I heard on the news yesterday that the University of Maine's president, Robert Kennedy, was not going to be the new president of Kansas Sate -- a job he was a finalist for. Normally I wouldn't care about this, but right before Kennedy made it public that he was a finalist I had made arrangements with him for a feature story on his home for the April issue of Bangor Metro magazine. I quickly recinded the offer. Hey, if the guy is looking to move out of Maine I don't want to put him in the magazine.I looked online today for stories covering Kennedy's story and found some fishy information. The Maine Campus, UMaine's student newspaper, makes it very clear that Kennedy decided to withdraw his application at the last minute from KSU, choosing to remain at UMaine.
Kansas State has not made a choice between Kennedy and its other presidential candidate, Krik H. Schulz. Kennedy chose to withdraw his application, despite being a candidate.The Bangor Daily News reported the following:
Kennedy said for that reason and more he is pleased to be back in Orono about 24 hours after he said he made a decision to return to the University of Maine. The decision, he said, was made at the same time representatives of the Kansas Board of Regents, which governs six state universities, told him they were going in another direction in the president search.So AT THE VERY SAME TIME the search committee decided not to hire Kennedy and Kennedy decided, all of a sudden, that Maine was where he wanted to be.
“In the end they felt that the other candidate was a good fit for them, and at the same time Mary and I concluded we had the desire to stay in Maine, to see through a job we have started,” Kennedy said Wednesday afternoon. “It was an honor to be considered a finalist for [the president position].”
Right.
How very coincidental and politically correct for him.
I particularly liked this comment on the BDN website:
On 2/12/09 at 10:03 AM, augustagoverned wrote:
He's a very poor BS artist for being a university president. Evidently, he got where he is today by working hard because he certainly doesn't have any intelligence, if he thinks anyone will believe this tale.
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3 comments:
Ugh, it's amazing how he underestimates the public's intelligence...particularly when his employees are freaking professors!
so the question remains... will you count him back in on the article?
I made an editorial decision to move forward with my article sans Kennedy. It has a lot to do with timing. I needed to find people who weren't going anywhere to profile. I also felt that if Kennedy was serious about leaving Maine for a job in Kansas that our readers wouldn't appreciate having him profiled in our magazine.
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