News and notes....

So is it true that our fair university has taken a page from the corporate world’s playbook and moved us into the realm of mergers and acquisitions. To wit, is it true that Chicago State University is merging with Daley College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago in a heretofore unprecedented ultra articulation agreement? The proposal which has not been formally presented to the Faculty Senate for its consideration is but the first step in the assimilation of CSU into the Chicago City Colleges in some 21st Century higher education hybrid. Your humble narrator can only hope that the university administration has done its due diligence by thoroughly investigating whether this ‘merger’ needs approval by either the Illinois Board of Higher Education or the North Central Association; whether the Illinois House or Senate Higher Education Committees need to investigate this process; whether the university Board of Trustees needs to approve the agreement; or whether the faculty of the university will be consulted given the clear curricular implications of such a merger. If the administration has not received in writing, the blessings of the aforementioned bodies, then they have demonstrated a deplorable degree of negligence that continues to engender a lack of confidence in those associated with the university. If all of those agencies have given their blessing, why has there been no public discussion of such a major change in the operation of the university? Is this project an indicator of a more opaque communication process than the prior administration? Is there something in this merger that is being deliberately hidden from the faculty? It is time for the Faculty Senate to demand information on the university’s first foray the mergers and acquisitions world.

So our women's basketball season is off and running. The Ladies played at a tournament at the United States Air Force Academy this past weekend. They will be off during finals week but will have their next home game on December 17th against Akron. Unfortunately for some that is the same night as the Commencement. How are the women going to play a home game in the Jones Convocation Center if the Commencement is scheduled for the same night? The short answer is that they won’t. They will play at the Jacoby Dickens Building in a clearly inferior athletic facility. The real down side is that the university is now liable for a $10,000 penalty for breach of contract with Akron because the contract the university signed months ago stipulated that the game be played in the JCC. Because the university could not de-conflict its events and schedule the commencement for Saturday we will now pay our opponent to come and play against us. I would think some administrator would have caught this and saved the university $10,000. How much athletic equipment could have been purchased for that amount?

So has anything really changed after the trumpeting of new leadership by of BOT chair, who by the way has some interesting financial challenges outside of the university.