OPINION: State’s hollow attacks prioritizes politics, not facts

National headlines are filled with stories about higher education under attack due to political directives. The threats I face are much closer to home.

I am not a politician. I am an educator who has spent my career elevating others. Yet I now find myself the target of smear campaigns orchestrated by New Mexico public officials. As president, I worked tirelessly on behalf of Western New Mexico University for nearly 14 years. We received a decade’s worth of clean audits, grew the university foundation’s assets by nearly 400%, improved academic programs, and completed numerous beautification and expansion projects.

After arm’s-length negotiations, and to avoid negative attention for the school, WNMU’s Board of Regents and I agreed I should step down, despite having 30 months remaining on my contract, and waive potential legal claims. In exchange, I received a fair severance package based on the months left on my contract.

New Mexico’s attorney general filed a lawsuit challenging this agreement, attempting to use his position to usurp the regents’ constitutional authority. While I am confident that suit will fail, the state is now spending even more money on a new attack against me that is shocking and deeply insulting.

Recently, the State Ethics Commission filed litigation based on the absurd claim I violated state law when I held an event related to my daughter’s wedding at my home on the beautiful campus of WNMU.

After her engagement, I suggested my daughter get married at WNMU. She looked at several options, and originally chose a different venue, but agreed in late March 2023, to hold the wedding at the university on May 13, 2023.

Her wedding was not the first at the university. As was my responsibility, I paid the university’s standard rate for the venue, chairs, tables and personnel.

The commission specifically alleges I had a patio at the president’s house expanded for the wedding. This is nonsense. As president I was required to live on campus and host events on behalf of the university. The president’s house has a patio that is used for college functions and served as our backyard.

The university began construction on the main patio in 2019. A design for additional work to enhance accessibility was finalized in October 2022. My daughter became engaged in November 2022. The project evolved to include not only more effective and less expensive accessibility improvements, but also a small patio extension — changes that made sense and offered broader benefits to the university. Overall, to support the project’s success, I took steps to reduce costs by over $120,000, improve the patio area, optimize drainage to protect surrounding buildings and ensure accessibility.

Under normal circumstances, public officials are commended for such actions. It is interesting that the commission wishes to penalize me for saving the state money and views this as unethical.

Additionally, when I told the university’s project management team to prioritize completion of the patio extension, my daughter’s wedding was still scheduled to take place at a different venue. I expect timely completion of all projects, and this one was ultimately delayed by over five months which clashed with patio usage for commencement and related events.

Indeed, the state wants the public to ignore the fact that future commencements and campus events will make use and already have made use of the improvements. These improvements were designed for such purposes.

It is important to me and my family that the people of New Mexico know the facts, know my commitment to the students and know my character.

While presented under the guise of accountability, these ongoing attacks are motivated by nothing more than political and personal vendettas and a grab for headlines. We need to take a hard look at these facts and ask whether those leading our most trusted agencies are truly reflecting the values we hold dear. New Mexicans deserve leadership that respects our trust — not takes it for granted.

My legacy at WNMU lives on in the thousands of graduates who are making meaningful contributions across New Mexico. Those of us who dedicate our careers to education do so out of a deep commitment to learning and improving our students’ lives and our society. That mission seems to have become inconvenient, or even threatening, to some of our local political leaders.

I have spent my life serving and educating future generations and my hope is that their values will always reflect the highest ethical standards. In this matter, state officials are falling well short of those standards.

Joseph Shepard is the former president of Western New Mexico University.