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Seven Days

Wednesday, August 6
Dollywood announces layoffs and cutbacks for the first time since the company took over the Sevier County theme park from Silver Dollar City in the mid-1980s. Osama bin Laden is blamed.

Thursday, August 7
UT Trustees speculate that the university will survive, whatever the outcome of the brouhaha over the questionable practices of its most recent president (last two presidents, really). Why not? UT survived the shelving of the single-wing offense and platooning, didn't it?

Friday, August 8
John Shumaker resigns as UT president. Not to worry. Bill Battle and John Majors are still around and could be recruited to fill the post, if needed. Doug Dickey is not a candidate, due to an unfortunate coincidence involving his last name.

Saturday, August 9
Retired former UT President Joe Johnson leads the surprise list of candidates to fill the UT presidency on an interim basis. It's a surprise because no coaches or former coaches are apparently being considered. Joe should hold out for the $735,000 annual package that Shumaker pissed away.

Sunday, August 10
The News Sentinel intimates that UT's head-hunting consultant, rather than certain influential members of the board of trustees, may catch the blame for the Shumaker debacle. Where's Osama bin Laden when you really need him?

Monday, August 11
Departing President Shumaker's name does not appear on the Sentinel's front page, even though protesters of the nuclear program at Oak Ridge attempt to blame him in their Sunday march there for the bombing of Hiroshima. He hears about it and blames Osama.

Tuesday, August 12
The Associated Press reports that Tennesseans rank way low nationally in statistical profiles on general health and health practices. That confirms the empirical evidence you collected the last time you watched the diners filling plates at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Don't blame you know whoma?

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Confused by many as the stage area at the Knoxville Zoo where bird shows are performed, this charming amphitheatre is actually located in Walter Hardy Park on Martin Luther King Boulevard, across from Tabernacle Baptist Church. The park is also the home of Doctor's Row, a line of trees honoring black physicians who served the community between 1869 and 1989. The twenty-six trees in the Row each have biographical plaques representing each doctor.

Aubrey Davis of Knoxville was first with the correct location of this stage and for her efforts she receives The Truth is...My Life in Love and Music by Melissa Etheridge with Laura Morton. Good work, Aubrey.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, Aug. 19
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Tuesday, Aug. 19
5 p.m.
John T. O'Connor Center
611 Winona St.
TDOT has a second public meeting scheduled for the proposed widening and reconstruction of I-40 and James White Parkway through downtown, East Knoxville, Fourth & Gill and Old City neighborhoods.

Bullying Rogues?
Who were the architects of ex-Dean Davis' demise?

UT's finding out what it's like to get trashed in tabloids; unfortunately, the tabloid in question is the Chronicle of Higher Education, a respected journal read by academics nationwide. The publication has covered the story of UT's president resigning under duress, but last week they gave even more attention to the parallel story of the dean of UT's prestigious College of Architecture resigning under duress.

The Chronicle ran a feature-length investigative report called "A House Comes Tumbling Down." It details the current drama, which has left popular Dean Marleen Kay Davis ousted, in favor of a non-architect—an anthropologist—placed temporarily in charge of the college.

The Chronicle story, by Scott Smallwood, observes that "architects around the state seemed to be the most disturbed by the news, especially the idea that an anthropologist would be leading their alma mater."

The article paints the College of Architecture, the only architecture college in Tennessee and one of the best-regarded schools at the university, as a Peyton Place of accusation and recrimination involving denied tenure, age-discrimination lawsuits, budget deficits, threats of physical violence—and transatlantic arson. That last astonishing detail, absent from news reports so far, has to do with an unnamed UT student who is said to have gone on an arson spree during a UT-sponsored summer trip to Florence a couple of years ago.

According to the story, UT Prof. J. Stanley Rabun—an award-winning academic and author, but also the same professor who reportedly threatened to shoot Dean Davis—charged that UT forked out $80,000 to bail out the student. Junior faculty member Adam Drisin, who led the trip, denies the charge. Drisin is also the faculty member, described by friends as a brilliant young professor, who was denied tenure.

Few professors—tenured or untenured—were willing to speak for the record. (The article does quote former professor Dean Almy, now at the University of Texas, who admitted that he quit at Tennessee because of the hostile work environment.)

Though most of the chaos arose during Davis' tenure as dean, the article seems to blame the whole mess on a cadre of four disgruntled older professors who dislike Davis, naming specifically Rabun, Peter Lizon, and Scott Kinzy. The article quotes a letter in which Davis quotes Edgar Stach, an assistant professor from Germany, as calling Rabun "ruthless.... It is very clear he just wanted to bully."

"What happened in Knoxville," reporter Smallwood concludes, "is a reminder of the power wielded by senior professors. For in the end, even if their critics saw these four as bullying rogues, they got what they wanted."

The question of the dean of architecture has been upstaged by even higher-up questions this week, but Marleen Davis's sympathizers are keeping the flame burning. A website advocates her cause at www.keepdeandavis.com.

—Jack Neely

Forum Gets Going
Candidates vie for West Knox minority votes

The announcement of a fledgling political organization to give voice to the oft-overlooked West Knoxville minority community stirred up listeners of local urban-contemporary station WKGN 1340-AM a couple of weeks ago. But the still-nameless organization's first unofficial gathering, a forum for Knoxville mayoral hopefuls Bill Haslam and Madeline Rogero, went down as smoothly as one of the iced cappuccinos several guests sipped as they listened to the candidates at The Cup Around the Corner coffee house in Homberg on Aug. 6.

The turn-out was estimable, at least as far as such things go around here, with about 40 people passing through all told, most of them members of the local African-American and Latino communities. In addition to official speakers Haslam and Rogero, several local city council contenders turned out as well, including Hubert Smith, Norris Dryer, Marilyn Roddy, Charlie Thomas and Bob Becker.

Organizer Michael Moore, an African-American fitness trainer and owner of Fitness Focus, conceived the forum last month. Shortly after he announced his intentions, a few WKGN listeners complained on the station's afternoon call-in show that his plan for such a minority coalition was in some ways divisive, given that the majority of the local non-white population lives in the eastern portion of the city.

"I guess some people felt I was trying to create a schism, and that I was removed from minority issues because I live in the West," Moore said. "But I don't feel like that's true; I'm just trying to move forward. We're all just trying to improve our condition."

At the forum, Rogero and Haslam reiterated familiar themes, while at the same time speaking directly to issues they felt to be of special concern to their audience. Rogero stood on her record as a neighborhood activist, saying that her grassroots strategies would create a more broadly representative city government, more diverse in its employment, and more inclusive in its decision-making process.

Haslam again touted his record in business with the Haslam family's Pilot Corp. He noted that the company has made considerable strides toward meeting goals for minority employment, although he acknowledged that Pilot "could still do better" in that regard.

The candidates fielded standard questions about taxes and downtown redevelopment, but also heard several concerns they likely won't hear in most other local forums, including queries about how to increase minority representation in awarding city contracts. One attendee asked Haslam how he might better serve the city's growing population of undocumented Hispanic immigrants but got no firm, specific answer.

Moore says he was pleased to collect 27 signatures from attendees—black, white, and Hispanic alike—interested in furthering a group devoted to West Knoxville minority interests. "When people talk about minorities in Knoxville, especially African Americans, they automatically turn to East Knoxville," he says. "I'd like to create a network, a voice for those of us who live and work over here."

—Mike Gibson