Anthony Young sent us faculty an email today. Interesting that he wants to communicate with us but will not reciprocate. Letters sent by you, an individual, or you together with colleagues begging for the board to pay attention to hopeless state university merely nets you a form letter saying not to bother them. But here is a letter from FOW Board Chair Anthony Young. Oh, I guess we'd better "Listen Up." Long and short of it: the Board of Trustees is not going to recognize the Faculty Senate, I suppose it will be disbanded unless...(read below or check your email).
Apparently soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many faculty have been complaining about the faculty senate. That is, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many faculty are complaining to the administration, not to their fellow faculty members. Just like ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL those students complaining to the administration about how much the faculty persecutes them.
The final paragraph of this letter is the most cynical statement of all:
"The Board firmly believes that Chicago State University deserves to have a strong, effective Faculty Senate. Therefore the Board encourages all University faculty members to become more involved in the shared governance process and work to re-establish the Faculty Senate..."
Is Anthony Young foolish or cynical? "Shared governance," yeah, right. Shared Governance are two words you haven't seen written here on this blog in a long time because in March of 2013 President Watson and his best buds in the southside political machine and churches swarmed Governor Quinn into overriding Young's predecessor, Gary Rozier, and two other members who finally wanted to put an end to the Watson patronage pony. Any shred of shared governance that might have existed on this campus ended that month. Tell me Mr Young, whatever happened to the much-touted "University Shared Governance Committee?" Why was their survey never made public? Why was the HLC monitoring report such a trumped up document with no real "communication" about its contents communicated before it was sent off? Shared Governance, PUH-LEASE. No one (even all those faculty members who you believe are complaining to the administration) believes anything but that Wayne Watson wants to centralize and control everything on this campus in the president's office. Neither the Provost Office nor the Board of Trustees operates as independent overseers of this university. My goodness, he's even got you, the chair of the Board of Trustees, writing this letter. Where are the signatures of your fellow board members?
Anthony Young spare us your phony concern for shared governance and "faculty complaints." Like your friend Wayne Watson, you only listen to whom you want, and you are fooling no one with this bluster. You will not achieve UNITY at this university by trying to enforce UNIFORMITY. Shut down the Senate, shut down student newspaper, shut down the SGA, you will still not be able to shut us up.
Young and the other agents of the ruling elite and their racism should be ashamed of themselves. They should be jailed for denying working class people and people of color on this campus educational and career opportunities. Young and the BOT's neglect of CSU, their lack of oversight, their failure to protect CSU, is criminal and immoral.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Wayne and Anthony can trot out some member of the campus community to publicly support them and talk about their credentials as Black educational leaders. I'm sure most of us will buy this convenient lie in order to remain comfortable in our air conditioned offices. "I knew it. All the problems of hiring girlfriends and incompetents, loss of students, repression, bullying, meanness are due to the Faculty Senate," they will say. "It is because of the tactics of the student and faculty resistance to Watson that CSU has a bad name not because of Wayne's cronyism, retaliation against employees and students or incompetence. It is Corday's or Bionaz's or McFarland's fault for pointing out the crimes. It is Jokari Miller's fault for not taking off his hat. If he would have done as Wayne said and taken off his hat, he would have never been beaten and choked by campus police." Never do FOWs or his cowardly apologists ever develop an argument that Wayne has done a good job. They couldn't possibly. So, they blame the messengers and the victims. And pat themselves on the back safe and secure in their delusions that they have stood up for our university, our students and/or 'the Black community.' Dutifully ignorant, they make excuses like the tactics used to resist Watson are distasteful or claim that faculty have not tried to "work" with Wayne.
How cheaply we sell our dignity.