higher ed institutions which are sick at heart. Nor are the Hounds the only ones with a clout scandal in their midst. Now, the badgers do too.
A Wisconsin state senator is calling for an investigation by the attorney general for the political appointment of Jim Doyle's top aide by system president, Kevin Reilly, for the position of the UW system's chief operating officer. Michael Morgan will start with a approximately quarter-million dollar salary.
What Rep. Nass finds duplicitous was that Reilly never had a search committee, which Nass claims is required for any high level administrator for the UW. In addition to the suggestion that this was a political appointment, we gather by the implication in the AP story, that affirmative action laws were violated by circumventing a wider applicant pool in order to ensure an african american was hired.
We find the race issue unlikely (but certainly possible), and believe that if there was any hiring of Morgan done strictly on the basis of race, it was committed by Doyle when he had Morgan in his previous position. Rather this is more likely another example, as the Tribune puts it, clout going to colleges. Which is in of itself, quite scandalous, even minus the race matters.
Reilly has had damage control experience already. This was after it was revealed the UW Madison had hired 9/11 skeptic, and child-beater, Kevin Barrett.
Posted by Hound No. 6
