Texas Southern University, its supporters frequently say, was created to fail. That it has succeeded all too well in this mission is one of the saddest stories in Texas.
Now in its sixtieth year, it has hardly known a time when its fiscal affairs were not in chaos, when its board of regents was not dysfunctional, when its graduation rate was not shockingly low, and when exasperated white politicians in Austin were not talking about putting it under a conservatorship or ending its status as an independent institution.
The latest crisis involves revelations that the university’s ex-president, Priscilla Slade, spent some $260,000 in school funds on decorating and landscaping her home, with the connivance of the school’s former chief financial officer, Quintin Wiggins, who was convicted of misapplication of fiduciary property and sentenced to ten years in prison. Slade herself faces a trial this month.
