What would you do to a person who brought several lawsuits to your place of work, angered the core group of your employees and altogether changed little in the quality of your business during the past few years?

If you’re the USF Board of Trustees, you give that person a huge salary increase, along with a plethora of unneeded and unearned bonuses.

My posterior nearly hit the floor when I saw the terms of USF President Judy Genshaft’s proposed new contract. The thing is worth more than a million dollars. Currently, Genshaft’s salary is a piddly $237,000.

What aggravates me the most is that I am the one who is going to end up paying out the wazoo for a person I don’t even think should have the job she has. Genshaft, in her short tenure as president, has shown me that she is the model of incompetence.

Numerous lawsuits with her name on them have piled up. She juggled the Sami Al-Arian situation for almost a year before passing the case to someone else.

Along with the Gestapo-type tactics to expel Al-Arian came a direct attack on academic freedom and the fundamental right of tenured professors to say what they want without fear of repercussion.

And now, it looks like the faculty union is going to lose its privilege of collective bargaining under her watch.

What is Genshaft being paid $237,000 for? And, where is the justification for another $800,000 in salary and goodies?

A couple of these goodies are pretty extravagant. She gets a car, complete with a driver, to ride around campus with her window cracked so she can wave to her peons, er, students.

Or how about travel and entertainment allowances? I can understand USF paying if she is traveling for a conference in the school’s name, but not taking her family to Europe for a month.

Or how about her $100,000 signing bonus? Two thirds of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, eat your heart out. The justification for this farce is that “competent” presidents are being recruited with higher salaries to schools that are losing their competent presidents to retirement.

Has anyone else considered that Genshaft might not be worth such a signing bonus?

I would hardly rank a president who has brought USF into the limelight in the past few years for all the wrong reasons as competent. Perhaps, it’s time we pawn Judy off to the highest bidder and start over.

But my favorite is the spousal recognition and bonus. The BOT wants to compensate Genshaft for being married? Does she get a stipend for taking in her parents, or gift certificates for Chuck E. Cheese for her children, nieces and nephews? In what twisted world do you get handed money for having a partner? Please tell me, ’cause I want in.

This whole situation is absurd. Pay Genshaft her salary for being here, but the BOT shouldn’t reward her for the subpar job she has done thus far.

Oh, well. At least the BOT knows it’ll be invited to Judy’s Christmas party this year.

Joe Roma is a junior majoring in political science.rahner13@hotmail.com