Slade claims unfair treatment, sues TSU

Ex-TSU President Priscilla Slade may be out, but she's not down — or so she hopes. According to KTRK, Slade has filed suit against the university claiming she wasn't given a fair shake. According to the suit, the TSU Board of Regents scheduled a retreat for this weekend where regents planned to talk about how to begin a search for a new president, but the retreat was to take place before the regents granted Slade a hearing she's guaranteed under her contract.

The regents, you'll remember, voted April 17 to fire Slade for spending as much as $650,000 that wasn't allowed under her contract. Slade hasn't said she didn't spend the money; her defense so far has hovered somewhere between "I had to spend that much to make myself and TSU look classy" and "I'm not the first person at TSU to screw up." But now it looks like Slade is actually going to try to make herself look like a victim:

"If I know before a trial begins that the jurors have already decided everything and are trying to decide whether or not to cut off her head or hang her, why would I go through that scam," said [Slade's attorney Ron] Franklin.

We wonder if the students, too, are wondering why they went through the scam of purportedly having a fiscally responsible reformer as president when she, in fact, seems to have stolen nearly $1 million. As for the regents' workshop, it was canceled and TSU isn't commenting on the agenda or on the lawsuit.

In other Slade-related news, the Chronicle reported this weekend on the vast differences between Slade's spending and that of other Texas university presidents — in short, she spent way more than her peers in most categories. As an example, during a legislative hearing in Austin last year, other university presidents stayed in Red Lion, Doubletree and Hampton Inn hotel rooms ranging from about $80 to $150 a night. Slade, on the other hand, put herself up in style at the Austin Four Seasons for $340 a night. Now that's the way to spend tuition money!