By Emily Tate, Managing Editor and Reis Thebault, Editor-in-Chief
On Friday morning, the day after the Board of Trustees announced the lone presidential finalist, Miami University revealed the names of other individuals who were nominated for the position.
The documents bearing those names came in response to a public records request from this newspaper, 13 days after the initial request was made.
The search process, conducted in secret by the Board of Trustees, a search committee and the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller, has proven to be difficult to interpret.
On Thursday afternoon, this newspaper was told the records could not be located, but at 7:55 the next morning, The Student received the documents. The university provided no explanation for the delay. Miami's Office of General Counsel did not respond to requests for comment.
The Miami Student has made numerous attempts to shed light on the search, but, throughout the academic year, the university successfully kept the search hidden from the public eye.
It's unclear whether this most recent pool of candidates is a comprehensive list of those considered for the position, but the documents reveal 77 names, including finalist Gregory P. Crawford. The names of the 23 applicants this newspaper was provided in December were not included among these documents.
Several nominees share some history with Miami, including former Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Conrado "Bobby" Gempesaw; current Dean of Students Mike Curme; current Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Phyllis Callahan; former Dean of Fine Arts Pamela Fox; former Dean of the School of Creative Arts James P. Lentini; and alumnus and former executive assistant to the president John A. Roush.
These individuals, as well as the others nominated for the position of president, did not necessarily know they were being nominated. Additionally, the records do not indicate who nominated each person. Instead, that is denoted by a category, like "faculty," "alumna/alumnus," "student" and "staff member."
Many individuals - like Crawford, the eventual finalist - were serious nominations. But others were clearly facetious suggestions, like Donald Trump and Ben Carson (both recommended by a student).
Ted Pickerill, the spokesperson for the search, did not respond directly to questions about the nominees.
The following are names of those nominated for the position of president. Numbers listed beside each name indicate how many times that person was nominated.
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Adams-Gaston, Javaune
Bardo, John
Bayless, Laura
Bernstein, Michael
Boehm, Michael (2)
Bridgeland, John
Brokamp, Jeffrey
Bruce, Harry
Bunn, Colleen
Callahan, Phyllis
Cantor, Nancy
Carroll, Donna
Carson, Benjamin
Chen, Ye Seul
Cook, Angie
Covey, Douglass
Crawford, Daniel
Crawford, Gregory P. (2)
Cronin, Thomas
Cross, Stephen
Crouter, Ann
Curme, Michael (2)
Davenport, Zebulun R.
Dever, Carolyn
Ellis, Curtis
Elsenbaumer, Ronald
Feyten, Carolyn
Fisher Guardial, Sarah
Fox, Pamela (2)
Fuller, Mark
Gempesaw, Conrado "Bobby" (4)
Graves, Gary
Griffin, Archie
Guichard, Julia
Hale, Janet
Herbst, Jeffrey
Hoadley, Tod
Jayawardhana, Ray
Johnson, Michael (2)
Jones, Rockwell
Kimbrough, Walter
Kinkelaar, Thomas
Klotz, Ann Marie
Krislov, Marvin
Lentini, James P. (4)
Manzo, Rocco
Mason, April
Means, Geoffrey
Meyers, Mark D.
Mink, Frank
Miranda, Rick (2)
Morano, Rick
Mottet, Timothy
Naganathan, Ganapathy
Ono, Santa (3)
Palladino, Joseph
Patankar, Manoj
Pena-Mora, Feniosky
Persky, David
Rice, Condoleezza
Robel, Lauren
Rogers, Rodney
Ross, Thomas
Roush, John A. (3)
Sabanegh, Edmund
Scherrens, Maurice
Scott, Ronald
Short-Thompson, Cady (3)
Smith, James Michael (2)
Snyder, Barbara
Steinmetz, Joseph (2)
Thomas, Randi
Tressel, James
Trump, Donald
Walter, Scott
Ward, Bryan
Wubah, Daniel A.
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