No way to treat people

This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports an instance of the sort of thing this blog has railed against: The Fix Was In. IHE refers to an article in South Carolina’s “The State,” which reports

In a move that's been called unprecedented, [U of South Carolina] canceled all bids to hire an architect for its new $90 million Moore School of Business so a donor could pick a design firm of her own choosing.

While no state spending rules were broken, four Columbia firms and their national partners spent months of labor and an estimated $100,000 each hoping to win the project before the school abruptly canceled the bids in a two-sentence memo sent April 2.

Instead, the business school's private foundation will pay an estimated $4 million or more to a New York firm chosen by the school's benefactor, Darla Moore.

Moore, a Lake City financier for whom the school is named, sits on the foundation board. The firm chosen, Raphael Vinoly Architects, was a finalist for the contract but was not going to win it, a source close to the bidding told The State newspaper.
. . .
"In the history of the AIA, it is a rare event that a project is advertised and that our members go though the process of trying to get shortlisted and to have that pulled from the public process," [Adrienne Montare, president of the South Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects] said "I'm not sure there is a precedent in the state."
. . .
She estimated the firms would have spent about $100,000 each preparing their proposals.

"It can be very, very expensive," she said. "And it's all done in hopes that you will be short-listed and the state procurement process will be adhered to."…. (continued)

This sort of thing—where good faith competitors, including the “winner,” are simply taken out of competition at end of the process—is rotten enough. But imagine a hiring process (say, for an administrator or faculty) in which the fix was in from the very beginning!

That's seriously rotten.

SOCCCD

Even when a dishonest process manages to hire the best X for the job, it's still dishonest; it's still a morale killer. Who wants to work at such a place, where good people are treated so foully? I'm not referring to the current SOCCCD Chancellor hiring process, though I am concerned about some potential hiring processes.

Reminder: a couple of months ago, the SOCCCD board decided to move forward with the Chancellor hire ASAP. Further, the President of the SOCCCD board of trustees offered strong reassurances that the Chancellor hiring process will be fair and professional. I am not aware of any reason to doubt those statements. Since then, the district has decided to hire a consulting firm and has done so. (They chose Community College Search Services.) The consultant no doubt will have some sort of presence or involvement even in the early stages of the process. How that will square with the district's Chancellor hiring policy (4011.6) remains to be seen.