CSU Faculty Voice: Who benefits???

Friday, July 20, 2012

Who benefits???

So I took a moment to consider a question that has been rolling around in my head for a while. I am aware of the confusion, disorganization and dysfunction that permeates the university and has done for the better part of three years. Mind you loyal readers, your humble narrator would never suggest that the university wasn’t broken when the current regime was installed. Clearly it was. What I would suggest is that there are other more critical parts that are broken now as a result of the current regime.I asked myself, who benefits from the current situation. It is a quintessential question in my discipline ( Political Science) and as this is a state university, historically tainted by politics, the question is as relevant now as it ever has been. Who benefits from a university that appears at times, leaderless, directionless, and in aviation terms, in a flat spin headed toward impacting the ground. Who could possibly benefit by what at times could be characterized as not knowing and at other times sheer ineptness? Surely it isn’t the students whose temporal, economic and emotional sacrifice is well known to faculty. It couldn’t possibly be the long suffering faculty, who continue to experience nothing but contempt for what they do. And certainly the university doesn’t benefit from 75 audit findings in the past two years. The university’s most recent chief executive amassed 107 audit findings in ten years. The university's hard working and often unappreciated staff doesn’t benefit by working in a climate of fear, threats of termination and rampant disrespect. The Board of Trustees doesn’t benefit by having to explain the continued failures, previously documented here, of the university. So if the students, the faculty, the Board of Trustees and the university staff don’t benefit by the confusion of workers not being paid, the Information Technology Division being headless, the web entry time keeping system being rolled out prematurely, student enrollment being flat or down, and faculty hiring being delayed and then rushed, then who does benefit?

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Thanks to Haki Madhabuti

"1. He/she must be a scholar of national note, with significant peer review publications and books in his or her field. There must be no doubt as to his/her standing in the community of scholars. This would also include a history of the candidate’s participation in the appropriate professional organizations.

2. He/she must have served with distinction as the administrative head of a major unit within an institution of higher learning or at the important position of Provost and/or Dean. Of course, prior service at the presidential level is preferred.

3. He/she must have a documented history of raising significant monies from the private and public sectors. At most major and research one universities it is not unusual to expect the president to come with a plan to raise in excess of half a billion dollars or more in the first few years.

4. The prospective president must have a consensus buy-in from the faculty, students, administration and staff, therefore, arriving with a unity mandate to lead by joining a University community that has bought into his or her vision for the future."

From an open letter to the CSU Community, 2009.