Credibility loss and politics mire UH in mediocrity

The University of Hawaii has become some Pacific version of California’s La Brea Tar Pits. Instead of wooly mammoths lumbering off to oblivion, here in Hawaii we have scores of plodding insiders hauling the spent carcass of the institution off to extinction.

This should be the big week for UH.

We could be celebrating that the battle over West Oahu has been decided. First pushed by former President Harlan Cleveland in 1969, Oahu finally has a legitimate second four-year campus. It could frame a new sense of hope for academic pursuit and competition.

Or we could be celebrating the first year of a new football team representing the Manoa campus, headed by Norm Chow, a coach with a national following.

Instead we have the UH President M.R.C. Greenwood’s ever-unraveling reality show over the future of Jim Donovan, who once was athletic director and now is going to be doing something for someone at some other part of the university for a little more than $200,000 a year.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s quote that "university politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small," comes to mind, regarding the mess that started with Donovan being tied to some scheme to host a Stevie Wonder concert that resulted in UH sending $200,000 off to someone and the money was never seen again.

Donovan’s attorney says his client was out of town when the money was wired and the politically popular AD had left instructions that nothing was to happen until the UH legal and financial team had approved the deal.

"Donovan was not in the State nor aware of the fact that the fiscal office had approved release of the money and sent it to an unknown Florida company, with which UH had no contractual relationship," wrote attorney David Simons, in a letter asking for Donovan’s job back.

Greenwood earlier this week had already said Donovan was to be replaced before the Stevie Wonder screw-up. That itself is curious because the person who was supposed to have supervision of the matter, Virginia Hinshaw, former Manoa chancellor, had repeatedly tried to get on the Board of Regents’ agenda a new contract for Donovan.

"I started last year trying for a 5-year renewal for Jim (addressed it many times to get it done but to no avail)," Hinshaw wrote in an email to colleagues earlier this week. "This year, I tried for a 3-yr. renewal up till I left but still no movement — very disappointing. Really sad to see the current situation."

Greenwood and the regents met behind closed doors for nearly eight hours Wednesday to discuss the matter, at the end of which Greenwood has scores of apologies but little new information, including any complete results of the UH investigation.

Given the lack of any of the documents gathered in the UH investigation, it seems obvious that most of the meeting was with lawyers trying to delay or stop the damage by covering up as much of the pertinent documents as possible.

Sometimes when leaders think they are battling a loss of face, they don’t realize that the struggle has already become a loss of credibility. The university and its regents appear headed in that direction.

Parts of the history of the University of Hawaii are the actions of leaders who felt the institution would be best served by their departure.

One of the university’s brightest presidents was Thomas Hamilton, who in 1967 resigned over what he considered to be a lack of support.

Later, Manoa Chancellor Wytze Gorter resigned in protest when regents went over his head to negotiate directly with the football coach.

It was Cleveland who used to describe his university as "five years away from greatness and holding."

Who today could measure how far we have slipped — and how many decades away we are.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.