Community college head accepts new duties

      CARSON CITY -- A flip-flopping Board of Regents voted 6-3 Friday to reassign a Reno community college president to new duties -- about half an hour after verbally deciding to let him stay while his performance was re-evaluated.
      After a two-hour meeting in which students and faculty praised and derided him, Truckee Meadows Community College President Kenneth Wright said it was best that he accept the regents' decision for immediate reassignment to a teaching position.
      "For me this is the best thing that could happen," Wright said after leaving a meeting room at Western Nevada Community College.
      Just moments before Wright was poised to fight an apparent move by University and Community College System Chancellor Richard Jarvis to reassign him to other duties against his will.
      Wright on March 5 had written a letter in which he voluntarily requested the reassignment. But after students and faculty members hailed him as a great president, he abruptly announced that he was withdrawing the letter.
      "People were intimidated from making positive statements about me," Wright said about an evaluation conducted by Jarvis.
      Jarvis had told the board that his conversations with Wright led him to believe that the college president sought reassignment.
      But after hearing the show of support for Wright, Jarvis and several regents said they seemed to decide to set a special meeting in two weeks about the president. At that meeting, they said they could discuss in detail the evaluation process.
      Regent Shelley Berkley even asked that the meeting not be held during the Easter season as she would be away on vacation.
      But after a break during which some of Wright's supporters left, figuring the matter had been decided, Regent Tom Wiesner requested the board reassign Wright.
      Only Regents Nancy Price, Berkley and Howard Rosenberg voted against the motion.
      Wright said he figured the vote was a show of support by the regents for Jarvis.
      "This is why the board has gained the reputation it has over the last 15 years," Price added during the hearing.
      At one point, retiring university system attorney Don Klasic even put on a World War II vintage Army helmet before advising members on what steps they could take with Wright.
      During another break some people joked that the audience should pay entertainment taxes for watching the regents perform.
      Price initiated the move to stop Wright's reassignment. And as in many past board meetings, she clashed verbally with Jarvis.
      She said Jarvis' evaluation of Wright did not use "rational management measures." And she said the university system, like most American businesses and institutions, employs "authoritarian management" techniques.
      Jarvis said the board two years ago set up the evaluation process he used for Wright and four other college presidents.
      "This is not a removal of a president," he said. "It is a request for reassignment that came from Dr. Wright."
      Rosenberg, attending his first regents' meeting since an Ethics Commission decision cleared him to vote, showed himself as an ally of Price's positions, often a minority position on the board.
      While he criticized Price once, Rosenberg also said that he thought Wright was being reassigned against his will.
      "In education no one ever gets fired unless he wants to," said Rosenberg, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "You are always given a chance to resign."