While it’s not entirely surprising that an organization like Miss America was run in part by people who felt it appropriate to write crude, rude and nasty emails about the contestants, it’s still faintly astonishing that this organization still exists in the first place. In a statement, interim board chairman Dan Meyers said that the process for selecting the new leadership will be quite different.
Instead of whatever cloak and dagger process that was previously in place for selecting new leadership, four former Miss Americas and state directors will suggest four people to make a search committee and the board will choose a former Miss America to join. Once the committee is assembled, they will figure out what the new leadership should look like and then pick people to replace the ones that had to quit.
This sounds like an awful lot of pussyfooting for a scholarship contest, but given the fact that the organization’s former CEO called one of the winners “trash,” you can’t really be too careful. “The board wanted to have a process that was unprecedented in terms of openness, transparency and inclusion,” Meyers said in his statement. Given the turbulent nature of leadership transitions, asking all the stakeholders to be a part of this process was the best way.”
