Rattlers must stop second coming of Castell

If Rufus Montgomery and Rick Scott succeed in pressuring the FAMU Board of Trustees to suspend President James H. Ammons on Monday, you can bet that the next motion before the board will be to hire Barbara Barnes as interim president, effective immediately.

Rattlers fought too hard to get rid of the original Castell Bryant to now let a Castell clone take control of Lee Hall.

Barnes was the back-up choice for most of the Jeb Bush-appointed trustees on the “transition committee” who banded together in 2004 to bring Castell in as interim president. There is little chance that she would have gotten their support if she had not been willing to follow the same harmful agenda that Castell did.

Montgomery, a former hired hand of Jeb, is now at FAMU doing the will of Jeb-buddy Rick Scott rather than what is right for his own alma mater. It looks like Scott has finally stepped into the fight to push Ammons out of FAMU because Montgomery failed to get the job done on his own back on December 8.

Scott has said that he knew nothing about any threat of FAMU being merged with Florida State University. But if FAMU gets another weak interim president like Castell, the university will have a hard time defending itself from anything FSU might try, like taking complete control of the joint College of Engineering in Innovation Park.


Castell did not even try to stop FSU from shoving FAMU out of the E-College. Ammons had to come down from his full-time job running North Carolina Central University to lead the battle that kept the E-College’s budget in FAMU’s hands.

FAMU cannot afford to let go of a president with a successful track record of defending the school in exchange for another Castell-like individual who does not.

And FAMUans cannot forget about the how Castell’s interim presidency was originally sold as a “short” arrangement, but ended up lasting more than two years. If Ammons is suspended or placed on any kind of leave on Monday, it is unlikely that FAMU will get another strong president before Scott leaves office on January 6, 2015.

Barnes might be the type of person who would make the governor’s office and Board of Governors happy, but she is not someone Rattlers can afford to take a chance on during these dangerous times.