University of Florida and had been accredited. You’re now going to start off and
accept a new first-year class: If we know ANYTHING, it’s how to educate a firstyear
class. At that point, for those students who are entering their first-year class,
they’d be getting not what was available in PIMS but something vastly enriched
because of the additional resources that we brought to bear.
So all logic told me that we were going to get provisional accreditation. I just
didn’t understand that THEY didn’t understand what provisional accreditation
was. So the survey team came, had a great visit, good report, no fault with the
report or with the people who did the survey. We had brought in some people
who had formerly been associated with LCME to give us advice about how to
prepare for the visit. They were satisfied that we had done everything we should
do; we were satisfied we had done everything we should do. And then it goes
before the Liaison Committee, and they turn us down. Denied accreditation.
At that point, we did what every lawyer does when you lose your case: We’re
gonna appeal! So we filed an appeal. We then went to Chicago and made a presentation
before the Liaison Committee. I’d like to contain my immodesty here,
but I can’t: It was a WONDERFUL presentation. Everybody who spoke – not
just Myra, and the dean, and one of the faculty members, but we also had two
medical students [Julie Gladden and Javier Miller] also spoke, and they were
wonderful. We just couldn’t be better represented than having these medical students
speak about their experience and why they had selected FSU and what
kind of education they were getting at FSU. This was as fine a presentation as I’ve
ever seen. It was great.
We lost! Shortly after we made the presentation, we return home and get
word that they had turned down our appeal. So I now have a duty to report to
the Board of Trustees at Florida State University. Who’s the chair of the Board
of Trustees at this point? John Thrasher! He has left the Legislature … and been
appointed as chair of the Board of Trustees at Florida State University. We had to
have a meeting with the Board of Trustees to explain to them what had happened
to our accreditation process. All along, I’d been giving people assurances: “Gosh,
we’re right on track. We’re doing everything we need to do. We’re gonna be OK.”
I’ve had this great confidence, even after we were first turned down. I was positive
we were going to win the appeal. And after hearing the presentation that my
colleagues made, I was just fully confident. But we lost.
And so I had to report to the board about it. When I got the news that we had
lost our appeal, I got really angry. I was very angry. The night I heard about it,
I went on my home computer and started typing a complaint against the AMA
and the Association of American Medical Colleges, a complaint in antitrust that
cited from their website. It cited the fact that their rules did not allow for provisional
accreditation. It cited the fact that that was anti-competitive….
I took that complaint in to our general counsel, who was then Richard
McFarlain, and I said, “Richard, here’s our complaint. I want you to get an antitrust
lawyer to look this over and get it in good shape and let’s get it filed. I want
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