PRESS RELEASE - For Release Monday, December 15, 2007
For More Information, contact:
Susan Rayner Puckett, President,
The Mississippi University for Women Alumnae Association
(601) 209-7573, susanpuckett1@bellsouth.net
MUWAeA Stymied In Its Continuing Efforts To Resolve Conflict Wwith MUW President
The MUW Alumnae Association has made "Herculean efforts to work closely with the university administration," said Susan Puckett, President of MUWAeA. She noted that the Association has done everything it can to normalize relations between the association and the university. "We have not ceased in our attempts to make positive telephone and personal contact and to give assistance in all ways you would expect an alumni association and a university to work together."
Despite the Association's documented efforts, the IHL Board of Trustees on Dec. 13 filed a motion requesting a stay to stop the enforcement of Lowndes County Chancery Court Judge Dorothy Colom's Oct. 1 ruling that declared the Mississippi University for Women Alumnae Association as the official organization to represent all MUW alumni. Claiming that "despite the Board's best efforts, negotiations with the leadership of the Alumnae Association have not been successful," the IHL spokesperson offered no explanation of what IHL's "best efforts" have been.
"Our members have been volunteering their technical expertise with the Alumni Office. We have alums working with the Foundation planning events to help raise funds for scholarships. We have alums working with the Admissions Office to plan mentoring workshops and represent the university at recruiting events. And we have offered extensive help with the 2008 Homecoming," Puckett said. "We are at a loss to understand what else the board thinks may designate cooperation from us."
In terms of specific legal issues, attorneys for the Association have consistently complied with university counsel's request for documents and have allowed his clients to make direct contact with leaders of the Association. According to Association attorneys, counsel has failed to reciprocate, not only failing to provide documents requested as far back as October, but also now demanding that no association representative speak directly with anyone on campus and that all communication be directed to him.
Rather than advancing efforts to negotiate, counsel's demand creates an unnecessary impediment to progress, seriously jeopardizes Association efforts to raise money for an endowed scholarship for the Foundation, and makes the Association's efforts to provide help and support for the university infinitely more difficult, if not impossible.
Betty Lou Jones, immediate past president of the Association, assessing the impact of what such a mandate means in practical everyday terms, said that even minute details must now receive counsel's attention. "This means that changes in the font size for invitations to the Lowndes County chapter's annual fund-raisingValentine's extravaganza must be handled by an attorney being paid with Mississippi taxpayers' dollars.
"It means that mentoring programs designed to provide current students with career advice from experts must be scheduled by a state-paid attorney; that alumnae who have been working with the recruiting office to increase enrollment will have to get their instructions from a state-paid attorney," Jones said.
Summing up the impact of the obstacles placed in the path of cooperation and normalization, Jones concluded, "It is a ridiculous waste of Mississippi taxpayers' dollars to pay an attorney to do the work of University personnel who are already being paid by the state. It is disingenuous to mandate an end to communication and request a stay based on their own failure to communicate and compromise."
Because the University and the IHL have perpetuated the legal conflict by appealing Judge Colom's ruling to the State Supreme Court, the taxpayers of Mississippi must continue to foot the bill. IHL and University attorneys are paid with state funds. The Association is represented by alumnae whose work is being performed on a pro bono basis.
"I don't know what they mean by 'their' best efforts have failed," said Puckett. "We have jumped through every hoop they have put before us and more. One would think that any university would be delighted to have such a dedicated and willing alumnae association. After all, alumni are any college's greatest asset and resource."