Dear HCN,
I read in stunned
amazement your story June 23 that was not only totally off-base on
the premise but factually incorrect as well. When the reporter
called me, I told him for the record that if he wrote a story based
on the false premise that big, bad ranchers were behind the firing
of New Mexico State University president Michael Orenduff, the
story would be incorrect.
The NMSU board of
regents met June 28 and released a large file full of serious
charges that resulted in the firing of Orenduff, and it included
not one mention of farmers or ranchers upset with Ted Turner’s
visit to NMSU.
The reporter also got it
completely wrong when he wrote that Regent Larry Sheffield,
president of the board, was a rancher and president of the New
Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau. I’ve known Larry a long time. He
is not in the ranching business or president of this organization.
He is a local businessman here in Las Cruces. Our president is John
Van Sweden of Raton, N.M., and we’re happy to report that he is a
rancher.
Yes, we were upset with Ted Turner’s
ignorant comments about our industry when he was on our campus, and
said so in a statewide news release, but the NMSU board of regents
had many more serious concerns about the leadership at our land-
grant institution.
Orenduff, according to the
regents, got fired for a long list of things, including:
negotiating important, long-term contracts without informing the
regents; failing to advise the regents of a serious budget deficit
in a major department; missing the last critical days of the state
legislative session to go to Reno, Nev., for a basketball game;
putting the university’s federal contract and grant funds at risk;
failing to inform the regents of major issues facing the school;
errors in expense reimbursements, and on and on. That’s the real
story and there is more to come.
Finally, as a
graduate of NMSU journalism department, I was concerned, as was our
board of directors, about a possible grant from the Turner
Foundation to the department. The strings attached would have had
students “producing written and broadcast reports about the
activities of Southwestern environmental groups.” Paying for
one-sided news stories is totally unethical – maybe even by your
standards.
Erik
Ness
Las Cruces, New
Mexico
The writer is head of
public relations at the New Mexico Farm and Livestock
Bureau.
PETER CHILSON
RESPONDS:
I stand by the story’s point captured
in the headline, “Did ranchers fire a university president?” I
spoke with J. Michael Orenduff and faculty senate president Clyde
Eastman, who both felt the regents were unforthcoming about all the
reasons for Orenduff’s dismissal. Moreover, Orenduff said that
three weeks before his firing, Van Sweden had told him he was doing
a fine job and never raised the allegations that Erik Ness
discusses in his letter. In fact, the Board of Regents chose not to
explain itself until after the firing. It’s curious, as well, that
I left messages with every board member, and not one returned my
calls. Erik Ness, although he writes as if he were intimate with
the regents’ thoughts, has no official connections to NMSU, and HCN
has yet to hear from the university itself.
But
I incorrectly reported the respective positions of Larry Sheffield
and John Van Sweden on New Mexico State University’s Board of
Regents (HCN, 6/23/97). Van Sweden is a rancher and president of
the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, not Sheffield. I
apologize for the mistake.
Finally, HCN is not
the only newspaper to report the ranching angle of Orenduff’s
dismissal. In its June 19-25 edition, a local paper, The Bulletin
of Las Cruces, N.M., published essentially the same story under the
subheadline, “Orenduff says he fell victim to ranchers, “meddling”
regents.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline You’re picking on ranchers.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
