For Moody’s it’s tricky to rate
The train wreck that’s Alabam State.
“It should be a D
But our lowest is C.
We’ll need to revise the whole slate.”
Corrupt, mismanaged, hemorrhaging students, running through administrators a mile a minute, and getting close to being unaccredited, Alabama State University doesn’t need to do anything else to embarrass itself. But the other day, in the very first moments of his deposition in the wrongful termination trial of ASU’s trillionth football coach, trustee Herbert Young deepened the embarrassment.
Something about the way questions were put to him enraged him and he began to leave the room. Here’s a description of a court reporter’s audio recording of the incident:
Young and [Donald] Jackson [the attorney asking Young questions] begin arguing a few minutes into the deposition after Jackson tells Young not to answer questions before he completes them. Young begins to leave, and as he’s doing so, Jackson states that he wants [the] court reporter to note that Young is leaving in the middle of a deposition.
That seemingly angers Young more, who says he’s leaving “because (Jackson) is disrespectful.” He goes on to tell Jackson that he will “respect him as a man” and spells out the word respect. Jackson repeatedly asks [Young’s attorney] to “get him out of here.”
Once the situation calms for a few seconds, [the coach, Reggie Barlow,] can be heard saying: “A board member acting like that.”
Young replies: “I got something for you too!”
At that point, things get chaotic. There is clearly a physical altercation of some sort — whether it was Barlow throwing a punch or Young choking Barlow is not evident on the recording — and [Barlow’s attorney] and Jackson are left screaming at their clients and trying to separate them.
September 28th, 2015 at 5:57PM
One of the finest books I’ve read is “The Debt,” authored by Randall Robinson. The reason I bring this up is that he is an HBCU graduate, and a testament of what those unis could nurture and produce. To see Alabama State, also an HBCU, destroying itself in order to chase a deranged notion of football success, makes me wonder how many potential Randall Robinsons are being thrown away….