Board of Regents is back to bickering

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 | 11:15 a.m.

Less than a week after the Board of Regents issued a sweeping apology in an attempt to put a spate of personal bickering behind it, the board is facing a new round of personal attacks.

In an e-mail sent out Sunday, Regent Linda Howard accused Regent Steve Sisolak of having business dealings with the educational institutions that he governs -- which would be an ethical conflict of interest.

Sisolak, who owns a telemarketing business, responded by saying he would not "dignify (the charge) with an answer."

"I'm saddened by the letter," Sisolak told the Sun on Tuesday. "Regent Howard is obviously troubled and confused. It is obvious that her own prejudices and anger have taken over her thought processes. Whatever personal problems she might have, I hope she gets the help she needs."

In response, Howard said she perceived Sisolak's remark as an insult -- one of a series of insults she has endured over the past several months.

"I have been called an idiot, an orangutan, 'Snooping Linda,' 'Peeping Linda' -- now I'm being called a liar, confused and I need help," Howard said Tuesday. "What next?"

Howard added: "(Sisolak) started this thing and I'm going to finish it for him."

Howard's e-mail, sent to the Review-Journal and copied to black community leaders, reacted to the Review-Journal's editorial criticism of her. Howard did not only question Sisolak but asked why the paper had not written about the business dealings of two former regents -- Dorothy Gallagher, whose family car dealership sold cars to the community college in Elko, and Tom Wiesner, who held parties at his Big Dog restaurants for university athletic functions.

"People are upset about the fact that now a regent that has unfortunately passed is being drawn into a controversy and there is no place for that," Sisolak said, referring to Wiesner who died earlier this year. "I mean, he can't defend himself."

Howard contended in her e-mail that Sisolak has been protected by the media because no one has written about him cutting a professor's class from the community college schedule for personal reasons.

"He cut that professor's classes because she was a friend of his ex-wife," she told the Sun. "That's unethical behavior." Sisolak said that he lobbied to cut a class in flirting because the professor was holding the sessions at a local bar.

"A bunch of citizens called and said it was a waste of tax resources," Sisolak said. "Still, I had a problem that the course was taught in a bar. I thought that was just inappropriate."

Sisolak provided political cover for the board last week when he issued a blanket apology for board misdeeds -- from personal sniping to regents looking through student and personnel records. He embraced Howard in an act of goodwill after the meeting.

Howard had been under fire for allegedly abusing her authority by obtaining information from a personnel file and thousands of student records at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. One of the files she viewed belonged to UNLV student Hubert Hensen who called Howard an "idiot" in a campus newspaper editorial.

The personnel file was that of County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, a part-time UNLV employee who worked at a center where Howard had tried to get a job. Howard explained that away by saying she looked at the files because constituents had concerns about Atkinson Gates' employment.

As a result, Sun columnist and political commentator Jon Ralston began referring to Howard as "Peeping Linda."

In another incident, Regent Mark Alden called Howard an "orangutan" on the Alan Stock and Heidi Harris morning show on KXNT 840-AM. Howard is the board's only black member.

The board hoped to put those issues to rest last week when it issued its broad apology.

But on Friday morning -- a day after the apology -- Howard again appeared on the Stock and Harris radio show and said, "I don't have anything to apologize for, and I think there are a whole lot more apologies that need to come to me."

Sisolak said those comments caused him to re-think the collective apology.

In fact, in an interview that airs today on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," Sisolak said he now regrets making the motion that led to the apology.

"I thought the collective apology was enough to wipe the slate clean and move forward," Sisolak said. "Obviously, I made a mistake."

Sisolak also told Ralston that the students whose files were accessed, especially that of Hensen's could be actionable in court.

"Face to Face" airs at 4:30, 5:30 and 8 p.m. on Las Vegas ONE, Cox cable channels 1 and 39.

Howard also told the Sun on Tuesday that no one has apologized to her yet for calling her a liar and she has not received a personal apology from Alden for the orangutan remark.

Alden has already publicly apologized twice -- once in a written statement to fellow board members the day after he made the comment in October, and again during Thursday's board meeting. Alden who was absent from the meeting because of prostate cancer had his statement read into the record by Chancellor Jane Nichols.

"I never meant to use the term in a racial way," Alden said in statement read Thursday. "I was stupid enough to describe how we interact sometime as a board. Regardless of how I meant it, I hurt people's feelings."

Board of Regents Chairman Doug Seastrand said he was troubled by the latest go-round of wrangling on the board.

"I don't see how any of that discussion will further the cause of higher education," Seastrand said. "I find it very disappointing that regents would want to continue the discussions along this vein and particularly to make it personal."

Academics within the university system are equally troubled by the continuing problems.

"The personal bickering makes the board look bad," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "It distracts them from their policy and oversight role and only they can fix it. Or the Legislature can step in, as proposed, and wipe out the regents as an elected body."

Herzik said strength of the board's public apology began eroding before the board's two-day meeting was convened on Friday when Regent Doug Hill asked to seek outside advice from the attorney general's office to set boundaries for what Regent Howard Rosenberg could vote on because of his position as a professor at UNR.

A bill draft is due to go before the Legislature in February to possibly appoint the board. The proposal being put forward by Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, would require an amendment of the state's constitution.

Howard, however, said she has vowed to fight back whenever she thinks she is being attacked.

"As long as they keep writing about me and trying to discredit me, I will continue to respond," Howard said.

"The new issue is institutional racism and I'm upset with the chancellor that she went (on television) and said there was no institutional racism in the system."