ARTICLES CONCERNING
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI'S
FINANCIAL PROBLEMS
(September 16, 2010) 31st & Pearl Does President Saunders Need a Larger Plane? One of the greatest scrolls in the
history of USMNEWS.net occurred on 16-Sept-2010, announcing all of the individuals who traveled with USM
president Martha Saunders aboard “USM air” to Omaha, Nebraska, in June of 2009 for a USM baseball game. A
facsimile of that scroll, containing a partial list of the passengers for that trip, appears below.
(September 14, 2010) 31st & Pearl It’s Not an Elephant, It’s a Plane USM president Martha Saunders told the USM
family members gathered on 14-Sept-2010 for the fall 2010 convocation that it would be insulting of her to deliver the
2010-11 State of the University address and not mention the “elephant in the room.”
(September 14, 2010) Aunt Martha’s Extravagance Part 7 – Sneaking in a Beach Trip? Via a Mississippi Open
Records Act request, USMNEWS.net recently obtained a large batch of documents from USM relating to USM
president Martha Saunders’ university aircraft. This series, Aunt Martha’s Extravagance, provides analysis of these
documents. This installment examines the 18-March-2010 trip in the USM airplane taken by Saunders to make a
“SACS Reaffirmation Visit” and to attend “Bond Request meetings.” That invoice is inserted below, and it indicates
that USM charged itself $5,040 for Saunders to take this recent trip.