The Chronicle‘s Matthew Tresaugue, who has done a good job covering Priscilla Slade’s spending scandal at TSU, reports that the embattled university president is taking her case to the public:
Priscilla Slade, Texas Southern University’s president, is waging a public campaign to defend her integrity, breaking a two-month silence with a series of interviews and an open letter this week before the school’s investigation into her spending concludes.
But the strategy puts Slade at odds with TSU’s governing board, which ordered her in February to remain mum during the inquiry.
“I almost don’t know how to comment,” J. Paul Johnson, the board’s chairman, said Wednesday. “It was my opinion that we would not try to air this thing in the media.”
The nine-member board is scheduled to meet May 5, but Johnson said the regents are considering the possibility of meeting before then to decide Slade’s future at the historically black institution.
The lack of institutional control of spending during Slade’s tenure — including her choice of someone once convicted of passing hot checks as her chief financial officer — should be reason enough to send her packing, but the latest acts of insubordination really leave the board little choice.
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