news-record.com

Blue-and-gold parachute
It is not surprising that some at N.C. A&T are not happy with the severance package proposed for outgoing Chancellor Stanley Battle.

It is surprising that so few people are defending it.

Battle suddenly announced his resignation in February after less than two years on the job. He will step down effective June 30.

In a package approved by the UNC Board of Governors on Friday, he will receive:

-- “Research leave” from July 1 to Dec. 31.
-- His chancellor’s salary at the rate of $273,156 per year for the duration of that leave.
-- A tenured faculty position in A&T’s School of Sociology and Social Work when he returns, with a “normal salary for his discipline.”

The nature of the deal was hinted at in the official news release announcing Battle’s resignation for “family and personal reasons.”

The fourth sentence of that Feb. 24 release reads: “Battle, a tenured member of the N.C. A&T faculty, author and civic activist, assumed the role of A&T chancellor on July 1, 2007.”

It is not unusual for a former chancellor to step down to teach. But Battle is not stepping down after a long and successful tenure.

Also, Battle’s blue-and-gold parachute comes as A&T is cutting 66 positions, 42 of them faculty.

And as the university, like all UNC campuses, struggles to make budget cuts, he will be paid a chancellor’s salary that presumably would overlap with his successor’s tenure.

A&T would be paying two chancellor’s salaries for seven months.

Executives usually negotiate severance deals to provide some sense of job security. Battle’s is modest when compared to what those in the private sector typically get.

But the timing makes this a tougher pill for some Aggies to swallow.

Victory lap
The City Council has officially approved the city’s competitive swimming center and an ACC Hall of Champions to be located at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.

We firmly opposed public funding of the swim center, but voters said otherwise.

We also hoped downtown Greensboro had been a more serious suitor for both projects.

But each should be an asset to the city when completed.

And the coliseum can do both more cheaply and more efficiently.

For starters, the land there costs the city nothing. Try finding a free lot downtown.

In addition, the city is right to move ahead on these initiatives right now. Construction costs are cheaper in a down economy.

What better time to plant seeds for the future?

An e-mail exit
Good riddance.

Whether it was as former state Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Doug Fox claims, “time to surrender the helm,” or more likely because of a racist e-mail, he’s gone.

Gov. Bev Perdue asked for and got his resignation just hours after receiving a copy of a racist photo illustration sent from Fox’s e-mail address last November following the election of Barack Obama.

Shown was an altered photo of the White House south lawn as a watermelon patch with the caption, “There goes the neighborhood,” followed by, “How true.”

Somehow, those who would pull such stupid stunts must think either they won’t be held accountable for unacceptable behavior or that recipients will just laugh it off.

Not the governor, who issued a statement saying, “E-mails and images of this nature are offensive and unacceptable.”

Fox, who was paid $110,000 last year, offered to stay on to help a successor.

The governor wisely declined.