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To fix FAMU, she brings a heavy hand

Interim president Castell Bryant has brought her straight-shooting attitude to the school. Most like it. But not all.

By RON MATUS
Published June 20, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - Her idea of a good time is watching a Western over breakfast. She likes the Lone Ranger.

A century ago, she boasts, she might have outdueled Annie Oakley.

"I would have been baaaad, " says Castell Bryant, the interim president at Florida A&M University.

If FAMU supporters wanted a gunslinger to right the school's reputation-shaking financial mess, they got one in Bryant. Since being appointed in January, the 67-year-old with cowgirl fantasies has had both barrels blazing.

To ferret out ghost employees, she forced everyone from janitors to professors to sign for paychecks. To tighten spending, she ordered employees to turn in campus-issued cell phones. She has sacked a half-dozen top administrators, fired more than 20 other employees and ticked off powerful supporters.

Last week, longtime football coach Billy Joe got the boot.

Those who know Bryant are not surprised.

"Be ready," warned Bryant's former boss, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron, when FAMU trustees asked him what they should expect. "She will do what she believes is right, regardless of the consequences." For FAMU, 117 years of hard work is at stake.

One of the country's best-known historically black colleges has never been under so much scrutiny. Audits show millions of dollars can't be accounted for. The financial aid system is in disarray. The athletic department is mired in scandal.

"There's a lot of corruption," says Cortney Hodgen, a political science major at FAMU. "There's a lot of who-you-know going on."

In steps Bryant.

To date, professors, students and alumni have mostly cheered her high-noon performance. At a recent prayer meeting in a Tallahassee church, one FAMU supporter told her to "Give 'em hell, Castell!"

Gov. Jeb Bush and other state power brokers also are offering encouragement while resisting calls to intervene.

Bryant is "doing a good job in a very difficult circumstance," Bush says.

But there is another view. Some say Bryant has crossed the line between bold and rash, and is herself becoming an issue.

In recent months, she has managed to irritate Barney Bishop, a FAMU trustee and president of the powerful Associated Industries of Florida; and Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, a prominent FAMU graduate. State Rep. David Mealor, R-Lake Mary, who heads the House committee on universities and colleges, questioned her recen t decision to put the law school dean on leave.

One critic says a dump-Bryant petition is beginning to circulate.

"We need some positive leadership at the university," says Lawson, who has criticized Bryant for being secretive and recently resigned as chairman of the FAMU Boosters. "I have my doubts whether she is that person."

For the moment, many FAMU faithful disagree. They want the school fixed, now.

And they don't care if the fixer has a heavy hand.

Bryant hails from Jasper, a middle-of-nowhere Florida town five minutes from the Georgia line. One friend calls her sense of humor "corn pone." She peppers her speech with down-home-isms.

"When you show me that you have been woofing me, I'm through with you," she says.

Woofing is Jasper-ese for "misleading."

But don't let the country-girl shtick fool you.

Bryant has decades of experience in higher education, a bone-deep feistiness and a cold-steel spine. As FAMU trustees chairwoman Challis Lowe puts it, "She's no sissy."

A FAMU graduate, Bryant earned a doctorate in education administration and spent six years as president of Miami-Dade College's North campus. In 2003, Bush appointed her to the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system. She quickly became one of its most outspoken members.

In Jasper, Bryant played piano and captained her high school basketball team. On Saturdays, she hit the cinema to catch the latest Westerns.

She loved them. The good guys always won.

At home, her father taught her to weld.

The lesson: Self-reliance.

Hard-nosed, independent, tell-it-like-it-is - Bryant's supporters say those traits are serving FAMU and its 13,000 students well.

"It's like if your friend is bit by a rattlesnake ... and says, "Cut, man, cut!" says Leon County commissioner and FAMU instructor Bill Proctor.

It hurts, but Bryant has got to cut, he says.

FAMU will thank her later.

Only yesterday, it seems, FAMU was outpacing Harvard in enrolling the nation's top black students. The pharmacy school was stellar; the business school, rising fast. Even the football team seemed unstoppable.

Against that backdrop, the stories in the late 1990s seemed isolated, random:

Adjunct professors not getting paid. Theft in the financial aid office. A state audit that raised questions about administrators using state money for Christmas gifts.

But the fog of bad news never seemed to lift.

This year, an audit showed the school spent $51-million more than it had budgeted. Credits and debits were in the wrong columns. Daily cash reports were marked with whiteout.

Soon after taking over, Bryant said it would be difficult to avoid sinking into the red again. She instituted a moratorium on new spending. She decided to personally approve hundreds of bills.

But new fires kept flaring.

The National Science Foundation threatened to terminate federal grants.

An endowed chair at the law school was found to have been filled by its donor.

The state launched a criminal investigation into activities at an on-campus institute.

A financial employee was indicted for fraud.

"Parents are shocked," says Angela Mattox, a journalism major who was eating lunch last week at Olean's, a popular, next-to-campus restaurant. "They're saying, "I don't want my child to go to a school with so many problems."'

The avalanche of woes has many FAMU supporters worried about the school's reputation. Others fear a loss of independence.

Last year, some lawmakers pushed for legislative accountants to take over FAMU's finances. Meanwhile, rumors about a Florida State University takeover have risen from the crypt and run amok.

"I think if (high school) students want to go to a historically black college, they'll look someplace else," says senior Stephen Greene, a mathematical science major. "They want a situation that's stable."

All Bryant had to do, Tony Suarez says, was call.

The interim president had every right to put law school dean Percy Luney on leave, says Suarez, who is Luney's lawyer.

But instead of discreetly asking Luney to step down - a request Suarez says Luney would have honored - Bryant told reporters her decision was tied to a universitywide audit and then offered no details.

Reporters could only assume there was a connection to a June 4 St. Petersburg Times story that outlined how a wealthy Kentucky lawyer donated $1-million to FAM U for an endowed chair, then was appointed to fill the chair at $100,000 a year.

Luney fought back, pinning the arrangement on past FAMU presidents Frederick Humphries and Fred Gainous, and slamming Bryant for staining his reputation.

Negative headlines dragged on for days.

"Reasonable people would have handled it so much differently," Suarez says of Bryant.

Bryant's decision to shutter the Institute for Urban Policy and Commerce - and fire all 23 of its employees - also drew criticism, this time from current and former state lawmakers who helped create it.

Their beef: little explanation.

"To the extent we are rooting out corruption or criminal activities, that's appropriate," says Bishop, the trustee and Associated Industries president. "But there's no justification for not telling the trustees."

Bishop calls Bryant "a bull in a china shop."

Bryant has responded by cutting off all communication with him.

The trustees, she promises, will get more details at their next meeting on June 30.

For now, Bryant is being given wide leeway.

"Most of the alumni are behind her," says Donald Rutledge, president of the Upper Pinellas/Clearwater chapter of the FAMU Alumni Association. "We have to be. We don't have anything else."

So far, he likes what he sees.

But even Bryant's friends say her hard-charging style has its downside.

"She's very rigid," says retired U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, a FAMU alum who has known Bryant for more than 40 years and spent many a Saturday thrift-store shopping with her.

But isn't that what FAMU needs?

"That's debatable," Meek says. "We'll see how it turns out."

Asked about shortcomings, Bryant takes the unusual approach of siding with her critics.

Rigid? Yes.

Rash? Sometimes.

Impatient? Often.

"I can make some terrrrrible decisions," Bryant says.

But she can't think of any lately.

-- Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or 727 893-8873. Times capital bureau chief Lucy Morgan, staff writer Joni James and researchers Carolyn Edds and Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified June 20, 2005, 09:55:06]