It's the Faculty's Fault! No, really it is.

So I think I have finally discovered what really ails this university. It is none other than the Faculty Senate, a body that I have the privilege to represent and preside over. 

Yes, loyal readers, it is the Faculty Senate that earned the university more than 100 audit findings in three years. It is the Faculty Senate that is responsible for the largest decrease in enrollment in Illinois public universities. It is the Faculty Senate that has not increased the size of the university endowment through its fund raising efforts. It is the Faculty Senate that has single handedly damaged the reputation of the university by hiring administrators who have falsified their job applications. It is the Faculty Senate that has needed to appoint three Vice Presidents of Enrollment Management in four years. It was the Faculty Senate that appointed an interim provost, who possessed neither the credentials nor qualifications, including no terminal degree, not possessing tenure or rank of full professor at the time of appointment. It is the Faculty Senate that continues to conduct fruitless searches ensuring interim appointments in key areas. It is the Faculty Senate that generated an undeniably unconstitutional communications policy that it later had to embarrassingly rescind. It was the Faculty Senate that foisted a ridiculous computer usage policy on the university that it also had to embarrassingly rescind. It was the Faculty Senate that hired unqualified applicants at exorbitant salaries without the use of faculty search committees. It was the Faculty Senate that directed college deans to violate the faculty contract and write Departmental Application of Criteria documents for departments in their colleges. Those would be the same departments, many of which were reorganized by the Faculty Senate without consulting the faculty on the impact of those reorganizations. It is the Faculty Senate that has not provided an annual university organization chart to the university community per the directive of Board of Trustees governance documents. It was the Faculty Senate that eliminated the Graduate College in order to remove the Dean of the College. It was the Faculty Senate that has introduced chaos into the tenure of academic department chairs by either not appointing the faculty selected chairs and reducing terms from three years to one year; this done despite the fact that chairs serve at the pleasure of the Faculty Senate and can be removed at any time. It was the Faculty Senate that has hired more attorneys than any administration in the university’s history. It was the Faculty Senate that gave top administrators $20,000 plus raises in the face of marginal performance. It was the Faculty Senate that called on a ‘political godfather’ to prevent it from being disbanded for all of its failures. It was the Faculty Senate that imposed on academic departments a mandatory Senior Thesis without discussion or consultation with or consideration of the expertise of faculty within their respective disciplines. It was the Faculty Senate who fired the former Vice President for Administration after he put the university in the best cash position for the last two decades. It was the Faculty Senate that fired the Director of Institutional Research after he had the audacity to work with faculty.
What is that you ask loyal readers? Has your humble narrator erred in his assessment of responsibility? My apologies, loyal readers, I believe I have mis-spoken. It actually wasn’t the Faculty Senate that was responsible for the litany of aforementioned failures. It was the university’s president. That would be the same president who received a resounding vote of no-confidence from the Faculty Senate for his nearly complete and utter failure as president of Chicago State University. It is the same Faculty Senate that is under attack from the regime for its audacity to question his incompetence and his administration’s general ineptitude. It is the same Faculty Senate that was forced to reorganize after an ill-conceived and poorly executed reorganization of two of the university’s colleges. And now it is that president who is challenging how the faculty of this university organize themselves. Presenting himself as a champion for egalitarianism, he is seeking to unilaterally change the structure of the Senate and failing that convince the Board of Trustees to disband the Faculty Senate. Your humble narrator is unaware of the statistical representativeness of the Senate. If any of my distinguished colleagues have data on the representativeness of the Faculty Senate, please feel free to weigh in and disabuse me of whatever misconceptions I appear to hold.
The irony of the most recent assault on the faculty is that administrators at this university have never been able to create culture change or even get the most basic functions consistently performed and now this president is presenting himself as a paragon of adherence to established process. It is laughable on its face that such a contention would be publicly uttered. This, of course would be a first for a president who has managed to make a mess of just about every aspect of the university since his arrival. Let’s be clear, this university has never functioned along the lines of any other university so it is disingenuous to now proclaim adherence to established procedures when none of those procedures have ever been followed. I expect the same treatment of all university committees. I expect examination of meeting minutes and Board approval of governance documents. That in and of itself would be an accomplishment given that two of three Board governance documents have not been revised or approved in thirteen years. The hypocrisy of this president is astounding and yet I trust you loyal readers will not be bamboozled by any of the ridiculous rhetoric emanating from the third floor of the administration building.