Marti is FAU’s new student media director. Four months on the job, she was ordered to fire me.
At least, that’s what she told me when she was doing the deed a week ago today.
I believed her when she said Charles Brown, FAU’s VP for Student Affairs, made the decision. Marti said she stood up for me, and when Brown wouldn’t budge, she tried to get me more than three days’ notice. No dice.
What’s even worse, at last Friday’s staff meeting, Marti was forced to take the fall.
“I decided...early this week that we were going to look at a new organizational structure for student media,” she told the staff, as she looked sideways at Terry Mena, the associate dean for Student Affairs – and her boss.
In the corporate world, just the opposite would happen. When I was an editor at two publications owned by the Sun-Sentinel, the biggest boss would always deliver the baddest news. Even if it wasn’t his doing, he’d still take the hit.
The management theory is simple: You work for your supervisor every damn day. A VP is cloistered in his office. If the staff is going to hate someone, better the manager they don’t deal with directly.
But Mena let Marti twist in front of 60 angry students, alumni, and SG leaders for two hours. He didn’t even stand next to her. Marti was in the middle of the newsroom, while Mena hid behind a cubicle partition, emerging every so often to issue inane comments like, “When things change without cause, you can make a change.” Then he’d check his Blackberry.
Now Marti returns to work, facing those same students who hammered her. Her office is right next door to the University Press newsroom. Mena’s office is across campus.
At FAU, it's easier to get fired than to do the firing.
TOMORROW: An obscene example of intimidation.
