New Senate committee looks to examine issues with USC presidential search

The committee's goal is to answer some questions about how the presidential process was carried out

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) —Three months after the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees voted in Robert Caslen as their next president, some lawmakers still have unanswered questions about the process.

Senate President Harvey Peeler (R-Cherokee County) recently announced the formation of a five-person, bipartisan committee to look into how the Board picked Caslen.

Senator Darrell Jackson (D-Richland County), who called for the committee to be created after several of his constituents came to him expressing concerns about the search, said his aim is not to remove Caslen from office.

Rather, Sen. Jackson said forming a committee is the only way some questions about the process could be answered.

“If you thought so highly of (President Caslen), why didn’t you select him the first time? Secondly, if you had a process that you were going back out, why didn’t you give the public some explanation as to why (the Board of Trustees) decided to end that search and go immediately with this person,” Jackson said.

The five-person committee, chaired by Sen. Greg Gregory (R-Lancaster County), will look into getting more answers as to how the process was carried out.

This comes after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) said there was a “significant accreditation-related issue” involving the university’s presidential process, and they would launch a formal review in December.

Some board members said Governor Henry McMaster encouraged them to hold a vote over the summer to vote on Caslen as the next president.

A spokesman with the University of South Carolina released a statement, saying: 

“The University of South Carolina and its Board of Trustees will continue to work with the Southern Association of Colleges and School (SACS) in its examination of the presidential search process. Our institution is committed to SACS’ Principles of Accreditation, good governance and continuous improvement. In that spirit, we have enlisted the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) to review our Board policies and practices. The Board will use the findings and recommendations from the AGB consulting team to strengthen board governance practices.”

Senator Katrina Shealy (R-Lexington County), one of the committee members, says accreditation should not be impacted by the Governor’s role, and that the committee won’t turn heads about how the Board chose their president.

“I think that this Committee is just to listen to the issues that other members of the board, or members of the staff or other Senators, the issues they had with the selection. We should just move on, we should let the president do his job, let the university thrive, and be the great university that it is,” Senator Shealy said.

Senators Dick Harpootlian (D-Richland County) and Tom Young (R-Aiken County) join Senators Jackson, Gregory, and Shealy to comprise the five-person committee.

Senator Jackson said this committee is “not a witch hunt” intended to go after President Caslen, but is in place to make sure future board searches don’t impact areas like accreditation.

“There is no agenda to get rid of the president. We might not all agree on what happened, but I think at the end of the day, we all agree that there are to be some explanation given to the general public about this process,” Senator Jackson said.

Senator Gregory says his goal is to have the committee meet at some point in November.