The Faculty Senate Conflict in the Chronicle of Higher Education

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education by Peter Schmidt. The article traces the unique history of the current fight between the Chicago State Faculty Senate and the school's administration. As we already surmised, Chicago State's use of the Illinois FOIA against one of its own advisory bodies is unprecedented. As far as the rationale for the administration's action, none of our administrators mentioned the purported reason for their concern over the February Senate election: the disfranchisement of eligible voting faculty. Instead, Thomas Wogan claims that a small number of Senators "want to grind [a] political ax," and use the Senate as their own "soapbox" to air complaints about the administration. Wogan asserts that this dissident fringe has "hijacked" the Senate in order to fulfill from their desire to "tear down the name of this university," putting "shared governance at risk" in the process.

Whoa now, what happened to the administration's concern with those poor eligible voters who were unable to vote? What happened to the administration's concern with the propriety of the election? Apparently those concerns have vanished and been replaced with a desire to address the question of opposition voices in the Senate. Citing the recent James Crowley decision, Schmidt writes, "[t]he current clash over the Faculty Senate's election hardly represents the first time the university's administration and board have been accused of trying to silence their critics."

For the entire article see Peter Schmidt, "Clash Between Chicago State U. and its Faculty Leaders Redefines Hardball," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 6, 2014: http://chronicle.com/article/Clash-Between-Chicago-State-U/149233/