USA News Hub

It seemed like things couldn’t get any more shocking after Tennessee Republicans kicked two Black State Representatives out of the State Legislature last year. But the latest move affecting Tennessee’s only publicly-funded, Historically Black University still managed to send shock waves across the state.

On Thursday, Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who is white, signed a bill from the majority white legislature removing the entire board of Tennessee State University.

Republicans have consistently complained about the leadership at TSU. An audit on Thursday—showing “significant procedural deficiencies,” including serious issues with housing at TSU — may have been the final nail in the coffin for the board. Although, it’s worth noting that the audit found “no malfeasance or fraud by executive leadership.”

However, Democrats say that the issues with the TSU have to do with chronic underfunding.

“Tennessee State University was denied those resources, and because they were denied the resources there were problems that occurred,” said State Rep. Justin Pearson, who was ousted from the State Legislature last year. “But instead of us rectifying the problems that we created through racist policies by underfunding Tennessee State University, we’re now advocating to vacate their board.”

Democratic State Rep. Bo Mitchell also noted that he’d seen plenty of “horrendous” audits of other universities, but it was suspicious that only in the case of an HBCU did Republicans decide to remove an entire board.

“Have we ever, ever vacated an entire board of a university before? Have we ever done that?” asked Mitchell, according to ABC News.

Republicans countered that this was not going to be a big shift.

“All we’re talking about is the board … It’s vacating some personalities and bringing others in,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth told ABC News. “The goal is to make TSU successful.”

The new appointees are also Black, and primarily come from the business community, including executives at Bank of America Memphis and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.

However, despite the new board being Black, on social media some folks were skeptical about what type of representation to expect.

“The new board will be sage steele, jason whitlock, stacey dash, kanye west, and rachel dolezal,” joked one user. 

“To be fair Rachel might not fit their ideological goals… you know that’s going to Candace,” replied another user.

The new board will have to wait for approval from the State Legislature before their appointments are official.