Bill Proctor: Thrasher’s proposal doesn’t include a penny for FAMU

A Tallahassee Democrat op-ed by Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor called attention to the fact that Sen. John Thrasher’s proposal to split the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering doesn’t include any new money to help FAMU build an independent program. FSU controls the money that pays for 36 members of the current college’s faculty and Thrasher hasn’t offered one cent for FAMU to conduct faculty replacement hiring for those positions.

If FAMU doesn’t receive the money to replace all of the FSU faculty members who leave during the split, then it might not be able to meet the Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) accreditation requirements for all of the current degree programs.

From Proctor’s op-ed:

Sen. John Thrasher declares his budget amendment to separate the FAMU/FSU College of Engineering would strengthen Florida State’s stride toward becoming a Top 25 public (taxpayer-supported) university.

Like Gov. George Wallace, why are Thrasher and the Senate, legislatively speaking, standing in the doorway of the College of Engineering and decreeing that FAMU students cannot come in? In effect, Thrasher and the senators want FAMU’s students to get out and stay out of engineering sciences at FSU. Does “pre-eminence” mean that students from a black school are not welcome to tag along and mess up the white members-only society?

People with ideas and power like Thrasher’s make one wonder how much more will be required from the black community to aid the goals and aspirations of the aesthetic nirvana of white pre-eminence. In Florida, Jim Crow’s continued existence is sustained through the life support of the Legislature.

To attain this supposed pre-eminent status would mean so much to Sen. Thrasher and those who, by any means necessary, support the Senate’s quest. Thrasher asked for millions more for FSU’s College of Engineering, but not one new penny to assist FAMU’s engineering program. This amendment passed by voice vote. Unequivocally, under Gov. Rick Scott’s rule, Florida is headed back to the separate-and-unequal days of Jim Crow.

Since the death of the Board of Regents governing Florida’s State University System, there has not been a unified push for diversity among the administrative, teaching and student ranks of Florida’s universities. In the 1990s, FSU was a leader in administrative and faculty diversity. But under the Board of Trustees format of independent governance, diversity is not a priority, except in athletics.

If this discriminatory amendment against black citizens is accepted by the Florida House of Representatives, then, it would be left up to Gov. Scott to exercise a line-item veto of this heinous measure.

Read the full op-ed here.

Editor's note: This post contains corrections made on April 20, 2014.