majority of the science faculty agreed that, for the sake of their professional reputations,
they didn’t want FSU to be the first. But in 2004, the two legislators who
had been pushing the idea of a chiropractic school at FSU came to power and
forced the issue on us, right as we were busy with our final accreditation efforts.
The unbelievable fact was that there existed no public chiropractic school in
the nation, yet they were trying to establish it at FSU in the shadow of our new
medical school. The legislative leaders passed a law authorizing the “chiropractic
medicine degree program at Florida State University” and included building
funds and a recurring funding stream of $9 million annually in the 2004 legislative
session.
Everybody in town was talking about it. They said: “Why aren’t you guys up
in arms?” Well, we couldn’t get up in arms about it. We were fighting for our lives
in the Legislature and everywhere else. We couldn’t open our mouths. We were
even asked to silence the opposition of our medical students.
Ultimately, in early 2005, two months after the LCME site visit and one
month before we received our first full LCME accreditation, the Capital Medical
Society, the FSU faculty and the FSU Graduate Policy Committee vociferously
opposed the chiropractic school. On Jan. 14, 2005, the FSU Board of Trustees
refused to approve it and sent it to the Florida Board of Governors, which also on
Jan. 27, 2005, voted against forming the Chiropractic School at FSU.
Thankfully, a local M.D. became our champion and visited each member
of the FSU Board of Trustees and Board of Governors at his own expense. Dr.
Ray Bellamy fought for us, talking about how bad it would be for a chiropractic
school to come to Florida State. Well, it didn’t. •
60 | Breaking the Mold