tl20021125-000 "The Tawerllhb Baltimore's #1 College Paper - Published Twice-Weekly - www.thetowerlight.com Monday, 11/25/02 Smokeout helps eliminate habit ....7.,G=P 11 5 Jones answers SWAT inquires 5 Ebony Lounge jams in Potomac 13 'Friday': Still fun after three films Departments News 5 Nation 6 Campus Briefs 7 Arts 13 Sound Bites 14 Entertainment Briefs 14 In A Theater Near You. 15 Sports 20 Athlete of the Week 17 In This Corner 20 Classifieds 16 Opinion 2 Group interviews former provost Committee questions Caret for presidency; some TU faculty ponder validity of closed process Mike Morris The Towerlight Former TU provost Bob Caret was interviewed Friday morning by Towson's presidential search committee, which will decide whether or not to submit his name to the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, according to sources close to the situation. The Board will choose the University's 12th president from a list submitted by the committee. One of the 25 campus leaders invited to meet with Caret on Friday called Caret a perfect match for Towson. The faculty member, who requested anonymity, worked with Caret when he was provost in the early '90s. ""He's a person that will not be happy with the fact that Towson is underfunded, and he's very serious about fundraising. He's just a great mind,"" the individual said of Caret Friday afternoon. ""Towson is in good shape. Bob Caret is an excel-lent choice."" James Clements, chair of the committee, who is bound by confidentiality agreements, wouldn't comment Sunday about Friday's meeting. Acting President Dan Jones attended the meet-ing along with a handful of other top-level admin-istrators. Jones said Thursday afternoon that he was told the meeting would be at a Radisson hotel; however, employees of both Baltimore-area Radisson hotels were unable to confirm this. One Towson official said this is because the committee went to great lengths to keep the meeting a secret, eliminating a paper trail of the event. This level of secrecy has members of the TU community concerned. Salvatore Zumbo, chair of the modern lan-guages department, said for many in the College of Liberal Arts, the whole situation looks like a fix. USM Regent David Nevins, a strong advocate of Caret, is rumored to have been Caret's best man at his wedding in the mid-90s. ""I don't know if it was a setup, but the fact that there is a close relationship between Bob Caret and David Nevins makes people suspicious,"" Zumbo said Saturday from his home. Zumbo, who has worked at Towson for the past 14 years, said he is bothered by the fact that the search is essentially closed. Jones said there is a level of distress across the campus since there has not been a full enough communication to the TU community about how the search is moving forward. He said this raises a level of mistrust. ""Towson is not typical,"" Jones said from his office. ""It's been a place where faculty, staff and administration trust one another and work together. The history of most places across the Photo courtesy San lose State Unwerszty Former TU provost Bob Caret recently took a break from his duties as president of San Jose State University and flew into town for a meeting Friday to discuss his candidacy for University president. country now is that the faculty see the adminis-tration as evil villains and the administration sees the faculty as people that have to be dealt with. And nobody pays much attention to staff. ""That's just not true at Towson. We're a whole community. The grief over the closed search is the fact that [Towson employees] are being cut out of something that they own. Whereas the people that advise closed searches think that's so typical nationwide. They don't understand the depth of feeling here. There is that sense of ownership."" When asked if the committee would be inter-viewing Caret as a candidate Friday, Jones replied, ""It would be difficult to believe that he is not the finalist."" Jones said some on campus are questioning Caret's motives for possibly returning to TU. ""There's a question: Why would Bob want to come back? There are lots of reasons why people chose to do things with their lives. You can't pre-dict that,"" Jones said. ""I'd like to think that Bob would want to come back because we're such a See CARET, page 7 Today High 54 Low 36 \ Tuesday High 47 Low 25 Wednesday \ High 39 Low 21 Thursday High 41 Low 25 � � , $ op ill \ Friday High 44 Low 31 "
