Changes at TSU — or not?

It's been a busy weekend for Texas Southern University, where the regents are reportedly meeting this morning to fire interim President James Timothy Boddie, whom they had picked to lead the troubled school last fall. According to KTRK, the new president will be Morris Overstreet, a law professor who earned his law degree from TSU in 1975 and was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1990. There aren't any more details on the possible change in the presidency: Channel 13 seems to be the only media outlet that has reported it, so we'll see what news comes out this afternoon.

Boddie's future isn't the only leadership question at TSU: The school's remaining regents on Friday announced that they will resign, as Gov. Rick Perry had asked them to do earlier this month — but not until their replacements are in place. Belinda Griffin, chairwoman of the Board of Regents, sent a letter to Perry saying that the regents won't step down in favor of the state conservator Perry has said he wants to install. That didn't go over well with the governor's office, apparently: "It's inappropriate for the chair to move forward with a meeting that could lead to more expenses for the university," Ted Royer, a spokesman for the governor, said. "Those are the types of decisions best made by new leadership." But Griffin claims that Perry's office said last week it wanted the regents to keep running the university until a new board is in place — which, if true, would be a 180 from Perry's position of a couple of weeks ago — so she didn't understand the reaction to her announcement that the current regents want to stay where they are. "Why they're acting all surprised is dumbfounding to me," Griffin told the Chronicle. "I'm incredibly, incredibly disappointed in the governor's office."

The issue with a potential conservatorship, which would concentrate all the university's financial decisions in a single person appointed by the governor for a certain period of time, is that it could jeopardize TSU's accreditation. Legislation introduced in Austin on Friday would allow the governor to dissolve a state school's board of regents and appoint a smaller, reform-oriented board when necessary — an alternative to a conservator. "We've made tremendous progress and are trying to fashion a compromise in a constructive way," state Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) said. "This gives us the chance to give the governor another tool. All of us would agree that this is a crisis situation."

One other thing in the TSU story. The Chronicle reports that state higher education commissioner Raymund Paredes sent a three-page letter to Perry on Thursday alleging that TSU has repeatedly violated state laws by going forward with construction projects without approval. In addition, Paredes said the school went over approved budgets and can't account for $7 million from public bonds. Those things could lead the state Higher Education Coordinating Board to halt any construction on the TSU campus: "We need to get to the bottom of this," Paredes said. "Clearly, until they put a new management team in place, there is going to be a higher level of scrutiny for TSU."