(September 16, 2010) Saunders Gets Snarky with USM Student Possibly (1) Admitted Legal Violation, or (2) Lied Things continue to spiral out of control on the USM campus in response to the Martha Saunders administration’s decision to terminate the employment of 29 tenured/tenure-track faculty for the 2011-12 academic year. These terminations come from Saunders’ response to a state-mandated $15 million budget cut for FY 2012, which combined with the FY 2011 cut of $10 million has led Saunders to deliver almost 50 pink slips to tenured/tenure-track USM faculty since summer of 2009.

ARTICLES CONCERNING
MARTHA D. SAUNDERS' AIRPLANE - AIRFARCE ONE

For more articles and editorials concerning Dr. Saunders's airplane please click here.

(September 16, 2010) QUESTION: WHAT SHOULD TWO ROUND TRIPS TO OMAHA NE COST? USM’S ANSWER: $72,395.74

(September 16, 2010) 31st & Pearl Does President Saunders Need a Larger Plane? One of the greatest scrolls in the history of USMNEWS.net occurred on 16-Sept-2010, announcing all of the individuals who traveled with USM president Martha Saunders aboard “USM air” to Omaha, Nebraska, in June of 2009 for a USM baseball game. A facsimile of that scroll, containing a partial list of the passengers for that trip, appears below.

(September 12, 2010) QUESTION: WHAT SHOULD A TRIP FROM HATTIESBURG, MS TO HOUSTON, TX COST? AND WHY DID LT. GOVERNOR PHIL BRYANT GO, TOO, ON YET ANOTHER TRIP TO HOUSTON, TX?

(September 14, 2010) Aunt Martha’s Extravagance Part 7 – Sneaking in a Beach Trip? Via a Mississippi Open Records Act request, USMNEWS.net recently obtained a large batch of documents from USM relating to USM president Martha Saunders’ university aircraft. This series, Aunt Martha’s Extravagance, provides analysis of these documents. This installment examines the 18-March-2010 trip in the USM airplane taken by Saunders to make a “SACS Reaffirmation Visit” and to attend “Bond Request meetings.” That invoice is inserted below, and it indicates that USM charged itself $5,040 for Saunders to take this recent trip.

(September 14, 2010) 31st & Pearl It’s Not an Elephant, It’s a Plane USM president Martha Saunders told the USM family members gathered on 14-Sept-2010 for the fall 2010 convocation that it would be insulting of her to deliver the 2010-11 State of the University address and not mention the “elephant in the room.”