So is Gee really a fool? 5.8 million reasons he's not.
I've always wondered how a fool like Gee gets to where he is. But he's no fool -- what a golden parachute for being a dufus, albeit a dufus who raised a ton of dinero for tOSU.
This feels like payoff money -- like there's something in the closet, right. I mean, if you're Gee and working for a public university, and you did them wrong by opening your trap, would you say, hey, gimme millions? No, you'd be embarrassed and want to help the U recover from your dufus-ness, and just move on to some other institution of lesser repute* (*assuming there are any) and work another day. So what's with the huge payoff? What's he know he's not going to say now? Or am I a paranoid M man?
I'm disillusioned because tSOU gave Sweatervest hush money too. His buyout could be summarized thusly: "What's your price, Jim, for you to take the fall on Tatgate and let the program continue unabated... oh, that much... ok, here's a check for it." And it just feels like, Gee got the same deal, only with bigger numbers.
Or, truth be told, I'm actually like, wow where did I go wrong in life not to get Gee's gig.
You should probably retitle the thread as: "Gee maybe a fool, but Ohio's Trustees are absolute morons"
Can we stop assuming everything is a massive cover-up and pay-off just because it involves OSU?
It's my understanding that Gee was very well liked among students and alumni, and as you point out, he was hugely successful at fundraising. All-in-all, he's an obnoxious doofus, but one that was, by more than one metric, extremely good at his job. Yes, we all hate him. Yes, he said a lot of really dumb things. That doesn't necessarily mean he's being bought off or that the university is covering anything up.
All that said, $5.8 million is a fuck ton of money to give an outgoing president.
Honestly when you get right down to it, in terms of faculty development and research. Ohio State is a Tier 2 school as a whole. A high end one with lots of funding, but they're not Tier 1. tOSU is lucky that Gee's foot in mouth disease ensured him a short term stay at Brown, because the man fundraises like a Tier 1 president. I'm not surprised it took multiple screwups on his part to earn early retirement and that he's sitting on a very sweet contract.
We're a solid Tier 1 program and we lost Bollinger to the Ivy League and multiple people took a run at Mary Sue. I'm sure there were lots of other programs out there willing to deal with the occasional Gee faux pas in exchange for that kind of fundraising. I bet everytime someone took at a run at him he got another set of perks from tOSU, supposedly they were also paying a number of his personal expenses.
He said it, not me.
I don't think anyone was calling Gee a fool because he wasn't getting paid. It was entirely about his ability to properly represent an institution of higher learning. And if he thinks it's ok to say the things he said while being the primary representative of OSU, he's a fool.
Ohio didn't really want to fire Gee, they felt they had to. Just like they didn't want to fire Tressel, but felt they had to. So both of them got sweetheart deals to leave.
I missed his comments. Can someone link me to a good story on them?
Ohio State had him for the money he brought in, not for the leadership. That money went to funding some of the greatest research ever conducted by our civilization.
There's nothing wrong with paying him for bringing in the dough; why should he suffer now for their misguided belief that they could rule by council with just a moralless, glad-handing face guy in the presidential chair?
Gee is a lesson in leadership for every company or organization: it is tempting to put the guy with the best smile in the top chair and if you're on the board of directors it's easy to justify simply by taking away the ethically challenged man's ability to make ethical decisions. What guys like Gee (and Presidents and kings and CEOs and fraternity presidents I can name) do, however is rob the organization of its substance. An organization cannot exist for itself; it must have a purpose, a good it serves or provides. A leader is the only one who can set that purpose, whose job it is to say "this is who we are and what we do and for these reasons."
Gee was Ohio State's fault, not the other way around. You can say that it was because of him that Ohio State got so far out of hand, that its alumni and fans turned so far inward as to be impervious to embarrassment. However Gee was always who he was; he was the same thing at Brown and same thing at birth; it's Ohio State's board of trustees, the real power at that university, who made the face guy the face of their organization, and if the university is now reviled as the bad guys according to everyone but themselves, it's those trustees who shoulder the blame.
Ohio State has one of the best heart hospitals in the world and also one of the best cancer research programs in the world. Both significantly improved under Gee.
In addition to the medical comment about, tOSU is also an extremely well funded top end Tier 2 program overall. They hire in a steady stream of recent Michigan PhDs who launch their career and research project based on the support tOSU can provide. Lots of talented PhDs who couldn't get a Tier 1 job for whatever reason (lack of jobs these days mostly) end up at tOSU and go on to big things. With the work Gee has done for their endowment and the research projects started thanks to that, expect them to move from middle of the pack in the CIC academic rankings to upper third at some point. They won't be passing Chicago, Northwestern, or Michigan anytime this century, but they'll get up into the Top 50 and establish themselves as a couple steps ahead of the conference bottom feeders.
This story still blows my mind to this day, and I have no reason to not believe it.
I went to law school with this guy who was maybe the single nicest, most honest, and most friendly guy that ever lived. He was from a Utah and apparently grew up either in the town that Gee did or from a town very close thereto.
Anyway, through some group or association or something he was involved in for law school (can't remember what it was) he was to attend a national conference held at THE Ohio State University. Having always grown up hearing about what a crazy success Gee was in his area, he decided to try and see if he could schedule a meeting with Gee based on the premise that they were from the same home town or area or whatever. Sure enough, after going through the proper channels, Gee agreed to meet with him.
My friend shows up to meet Gee in his office. Right off the bat Gee starts going off about his Mormon faith and starts discussing it with my friend. My friend was embarassed as he had to awkwardly inform Gee that despite being from Mormon central he was in fact not Mormon.
Gee cut off the interview and asked him to leave. Again, the guy who told this story was without exception the nicest and most honest person (and especially lawyer) that anyone has ever met. I believe him 100%. And with that, Gee is officially a giant prejudiced A-hole. His Catholic comments were also not a shock to me based on this interaction with my friend.
which has some potential value, but not calling G an ahole in your header. Ad hom, uninspired, etcetera.
I honestly don't even know how to respond to something like this.
This is by far the worst Michigan site to post to for many topics. I mean, you yourself state that my story is interesting, but it's no longer worth reading because it uses the term a-hole? Does that actually have any effect on the content of my post whatsoever? I mean, honestly, the word that originally came to mind was asshole, so I used the friendlier version. Obviously, everybody out there from some 10 year old kid to some graduate of the 1948 class understand exactly what I'm saying without being horribly offended.
I honestly couldn't care less about the points attached to my name on here. I'm only wasting the time to write this because I'm not the only person on this board who is just tired of half the posts on a given topic being about typos, incorrect grammar, and thread titles that aren't fully informative. It really takes a lot away from the site. It just reenforces the stereotypes of arrogance and condescension that fans of other teams associate with Michigan and its students.
I've started coming to MGoBlog for all of my OSU news now.
What baffles me is the vitriol in the responses to the silly things that Gee said. Gee was no moron, but he was eccentric and amzingly insensitive to the potential negative reactions of people to the things he was saying. There is no question that he was more eccentric and insensitive than a university president can afford to be, and his departure was necessary and proper, but in the end it was a departure caused by comments that reflected insufficient gravitas, not insufficient morality or intelligence.
If comments like Gees make you "mad as hell" I hope (1) you have a good blood pressure regimen, and (2) you find a way to get out more.
A couple of lesser known items from Columbus - Gee said more questionable things than those that found their way into the papers. There were a few choice thoughts about women to a women's leadership group recently. It was more of a sad situation where the board was concerned that his 'filter' was going.
As for why such a sweetheart deal. He was Lex Wexner's guy. Wexner flew to see Gee a few years back and wouldn't leave until he agreed to be the president of OSU again. Wexner, who recently donated $100 million + to OSU, is pretty much the most powerful man in Cbus (for what that's worth) and placating him would probably be at the heart of why the deal.