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OSU’s jock-sniffing Pres F. King Alexander gets called before trustees to explain cover-up of the usual athletic assaults at LSU

Public meeting notice for 12:30 Wed here.

The OSU Trustees hired Alexander last year, after a closed search by Witt/Kieffer search consultants. At LSU Alexander’s accomplishments included a $85M “lazy river” and firing a professor for cussing. But these weren’t his only problems. Former Daily Emerald reporter Kenny Jacoby, now working for USA Today, uncovered Alexander’s role in covering up the usual sorts of big-time sports scandals that presidents of sports factories get paid the big bucks to cover up. USAToday has a summary here:

… Alexander has come under increasingly heavy criticism since the March 5 release of the Husch Blackwell report, which detailed LSU’s “serious institutional failure” when it came to handling cases of physical and gender violence. Husch Blackwell is the outside law firm LSU hired in November to review its handling of Title IX cases after USA TODAY chronicled systemic failures.

Among Husch Blackwell’s revelations was that then-athletic director Joe Alleva urged Alexander to fire head football coach Les Miles in 2013 after another internal investigation found Miles had behaved inappropriately with female student workers, and that LSU had intentionally hired an outside law firm to do the investigation so the report wouldn’t be made public.

Miles was not fired until 2016, after LSU started the season 2-2. The 2013 investigation did not come to light until last month, after USA TODAY sued for a copy of the report.

No word yet if OSU will ask Witt/Kieffer search consultants, Zachary A. Smith, Ph.D., Suzanne Teer and Kim Brettschneider for their money back, as the UNC system did when it also banned its schools from hiring Witt Kieffer for searches, after they failed to do due diligence on a chancellor hire.

Of course it’s equally possible that during the hiring process Pres Alexander bragged about his ability to keep these sorts of scandals private – as UO General Counsel Kevin Reed did – and the trustees saw it as a positive.

10 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Gangsta 03/16/2021

    effin’ A! He made LSU famous with the notorious Lazy River. What is OSU going to do now, fire him? At least he has generated some good bad publicity — so unlike UO with Gottfredson! I do have to admit, though, Lariviere “The Hat” was good!

  2. Fishwrapper 03/17/2021

    Watching the F.King president answer questions put to him by the OSU board, I keep hearing a grown man say “it’s not my fault” at an alarmingly 7-year-old-like frequency…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImyGrsXoY3Y

    • uomatters Post author | 03/17/2021

      Yeah, I’m impressed by the seriousness of your Board’s questions though. You’d never see this from the UO Board. Bottom line is he knew about Les Miles and kept his mouth shut.

      • Fishwrapper 03/17/2021

        It seemed to me their questions were of the laying-the-groundwork variety… They have been in executive session for an extra hour now. I can’t imagine longer is better for the F.King president.

  3. Fishwrapper 03/17/2021

    Can kicked down road. King gets time – till June 1 – to wipe his nose.

  4. Fire the boards 03/17/2021

    Time to repeal the law that set up these bogus servile boards that make university presidents unaccountable and non-transparent, but richer and richer.

  5. GoosesGAnder 03/18/2021

    I assume this is why UO tries to keep Athletics so separate from the rest of campus. When a huge scandal breaks, it would look very bad if all departments benefit from the sex-assault slave dollars generated from Athletics.

  6. Fishwrapper 03/19/2021

    You can’t buy this kind of quality PR: His New Job on the Line, This President Unleashed a Scorched-Earth Critique of His Old Campus

    Oregon State’s Board of Trustees, questioning the conduct of Alexander at Louisiana State, voted on Wednesday to put him on probation as president through June 1. But not before Alexander, in a meeting of the trustees where his presidency appeared to be on the line, publicly slammed Louisiana State, suggesting that some of the most disparaging stereotypes that often get attached to the big-time, Southern football schools are, in LSU’s case, all too accurate.

  7. Fishwrapper 03/20/2021

    I wonder if, after seeing the Faculty Senate overwhelming vote “No Confidence” with motions for resignations of not just the F.King president, but also the Board who hired him, some on the Board of Trustees are having second thoughts about last week’s vote for a F.King wrist slap?

    “The Oregon State University Board of Trustees will meet on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, from 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. in public session to discuss and consider action regarding President
    Alexander’s leadership.

    “As part of the agenda, the board may hold an executive session…to consider the dismissal or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against, a public officer…”

    Public Meeting Notice

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