How does Kelli Stargel embody MEI, Mr. Poly president? LOL
Devin Stevenson's "merit, excellence, and intelligence" riff is hilarious considering he pays Kelli Stargel $220,000 of your money to do exactly ... what? But MEI is a useful term moving ahead.
Kelli Stargel was gifted her husband’s seat in the Florida Legislature, where she accomplished nothing in her however many terms as state representative and senator. She did, however, serve as a reliable pass-through for much more powerful men seeking to stick it to local communities, damage Florida’s public functions, and enrich themselves in various ways. And they appreciated that.
She parlayed that version of “service” into a very (and increasingly) lucrative pretend job at Florida Poly, Florida second silliest “university” now that New College has been looted. Today, that $220,000 pretend job is known as “vice president for strategic initiatives, development, and external relations,” to include overseeing the Poly Foundation, even though they’re also hiring a development director to actually do the work.
In short, “excellence” is not the word that defines her.
So I found this new Ledger article about Poly’s pride in being a lady wasteland deeply amusing — especially this quote from Bryan Brooks, Florida Poly’s vice president of student affairs, enrollment management and strategic communications.
We recruit based on merit, excellence and intelligence. I know that our president likes to say, likes to talk about MEI — merit, excellence and intelligence — and we're simply trying to recruit the brightest minds out there, regardless of gender, race, background or where they come from or financial status. We're after the brightest minds, future innovators, future inventors.
Cuz, I mean, when I think of Kelli Stargel, I think … innovator. Riiiggghhhhtt.
This article, which I did not know was coming, was also exquisitely well-timed for me. Just yesterday I sent Poly a public records request about the expectations of Kelli Stargel’s pretend, taxpayer-funded $220,000 job. It went like this:
Good morning. Pursuant to Florida statutes, I am requesting job descriptions for each of the three roles Kelli Stargel has held at Florida Poly. They are, in chronological sequence:
Senior adviser for strategic relationships
Associate vice president of strategic relationships
Vice president for strategic initiatives, development, and external relations
I am asking for job descriptions for all three roles because I want to see the differences between them.
In addition, I am requesting any performance metrics she is required to meet or pay incentives related to the Poly Foundation. If she has a contract, I am requesting that contract.
We’ll see what I get.
Lakeland mayor’s race should be all about MEI
I also noted that we now have an officially declared candidate in the Lakeland mayor’s race, which will be decided in November.
I happen to think MEI should be the issue in the campaign. So thanks for that, President Stevenson. I’m going to be using “merit, excellence, and intelligence” often. (Although I don’t find merit and intelligence particularly correlated. I guess it depends on how one defines “intelligence.”)
Restoring some semblance of “merit” in all its forms — personal merit, professional merit, moral merit, the merits of any particular situation or issue — to public life and leadership in Lakeland and Polk County would make a very useful civic theme for a competitive campaign and election. It’s certainly what I would run on — if I was going to run (I’m not).
It should not matter where you go to church, who you married, what you inherited, or who your buddies are. Of course, those things matter too much everywhere — in all of human life; but they matter way too much here — with real human consequences.
Competency and assertiveness of the public good outside the bounds of the small nepotistic hierarchy that sits in comfortable, stifling mediocrity atop Lakeland’s organic vibrancy is a leadership and career death sentence in waiting. That’s a civic problem we should try to fix — even a little.
For instance, this is a tiny ruling hierarchy so mediocre and timid that it cannot even say out loud that the obviously innocent Leo Schofield should be exonerated. They all believe it. But they’re afraid of offending failed judges, Brian Haas or Jerry Hill, who is nearly a decade removed from any actual power, but cannot have his wee feelings hurt for keeping an obviously innocent man in prison for virtually his entire life. That is the ultimate failure of merit, which is so so so easy to fix. And yet … they’d rather sacrifice Leo.
This is this is a tiny ruling hierarchy so mediocre and timid it looks at Kelli’s $220,000 bleeding of Lakeland’s vastly underachieving public “university,” which was supposed to have 1000s more students by now and can’t keep the ones it has, and goes: sure, that’s awesome.
And anybody paying any attention to the small, insular, and self-serving world of Lakeland’s institutional and economic ruling class knows we’ve all seen the hierarchy recently execute a very clear, brutal, and unjust reverse MEI.
Trust me on this: my beloved wife (29 very very lucky years on Sunday), who does truly innovate in her advocacy and stewardship of the business and civic experience in downtown Lakeland (I’m biased, of course), who works a lot harder than Kelli for much less money (don’t need to be biased to know that) will absolutely be reverse-MEI’d one day.
It’s just a matter of time. (She does not know I’m writing this; and I’ll probably get in trouble for it.)
Somebody “powerful” will find her too annoying in her strength or too competent or too willing to act on merit, rather than personal identity, or just want some friend or loved one or fellow parishoner to have her gig. If you’re not in the hierarchy here, in public life, you’re always on rented time, without a net. Even if you suck up to it. There is no safety in indignity. Have no illusions about that.
Saying it directly and openly to the people who do it is better defense than waiting for it to happen. So thanks, President Stevenson, if nothing else, you gave me a weapon.