Western New Mexico University’s ex-President Joseph Shepard has certainly left his mark. Things will be different as the university moves on without him.
Many people I know think Shepard should go to prison. Others seem to have no problem with him, such as our state representative and senator and my fellow columnist, Tim Matthes. But I haven’t encountered anyone other than the regents who thinks he should get a $1.9 million settlement and a high-paying teaching job in a department that doesn’t want him.
Fortunately, Mary Hotvedt, former chair of the WNMU Board of Regents, wrote a Daily Press column Jan. 3 explaining all. I know Hotvedt slightly. I’ve been to political events at her house. I voted for her for representative back in 2016. We say hello and chat when we see each other. I was eager to read her explanation of the controversial settlement.
Hotvedt’s column hit the high points of the Shepard years. She said the campus looks nicer. Few would disagree with that, although in laying out new spaces and planting new trees, they removed or damaged old trees. But WNMU is a university, not a park. Beautiful facilities shouldn’t override education.
She mentioned Shepard’s enthusiasm. Yes, he spoke with enthusiasm and he backed it up with ideas and projects. But sometimes that enthusiasm was misplaced.
One of his enthusiasms was international connections with Mexico, which may be a reason international students demonstrated in favor of him on Jan. 15. His enthusiasm for African travel didn’t work out so well.
Hotvedt mentioned that WNMU is now “well-knitted into the larger community.” That’s certainly true from a cultural standpoint. I have attended many lectures and concerts that seemed to be directed at old folks like me, rather than students. I enjoyed many of these events, but WNMU is a university, not an entertainment venue.
And then there were the couches. The state auditor said they paid $27,000 for couches, but Shepard said there were three couches for the president’s house totaling $15,500. High-end Santa Fe couches are more expensive than Silver City couches, but I’m not as outraged as many people I know. The WNMU Foundation has raised many times either amount at the president’s house.
And so on. I’m not going to list all of Shepard’s accomplishments, or the asterisks next to many of them. Like most of us, he is a complicated person with many sides. But the real question is whether WNMU is a better university now.
The bottom line is this: Would you send your child there? We don’t compare WNMU to Harvard, or even the University of New Mexico, but it should be more than a glorified community college with football and two master’s programs. I know some successful WNMU graduates, but many Silver High grads head elsewhere.
But none of that is what I wanted from Hotvedt. I wanted to know why the regents canceled Shepard’s existing contract — which would have paid him about $600,000 through 2027 — and replaced it with a severance package paying $1.9 million.
Here’s what she said: “The settlement was conducted according to policy. The board took into account many factors, and the president had his own counsel for the procedure. I won’t go into all the details in this column.”
What? The new contract was the only thing Hotvedt needed to explain. She had already made very clear that she approved of Shepard’s performance.
To me, the regents’ choice made it impossible for what many of us would have liked to see: A happy ending. We could praise Shepard and damn him, pay off his contract and watch him ride into the sunset, leaving his couches and many other improvements behind.
But frankly, the severance payoff doesn’t sound straight or make sense. One of the student protest signs on Jan. 24 read: “Let me on the Board of Regents so I can party!”
There are also questions about the other part of the deal: If the attorney general’s lawsuit fails, Shepard would be a tenured faculty member of the School of Business receiving $200,000 a year — more than any other professor. What creative name would you give to his class? Would students flock to it? Or would he teach to an empty Zoom screen?
I think of Shepard’s time here as the tale of two statues. There’s the mustang at Regents Square that looks like it was ordered from a catalog — perhaps the one where they got Silver High’s fighting colt. And there’s the new abstract sculpture on the edge of Old James Stadium by Professor Emeritus Michael Metcalf.
I’ll let readers decide what these two very different statues represent, and which they prefer. They’re both part of Joseph Shepard’s legacy.
