Ole Miss leader declines to stay

Calls for change in governing structure

OXFORD, Miss. — University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones on Thursday ended two tumultuous weeks of maneuvering over his future by announcing he will step down when his contract expires in September rather than accept an offer that would have allowed him to stay at the Ole Miss helm through June 2017.

“I feel strongly, as do most of my advisers, that serving two years as a lame duck would make it difficult to recruit and retain key leaders and continue our momentum in private giving,” Jones told a throng of media and packed room of supporters in the university’s iconic Lyceum building.

Jones made it clear he isn’t retiring or resigning, instead forcing the state Col-

lege Board to oust him at the end of his contract in the hopes of “encouraging a public conversation” over the governing structure of Mississippi’s public universities.

“I considered retiring,” said Jones, 66, who recently returned to his duties after chemotherapy for lymphoma. “It would have been easier to announce I’ve had a serious medical problem and retire, but that wasn’t in my heart.”

Jim Borsig, the state’s commissioner of higher education, said in a statement posted on the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) website Thursday that the board of trustees will now move forward with a search for a new chancellor.

College Board trustees told Jones last month that they would not keep him on past Sept. 14, when his contract runs out. They said Jones hasn’t done enough to improve financial and contracting management at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

The statement on the IHL website said a 2014 audit of the medical center found unauthorized expenditures and contracts, violations of board policy and procurement records not readily available to show compliance with state law.

“The lack of a timely resolution to how these concerns should be addressed led to the Board’s decision to seek new leadership,” the statement read.

The departure of Jones — a disappointment to student, faculty and prominent alumni such as John Grisham and Archie Manning who have rallied to his defense — seems almost certain to spark the conversation over governing structure that Jones wants. Two Republican state legislators from Oxford, Sen. Gray Tollison and Rep. Brad Mayo, attended Thursday’s announcement and said afterward there’s no doubt there will be legislative discussion about whether the governing structure needs to change to give Ole Miss and Mississippi’s other seven public universities more self control.

“I think we definitely need to look at the structure,” Mayo said “The (Institutions of Higher Learning) board has a difficult job overseeing eight disparate universities, so we need to look at how to revamp it.”

Tollison said there may need to be a structure in which each university has its own board of trustees under the umbrella of a larger organization.

Both legislators said, however, that it’s unlikely the issue would prompt a special session of the state Legislature, which just ended its term. “It’s something that would have to be changed constitutionally,” Tollison said, “so we need to take our time.”

Jones addressed reports of his need to apologize to College Board trustees for not being more responsive to their calls for changes at the medical center 150 miles south of the Oxford campus, hinting in his response at the acrimonious nature of discussions. “A forced apology isn’t much use to anybody,” said Jones, a physician who ran the medical center before replacing the retired Robert Khayat as chancellor in 2009. “Other aspects of their offer weren’t in the best interest of Ole Miss, so we never got very deep into discussions.”

Allen Coon, a 19-yearold freshman on the Oxford campus who attended Thursday’s announcement, summed up the feelings of many students and faculty who had hoped Jones would stay.

“We’re all very disappointed,” said Coon, of Petal, Mississippi. “I wouldn’t say we were expecting something would be worked out, but we were certainly hoping it would. I’ve seen the impact Dr. Jones has had, and it’s very disheartening to know he’s leaving.

“But I still love the University of Mississippi. It’s a troubled love, but it’s a love nonetheless.”