NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Black Caucus sent a blistering letter to Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower about his comments about the former Tennessee State University president and the idea of selling its downtown real estate footprint.
The state has been back and forth about the historic Black college since November about its financial footing. Throughout the fall, TSU was quietly asking the state to help keep it afloat, especially when it couldn’t make payroll in November without extra resources. The new board met and discussed that without intervention the school would face a $46 million deficit by the end of the school year.
However, the Tennessee Black Caucus — made up of Black Tennessee state legislators — has now called out Mumpower for his dealing with the situation as it unfolded across the last state building commission in December. That is when the school and state leaders talked about turning the school’s finances in a better direction.
“TSU has faced systemic, historic underfunding and it is troubling for the State of Tennessee to spend decades diverting resources from TSU while criticizing the institution’s financial stability,” lawmakers wrote collectively. “TSU’s challenges require collaboration and equitable support, not condemnation or divisive rhetoric.”
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The state acknowledges it still owes TSU for underfunding in the past. The state said half a billion was owed in 2022, while the federal government said that number is actually $2.1 billion. By the state’s own calculation, it still owes TSU $250,000. Underfunding calculations boil down to the school’s status as a land-grant school, when Black students couldn’t attend the University of Tennessee-Knoxville during segregation.
Rather than allowing Black students to openly attend, Tennessee created a racially divided higher education system until the 1970s.
Through federal law, TSU was given the same funding status as the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in that the two were given resources for land and later should have been given the same state appropriations for agriculture extension offices and expanding their academic programs.
Though not focused on underfunding entirely in their letter, Black lawmakers said they were upset by Mumpower’s comments about former TSU president Glenda Glover, who was awarded a $1.7 million contract to both leave her top position at the school and become a president emeritus to the university the four years following. The contract started in the summer but with the former board’s approval. Gov. Bill Lee vacated that same board in March.
“I appreciate all of you who are here,” Mumpower said in the December State Building Commission. “I have great appreciation you dismissed your prior general counsel and your work with AG’s office to cancel the contract of someone who has made out like a bandit on a legacy of dysfunction. No parking place, Titans football tickets. Are you done?”
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The Black Caucus said they found those comments disrespectful.
“Your aggressive line of questioning regarding whether TSU has severed all ties with its former president, Dr. Glenda Glover, even down to a ‘parking place’ demonstrated a lack of respect and understanding,” the caucus wrote together. “Your assertion that Dr. Glover ‘made out like a bandit while leaving only a legacy of dysfunction’ is deeply troubling. Dr. Glover has been an asset to the university in many ways and has brought national acclaim to the institution. During discussions about the future of the university, you seem to go out of your way to disparage and disrespect Dr. Glover. Your attempts to undermine her legacy are unwarranted and unacceptable.”
In Glover’s contract obtained by NewsChannel 5 through a records request, a clause is written for Glover’s parking spot, an executive assistant and access to the school’s seats at Nissan Stadium for both Tigers’ games and the Tennessee Titans.
The Black Caucus also wrote that the Comptroller should consider discontinuing the idea of selling the Avon Williams campus, which has a downtown footprint off Charlotte Avenue. TSU received the property during a 40-year lawsuit with the state for both TSU and UTK to have equal funding and to stop having dual higher education systems based on race.
The Avon Williams was originally owned by the University of Tennessee as a continuing education center that started in 1947.
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Mumpower suggested TSU leadership look into selling their downtown campus to help their financial state.
“The suggestion of selling TSU assets to developers raises serious ethical concerns,” the lawmakers wrote. “Rather than proposing solutions that could destabilize the university further, we need to focus on supporting TSU, particularly given its long history of underfunding compared to peer institutions such as the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.”
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at emily.west@newschannel5.com.
What makes life worth living? These Nashville students have an idea
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What makes life worth living? A Vanderbilt professor tasked his students with answering that question and Photojournalist Bud Nelson captures the beauty and hope of their answers. These students are wise beyond their years and a light in this world. Enjoy!
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Just days after Tennessee announced it had a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state’s top prison officials said they aren’t going to release the document to the public.
The Tennessee Department of Correction last week told The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency this week denied the request, saying it needs to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved.
The decision to maintain secrecy differs from how the state has handled similar requests in the past, but mirrors efforts across the U.S. to suppress public access surrounding executions, especially after anti-death penalty activists used records to expose problems.
The protocol is typically a detailed set of procedures describing how the state executes death row inmates. Tennessee had been operating under a 2018 protocol that included directions on selecting execution team staff and the training they should undergo. It explained how lethal injection drugs should be procured, stored and administered. It gave instructions on the inmate’s housing, diet and visitation in the days leading up to execution. It provided directions on how to choose media witnesses.
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For lethal injection, the 2018 protocol required a series of three drugs administered in sequence.
A view of the death chamber from the witness room at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility shows an electric chair and gurney (Getty Images)
The new version unveiled last week requires only a single dose of pentobarbital. But that is all that is known about the revised protocol.
In an email sent Monday, Tennessee correction spokesperson Kayla Hackney told the AP the “protocol is not a public record” and cited a Tennessee statute that makes the identities of the people carrying out executions confidential.
However, that same statute says the existence of confidential information in a record is not a reason to deny access to it, noting that the confidential information should be redacted.
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What has Tennessee done in the past?
In 2018, Tennessee’s correction agency provided a redacted copy of the protocol to an AP reporter over email.
In 2007, a previous version of the protocol was treated as a public record and provided to the AP after former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, announced a surprise halt to executions. A reporter’s review of that 100-page “Manual of Execution” found a jumble of conflicting instructions that mixed new lethal-injection instructions with those for electrocution.
Why did Tennessee update its protocol?
Executions have been on hold in Tennessee since 2022, when the state admitted it had not been following the 2018 protocol. Among other things, the Correction Department was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity.
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An independent review of the state’s lethal injection practice later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested. Later, the state Attorney General’s Office conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.
Executions in the U.S. have remained at historic lows for years, but the small group of states still carrying out the death penalty have only increased the secrecy surrounding the procedures, particularly over how and where the state secures the drugs used for lethal injections.
Many states argue that secrecy is critical to protect the safety of those involved in the execution process. Yet in a 2018 report, the Washington-D.C.-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center found that this argument often led to these states refusing to provide information about the qualifications of their execution teams and some courts have criticized such arguments for lack of evidence that more public disclosure would result in threats against prison officials.
Kelley Henry, chief of the federal public defender’s habeas unit that represents many of Tennessee’s death row inmates, described the state’s refusal to release the new protocol, given that background, as “mystifying.”
“The secrecy, which cloaked the former execution protocol, created a culture of incompetence and lack of accountability,” she said in an email.
No. 13 Tennessee (12-0) will open Southeastern Conference basketball play on Thursday. Rankings reflect the USA TODAY Sports women’s basketball coaches poll.
Texas A&M (7-5) will host the Lady Vols at Reed Arena in College Station, Texas. Tennessee leads the basketball series versus the Aggies, 11-8, dating to 1997.
Tennessee is looking to start the 2024-25 basketball season 13-0 for the first time since the 2017-18 campaign (15-0).
The Lady Vols enter Thursday’s SEC opener having scored 100 points six times during the 2024-25 season. The all time record for the Lady Vols is seven during the 1987-88 season.
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READ: 2024-25 Tennessee Lady Vols basketball roster
PHOTOS: Kim Caldwell through the years
Here is how to watch the Tennessee-Texas A&M basketball game, including time, TV schedule and streaming information.
What channel is Tennessee vs. Texas A&M game on? Time, TV schedule
TV channel: SEC Network+
Start time: 8 p.m. EST
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Steve Miller (play-by-play) and Tab Bentz (analyst) will be on the call.
Watch Tennessee vs. Texas A&M live on ESPN+
Tennessee Lady Vols 2024-25 basketball results
Oct. 31 Carson-Newman (Exhibition — W, 135-49)
Nov. 5 Samford (W, 101-53)
Nov. 7 UT Martin (W, 90-50)
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Nov. 12 Middle Tennessee State (W, 89-75)
Nov. 16 Liberty (W, 109-93)
Nov. 26 Western Carolina (W, 102-50)
Dec. 4 Florida State (W, 79-77)
Dec. 7 Iowa (W, 78-68 — Brooklyn, New York)
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Dec. 14 North Carolina Central (W, 139-59)
Dec. 18 at Memphis (W, 90-75)
Dec. 20 Richmond (W, 92-67 — West Palm Bech, Florida)
Dec. 21 Tulsa (W, 102-61 — West Palm Beach, Florida)
Dec. 29 Winthrop (W, 114-50)
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Former Alabama and Florida State WR Malik Benson is set to visit Knoxville soon.
Tennessee will be the host of a very talented wide receiver’s visit. Tennessee will be hosting Florida State wide receiver transfer Malik Benson on a visit.
Benson is a former Alabama Crimson Tide and Florida State Seminole wide receiver. Before committing to the Tide, Tennessee was heavily in the conversation to land Benson. Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama were the finalists for the talented wideout.
Benson finished his season with 311 yards and one touchdown. In the season prior with Alabama, he finished with 162 yards and one touchdown.
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Benson will visit both Tennessee and Oregon after calling off his Texas A&M visit.
Tennessee still awaits news from Mike Matthews on if he plans to continue the transfer process. If he does that will be the sixth departure to the portal at the wide receiver position. The Vols will need to bring talent in from the portal to even the playing field and it starts with a big impression from Benson.
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