Coastal Carolina University Board of Trustees has ended its executive session, held Friday morning to discuss a personnel matter.
The board of trustees are now in their regular meeting.
In between the two meetings, we interviewed D. Wyatt Henderson, the chairman of the board. The raw interview with him is attached to this story.
Campus police were set up in front of the E. Craig Wall Building Friday morning where the executive session was being held in anticipation of a protest in support of former head football coach David Bennett, who was fired from his coaching position one week ago today.
Four protestors stood outside for several hours Wednesday morning because they disagree with Bennett's dismissal from his coaching position. "He's a man of principle, he's a great coach, he's had a great record here at Coastal and the way that he was terminated, we believe is inappropriate. We believe it was unfounded and we're here to support him," Marshall Biddle said.
Marshall Biddle is the son of CCU Board of Trustees member Larry Biddle.
Biddle hopes the board will convince the administration that firing Bennett was not the right thing to do. He acknowledged changes may need to be made in some parts of the sports program, but he said Bennett is the right man for the job.
"We're not out here to tear anything up or burn any cars or anything like that, we just we believe that the decision they made is going to be catastrophic for this university economically and I just think it's going to kill the football program," Biddle added.
We asked Mr. Henderson if he had seen a letter sent to the board from Tyler Thigpen, former CCU player and current NFL player, urging the board to reinstate Bennett. He said he had not seen the letter.
We understand the university will be issuing a response to the letter at some point Friday. We'll pass that on when we receive it.
