Faculty and students filed an injunction Friday, Oct. 28, requesting a court to impose a temporary restraining order against Sam Olens, who is the next president of Kennesaw State University effective Nov. 1.
Sixteen people signed on as plaintiffs in a motion for the restraining order. According to attorney Stephen Humphreys, the restraining order is the first step in a longer process.
“[It] would stop Sam Olens from becoming president of Kennesaw State on Tuesday and put that on hold until there can be an evidentiary hearing on our request for a permanent injunction to stop that appointment,” Humphreys said.
The language of the motion claims that Olens is getting the position “without academic qualifications, without input or participation from the KSU community in the decision, [and] without consideration of other qualified candidates available even without a national search.”
Olens, in his position as the state’s attorney, chose not to prosecute cases of corruption and other offenses at universities in Georgia. This includes the accusations against Gary Coltek, former food services director at KSU.
“That’s one of our beefs with the attorney general,” Humphreys said. “Instead of investigating and prosecuting the financial wrongdoing, he’s actually been defending it. Some other schools have admitted that there was financial wrongdoing.”
Dr. Susan Raines, a professor of conflict management, explained that there are plenty of other reasons that faculty are seeking legal action.
“The main grounds are perceived conflict of interest between some of the things he did or didn’t do when he was attorney general,” Raines said.
Leonard Witt, a professor of communication, points to the fact that faculty members who applied for the position of KSU’s president were overlooked in the process. Faculty have already filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to address this issue.
“Do we want to hire him and maybe have to put up with these things three or four or five months later in the year?” Witt asked. “Or is there a woman or a person of color or an academic or anyone else who is more qualified than him?”
The defendants in the lawsuit include Sam Olens, the Board of Regents, Chancellor Hank Huckaby, interim KSU President Houston Davis, and Gov. Nathan Deal. The case against the governor is based on the idea of quid pro quo.
“Did the governor have a hand in moving Olens out of his job to here, rewarding Olens with the job so that Chris Carr can come in?” Witt said, referring to Deal’s appointment of Carr as Olens’ replacement. “To me, that’s the most egregious thing if that’s the case.”
Notices of the motion were sent to the defendants Friday, but Raines was unsure as to whether or not the restraining order would be imposed by Olens’ start date on Nov. 1.
“It’s worth a shot,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t go through before Tuesday, the good news is the case doesn’t die, and when it gets heard, then a decision will be made about it.”
In the meantime, faculty and students have planned a protest on The Green from noon to 1 p.m. on Olens’ first day in office, Nov. 1. Students are also reportedly staging an “Occupy KSU” movement in which protesters will camp out on The Green until Olens is no longer in office.
Those interested in supporting the cause can also donate money to help pay for legal fees.
“If we’d had the money to get this going a while back, we’d have been done by now probably,” Raines said. “People can go into SunTrust Bank and make a deposit toward these legal fees.”
Anyone can deposit money into the Cobb SCLC Freedom and Justice Fund at any SunTrust Bank location. The routing number is 061000104 and the account number is 1000195208722.
For more information, people are encouraged to contact Raines at sraines@kennesaw.edu.
More pathetic students and teachers whining…oh there’s a surprise.
Do you know what the phrase “equal opportunity employer” means Mr. Roberts? Look up the rules ostensibly followed by the Georgia Board of Regents. They purport to follow these rules but obviously ignore them at their whims. The phrase means anyone and everyone must be considered for any position of employment. This law was not followed in this and many other instances with the corrupt Board of Regents. How would you like to be treated in this shabby and unfair and illegal way if you wanted to apply for the position of President of KSU? Only an insider crony like Attorney General Lawyer Sam Olens was considered for this job. This is unethical, illegal , unfair and sickening to every good citizen and taxpayer of Georgia. Winfield J. Abbe, Ph.D., Physics, Athens, Georgia
So what you are claiming is that this guy shouldn’t have been considered for the position because he is white? Insinuating he was only chosen because he is white rather than his capabilities to run a BUSINESS. EoE does not mean “anyone and everyone” has to be considered for a position, it simply means they can not discriminate. Recruiting a CEO or replacing a CEO without interviews is not uncommon in business…but I wouldn’t expect a physicist to know this. So congratulations, you managed to sound like a raciat while simultaneously calling the board of regents racist. I’ll be sure to follow your opinion much more closely now.
You do not know what you are talking about. The very article in the KSU Sentinel announcing the appointment of Sam Olens as KSU president admits the Board of Regents did in fact discriminate and considered only him for that position. And do you believe he is the “most qualified” person in the country for this position? He also has a conflict of interest in not only he is also a high level government employee, but also did secret work for the Board of Regents as well. This is all part of the Good Old Boy System of Georgia where it isn’t what you know but who you know that counts. He is also a lawyer. This position does not require a lawyer. We have too many lawyers now ruining our governments and country. Even some professors at KSU wanted to be considered for the position. Professor Anne Richards in English was one. I tried to put a link to a blog on TOPIX Atlanta on this subject but they would not allow it. You should be able to find it. But you appear to fail to understand the basic concepts of fairness, conflicts of interest and duty to show that the most qualified person was sought after with a national search, not just giving these plum jobs to local friends and cronies as has been done over and over again with the corrupt board of Regents in Georgia. Based on your ignorant comments I do not think any rational argument would change your biased and quite wrong opinions. “Is there a news blackout to protect embarrassment to the State of Georgia” is the approximate title of the blog. It also refers to another one “The Good Old Boy System of Hiring in Georgia”. You are free to believe anything you want Mr. Richards. If you want to continue to fool yourself that the Board of Regents is not a prejudiced group of appointed pals of governors, doing as they please, you are free to so believe. These lies are exactly what they want you to believe.
Its best you stick to knowledgebase, as business clearly is not in it. An ignorant article written for the ignorant mass of sheep that you have so proven. Its sad you people have to stoop to calling the entire board of regents racists and misogynists simply because they hired a white male. Ms Richards being a female and English professor does not mean she is qualified for running a business. Knowing her, I would say she is not qualified therefore I would not need to interview her. Just hypocrites being hypocrites.
I did not say she was qualified Mr. Roberts did I? This is what you do not understand. Regardless of how qualified she may or may not be she has the fundamental right to be considered for the position. However there is a mountain of evidence, even in the public arena that the candidate they chose for the position is patently not qualified. Many of the details are provided on my blog which you obviously did not read. What are your qualifications for evaluating the situation? From your ignorant comments you don’t demonstrate any. It is not enough for them to claim they considered her or anyone else; they must prove, with facts, that they did so. The world is a big place. The point is there are many many much more qualified persons in the country to be president of KSU but if you don’t look you don’t see. I also did not call the Board of Regents racists. But they are indeed a group of very prejudiced people operating outside of the federal law which is theoretically supposed to govern them, but so far, does not comply with that law. They also do not have the best interests of the citizens they purport to serve at heart because they did not make the effort to search out the top person in the country for this position; rather they “searched” only in their own tiny back yard with blinders on. They took the easy way out just as the Governor did in selecting his unqualified friend and crony to replace Sam Olens, another lawyer, and wasted no time in doing so. All this is why Georgia remains a backward State and continues to have a bad reputation throughout the country and world when it does not need to be so. Again you are free to believe anything you want or be fooled by anyone you want.
So you would still have a problem with him if he was Black?
By the way Mr. Roberts why do you ridicule “pathetic students and teachers” at KSU about this issue? Do you know where the law “equal opportunity employer” came from? Why it came from the United States Congress passing this law which then had to be signed by the President of the U.S. at the time to become one of the many laws which comprise the federal rules and regulations which take up a whole wall in any law library. You are ridiculing the wrong persons. The corrupt Georgia Board of Regents are the outlaws who refused to follow the law and should be punished for their gross misconduct but nothing happens to them. They basically do as they please and it is likely Attorney General Sam Olens told them, in secret of course, they could do as they please and ignore the federal law with impunity because no one or no authority would enforce the law on them; they are defacto above the law. All this confirms the wisdom of the late Howard Zinn, Ph.D. former professor of history at Boston University: “The jails are full of petty thieves but the grand thieves are running the country.”
I just posted a perfectly reasonable comment to the disparaging one below by Ryan Roberts against “whining students and teachers”, but it has already been removed by anonymous editors. This is a shameful disgrace for this sorry excuse of a newspaper.
That “Good Ole Boy” pick is from Miami, Florida… Narrative FAIL!