an expansion of an existing program, which he said, is usually viewed favorably. But most journalism professors felt the change would adulterate what had been a clear focus.
The hostile reaction to the Grady College changes was severe enough that Adams was forced to abandon the proposal, but his top-down management continued to rankle faculty feathers. Criticism of Adams was widespread among the faculty. As botany professor Barry Palevitz observed, “Universities succeed best when the programs come from bottom up and this is from the top down.”
The dawning of the twenty-first century also saw Adams publicly humiliated when one of his biggest administrative blunders was revealed after the firing of head football coach Jim Donnan. And the perception that Adams had little appreciation for the university’s research mission persisted as twenty-six research faculty members sent a letter to Adams and Provost Holbrook expressing concern about the lack of administrative support. Adams met with them and pledged more support. Holbrook backed up Adams’s promise by committing $4.1 million to recruit faculty to fill existing vacancies.
Some of Adams’s troubles with the faculty and staff over administrative and academic issues were out in the open. But an even bigger storm was brewing in the background over issues of spending, compensation, and accountability. Criticism of Adams over spending began almost as soon as he arrived at Georgia. Eyebrows were raised when it became known that the university had spent $90,000 on his inauguration, followed by another $220,000 to renovate the president’s sky box at Sanford Stadium. In response, Adams claimed that he and his wife used the sky box to entertain alumni, legislators, and potential donors at home football games.
Then there was the matter of his personal office. Adams first occupied the same office that his predecessors had used, a modest space in the uninspiring Lustrat House, a small two-story brick dwelling built in 1847 as a professor’s home. The building was relocated to its present location on the old North Campus in 1903. That move so angered Professor Charles Morris that he vacated the premises, and the eponymous Professor Joseph Lustrat’s family occupied the dwelling from 1904 until 1927. It was then converted into a museum, and later into the president’s office.
When Adams took over at Georgia, a $2.1 million renovation was already planned for the 21,000-square-foot building that had housed the Georgia Museum of Art until 1996, when the museum moved into a new structure that was part of expansion of the campus during Knapp’s tenure and in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics. Meanwhile the former museum, erected in 1907 as a library, was to be remade into offices for campus planning and legal affairs. Adams quickly decided the location, near the oldest building on campus, would make perfect digs for him and his senior staff. Two months later the Board of Regents approved Adams’s request, with a price tag that had grown to $2.5 million. The spending occurred at a time of belt-tightening at UGA and drew criticism from among the faculty and students. Critics dubbed the opulent new office space “the winter palace,” adding to a growing perception that Adams had too much appreciation for his personal concerns and too little for academics and research.
Still, Adams seemed to have solidified his support with the chancellor and the governor’s office. In August 2000, Portch gave Adams a sparkling performance review and a $100,000 a year pay raise, bringing his annual compensation to $558,557. The pay hike was financed by the UGA Foundation, as was another $51,000 a year being paid to Mary Adams to accompany her husband and represent the university at various factions. All this spending was beginning not to sit well with some trustees of the UGA Foundation who felt Adams was too free with the private contributions that came in to the university’s primary fundraising operation. In other words, with their money.
Coincidentally, Gerald McCarley, an auditor, had retired in 1999 from Deloitte & Touche, a Big Four professional services firm. He volunteered to set up auditing procedures for Foundation spending. Two inside auditors were assigned to audit cash disbursements on a quarterly basis, with McCarley supervising, and with reports issued to the Foundation board, which also meets quarterly. It wasn’t long before McCarley’s group began questioning Adams’s expenditures. First, it was his use of a Foundation credit card to pay for personal expenses, dinners, and golf outings that seemed unrelated to his job. Sometimes Adams used the credit card for personal travel and would reimburse the Foundation, but even then the Foundation paid additional interest due to his late filings of expense reports. This might not have been a big deal to some, but to McCarley it was money that could have gone to a deserving student. The Foundation eventually revoked the credit card after auditors discovered Adams was using it to pay for expensive dinners for himself, his top assistants, and their wives.
In 2001, the internal auditors questioned a $13,490 charge for a charter airplane to take Adams and two university executives and their wives to Washington for George W. Bush’s inauguration. Although Adams was listed as a passenger on the flight, Foundation officials later learned that he was not on either leg of the flight. He flew commercial to Washington and returned on January 19 and returned January 23 on a different charter at an additional cost of $2,422.50, according to records of that trip. Foundation Chief Financial Officer Cindy Coyle had already flagged the expense, forwarding a copy of the reimbursement request to UGA Vice President for External Affairs Kathryn Costello, who reported directly to Adams but was also executive director of the Foundation.
The auditors’ recommendation on the matter was to “remind executives of the University that they are spending donor contributions and the travel policy of the foundation.” The request was ultimately approved for payment but it resulted in policy changes that increased restrictions and provided for regular review of expenditures of funds that support the president’s office.
For his part, Adams maintained the inauguration trip provided him and other senior university officials with a good opportunity to visit the Georgia congressional delegation. He also bristled at the auditing of presidential expenses, a practice he considered duplicative and unnecessary, and that was abandoned at his direction.
With his cherubic face and shock of white hair, Adams can sometimes seem reserved, almost shy. A devout church-goer, his undergraduate degree is from a school affiliated with the restorationist and generally fundamentalist Churches of Christ. But Adams also has an earthy side and can cuss a streak when riled. And he is quick to anger.
In hindsight, none of this behavior should have surprised Foundation member Wyck Knox, an Atlanta lawyer who gradually became one of Adams’s most vocal critics. As mentioned earlier, he and his wife, Shell Hardman Knox, had been forewarned about Adams’s hiring in 1997. Shell Knox had been unable to get a seat on the search committee, but she had followed the process through a friend, who had told the Knoxes they probably wouldn’t be happy with Adams. The Knoxes learned of Adams’s selection in an early morning phone call. “[The caller] was apologetic,” said Wyck Knox. “He told us [Adams’s] background and the reputation he had at Centre. The reputation was, watch the numbers. Watch the expenses. That’s his reputation everywhere. He will fib on the numbers just like he’s done with Georgia fundraising.”
It’s likely that Adams was told or intuited how Shell and Wyck Knox felt, but he nevertheless was friendly and solicitous toward them when he first arrived on campus. As time passed and Wyck Knox probed into more and more of Adams’s expenditures and actions, the relationship grew tense.
Knox said he began to question the president’s spending of Foundation money after he learned of the charter flight to the Bush inaugural. Following the airplane incident, Knox said he discovered that there were no written guidelines for reimbursement. He also learned about the Foundation credit card that Adams was using.
“In middle of that process Mike asked me to go to dinner with him at Bones [a restaurant in Atlanta’s tony Buckhead neighborhood],” Knox said. “He wanted to talk me into not having any rules. And I remember looking him straight in the eye. I said, ‘Mike, this is not about $5,000 or $10,000. This is about the success of a fundraising campaign. And your job is to raise money for the University of Georgia. Let me put it to
