Mistakes Were Made (Editorial)

Tim Hudson

We occasionally engage in shop talk lamenting the decline in daily local journalism nationwide, particularly the decline in the resources needed to monitor governmental bodies. What you don’t know CAN hurt you.

Just 12 hours after our latest newsroom conversation, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a good example of why journalistic oversight is essential. It seems that Deidra Hudson, the wife of Tim Hudson, chancellor of Arkansas State University’s flagship campus at Jonesboro, was in charge of a study-abroad program that’s in disarray.

Deidra Hudson, hired May 1, 2013, to head the program part time, has resigned but is remaining on board until this summer’s programs are finished. She was paid $28.36 an hour and worked an average of about 32 hours a week between July 1, 2013, and April 30, 2016, for an average of almost $44,000 a year — not bad for a part-time job that was performed inadequately.

ASU has been seeking a full-time director for the study-abroad program, which ASU System President Charles Welch thinks will help resolve the program’s “disorganization.” But a full-time director is not necessarily the same as a new one.

Welch had to explain to Hudson that he couldn’t hire his wife as a full-time subordinate. Hudson also wanted to raise the salary to $50,000, which was almost $13,000 more than was budgeted. (Noted: The budgeted full-time salary was less than Deidra Hudson had been averaging for part-time work.)

All of this might be forgiven, but Tim Hudson’s next act was to cancel the posting for a full-time director, though 14 people had already applied for the job.

Here’s another puzzlement, the biggest of them all: Welch told the newspaper that Tim Hudson, whose salary is $309,688, is “still in good standing” with the university.