The recent appointment of William McCormick as President of Florida Memorial University (FMU) and the selection of a new Board of Trustees Chair were both legal and official, according to the man named to the latter post.
Walter Weatherington, who again became Chair on Aug. 10, said in a statement that a majority of the Board’s members approved the changes.
Any suggestion otherwise — including a now-pending lawsuit by ex-Chair Brandon Dumas, who alleged with seven Trustees last week that his removal was unlawful and the “presidency was obtained illegally” — are wrong, Weatherington said.
“The Board made its decision (regarding the presidency) based on the results of an evaluation conducted by an independent third-party evaluator. The decision was based on Mr. McCormick’s outstanding performance over the past year and his unfailing commitment to the FMU community,” he said.
“During that same meeting, Dr. Brandon Dumas’ removal from the Board of Trustees for cause was confirmed, based on his failure to meet his obligations under the Bylaws. Dr. Dumas was informed of his violations and mandatory removal in writing on July 22, 2025, and again on August 14, 2025. It is unfortunate that he continues to ignore his removal and unlawfully hold himself out as Chairman.”
Dumas claimed Thursday that Weatherington improperly called a meeting earlier this month, during which trustees voted in McCormick — until recently the school’s interim President — as President.
FMU, one of four Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Florida, has since pushed out a press release announcing the appointment and posted about it on social media.
Dumas’ lawsuit, filed Friday in the 11th Judicial Circuit, contends that only the sitting Chair — which would have been him at the time of the Aug. 10 meeting — or an authorized representative can call meetings.
In a statement, he called the vote by Board members Kimberly Chapman, Norma Ely-Jones, Bernard Jennings, Annamaria Jerome-Raja, Carl Johnson, Brittany McMillon, Vaseal Montgomery, Susan Nystrom and Audrey White a “coup.”
Listed below Dumas’ signature on the statement were the names of Board Vice Chair Mona Lisa Pinkney; Treasurer Deneshea Phelps Owens; members Bartholomew Banks, Dorothy Davis, Marcus Davis and Reggie Leon; Chair Emeritus Charles George; and Brittany McMillon, Secretary and President of the FMU National Alumni Association.
George and McMillon don’t have Board votes, meaning the vote would have been 9-7 if all voting members participated.
This isn’t the first time Dumas has featured prominently in controversial education news. The last time he was removed from a university post was exactly eight years before his FMU ouster.
While working as a Vice Chancellor at Southern University in 2017, he was at the center of a scandal involving a leaked sex tape and internal disputes over campus governance that led to his dismissal from the school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he still lives.
Dumas’ firing, effective Aug. 10, 2017, followed an investigation of his administrative practices and coincided with reports that sexually explicit Snapchat videos, later uploaded to a porn site, were circulating among alumni.
During a closed-door meeting the month before, when Board of Supervisors members voted to uphold then-President Ray Belton’s termination of Dumas, officials referenced the sex tape and testimony from the woman in the video, who told investigators that while she was a Southern University employee, her partner in the video was not.
But members of the Board and critics on campus nevertheless cited declining enrollment, retention problems and department mismanagement as ample justification for Dumas’ removal. The same week the videos emerged, Southern was placed on warning by its accrediting body, putting it at risk for federal defunding.
The Board voted 9-6 to support Belton’s decision to fire Dumas, who sat on the university’s accreditation reaffirmation committee. Dumas sued the Board on the same day his firing took place, but that legal effort fizzled out by January 2018, when a Judge dismissed the complaint, ruling the Board was within its rights to remove an at-will employee.
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