Change UofSC Board of Trustees now and preserve integrity of state’s flagship school
Make UofSC changes now
It would appear with the two recent flawed University of South Carolina (UofSC) Board of Trustees’ presidential searches that the current board is incapable of conducting a presidential search.
We are all aware of how the Caslen hire turned out, but, by the luck of the draw, our incoming president, Dr. Michael Amiridis, seems an excellent fit and is well-qualified.
(1) The current Board is too large - 21 members on any board is too many.
(2) As seen with the Caslen hire, the governor should not be an ex-officio member. As the SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) executive pointed out: When the governor is on the board, it is hard to distinguish intentions to influence the Board from conversations that are supposedly just informational.
(3)This restructuring should also include eliminating the state superintendent of education.
(4) The board has too many members who have been serving since the 1980s. Term limits?
It appears our S.C. Legislature does not hesitate to deal with issues like abortion which should be determined by individual women and their physicians. Why not now deal with an issue that should concern all South Carolinians – the future of our major flagship university?
Lois Lovelace Duke, Ph.D., Columbia
Representative court not new
Those on the right complain about President Biden’s promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court.
“He should just appoint the best candidate! There shouldn’t be promises beforehand.”
“The court is too important for affirmative action appointments.” Even “That’s racist!”
Ronald Reagan promised to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court in 1981, and Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in.
Prior to that, the court had consisted solely of white men, except for Thurgood Marshall in 1967. Donald Trump promised to appoint a woman in 2020, and gave us Amy Coney Barrett. Promising to make the court more representative of America’s demographics is nothing new.
There is no measure of “most qualified” when it comes to justices. It’s not like a batting average that can be quantified.
Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, being young and conservative, fit President Trump’s political agenda.
Complaints about promises to diversify the court and insinuating that “best candidate” and “Black woman” are mutually exclusive terms reveal hypocrisy, and perhaps something worse.
Danny Kuhn, Myrtle Beach
Slow down antitrust efforts
As a conservative in the social media age, I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about ‘big-tech.’ There are huge regulatory issues that need consideration, but with our globalized economy and China on our heels as we race to innovate, it is nearsighted to push antitrust legislation without giving deep thought to national security concerns of breaking up American tech companies.
Former Republican Senator and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats argues that U.S. tech companies are valuable partners for the intelligence community because of their ability to help counter global threats.
Recent antitrust legislation advancing in both the House and Senate aims to break up American companies like Amazon, Google or Facebook, opening the door for adversarial foreign companies to take the stage. Companies like TikTok have already taken my generation by storm and who knows what else, data-wise.
These antitrust bills are rushed, without careful deliberation from legislators, including our own South Carolina lawmakers.
I am not opposed to big-tech regulatory measures, but it is worth slowing down the process and taking into consideration the warnings from our national security and intelligence community to prevent unintentional negative consequences for South Carolina and the United States as a whole.
Willie Turral, St. Helena Island
Guns and weed
Imagine if state legislators would legislate as much regulation of guns as they are proposing for medical marijuana.
Dennis Malick, Hilton Head Island