Weds & Thurs Students Speak Up

ATTENTION: CONCERNED STUDENTS
COME SPEAK YOUR MINDThere are many problems that affect students, teachers, and campus workers at Chicago State. We need to do more to address them. Students (and others) who would like to become active from a social justice perspective should assemble
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31 AT 12 NOON
OR
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1 AT 12:30
WILLIAMS SCIENCE CENTER 1F CONFERENCE ROOM (1F LEVEL, WEST SIDE)Topics of interest for concerned students may include, but aren't limited to:

• Bookstore policy of not allowing students to select their own books
• U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adequate services for veterans
• Need for a student newspaper
• Automatic billing of $500 for health services
• Health care cuts in the Chicago area, closing of Oak Forest Hospital; service cuts at Provident, Stroger, and health clinics

• Police abuse, “consent” searches on the street and in cars, support for prisoners
• Student-centered radio station addressing student issues
• Problems receiving good service from financial aid office
• Cuts to state aid to elderly for prescriptions and health care
• ANY OTHER ISSUES AFFECTING US


This announcement has been prepared by those who wish to encourage more students to stand up for social justice. For information contact Pancho McFarland, x2333

What's in a name?

A year ago, as the semester was ending, an administrator told me that when we faculty returned from the summer CSU would be a very different place. Well, that prediction was a year late.

Just before summer began this year @14 junior faculty members across campus in their fourth year retention, found out they were not going to be retained. Since faculty don't hire, deans do, (remember we faculty only "recommend," we are "advisory only" and God help you if you attempt to send a ranking of candidates to your dean, the Deans' prerogative to hire is sacrosanct) then if this isn't a big old administrative failure I don't know what is. In an age when it is a buyer's market for Ph.D.s how could our Deans have hired 14 people who were so completely un-retainable? Maybe that sacrosanct right to hire needs to be reevaluated at contract negotiations. Or, is it that something else is going on masked as cost-cutting measures, get rid of anyone who is potentially a pesky overpaid tenured faculty member? UPI take note.

But faculty were not the only ones to be cut this summer. One year before accreditation, CSU Admin fired its long-standing dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Rachel Lindsey was swept out of office sometime in June--officially she has "retired," but rumors, as they are want to do, abound.

We in the College of Arts and Science then heard that there was to be a massive reorganization of the college departments--ostensibly to save money. All those departments with their money-sucking chairs would be cut down this fall to the confusion of faculty and students who have been wandering around wondering what happened to their dept chair. By January 2012 we are expected to attain our final status as Chicago State Community College with people attached to "divisions"--no info has been forthcoming on how the division head would manage all those former departments and people. All this has been mandated with no consultation of the Senate's Academic Affairs Committee. And isn't there something in the union contract about the need to consult regarding university reorganization? One more ding to the Admin on the failure of shared governance. We are back in Alice's Wonderland: mandate first, then consult those advisory-only faculty later.

So the College of Arts and Sciences is turned into a community college, but where is the savings in money at the university when new lines for administrators are being created over at Cook Admin at the same time? Oh, right. The demise of the departments allows the creation of new Administrators. Got it. As one faculty member said, the CSU Commencement ceremonies in May looked like a reunion of Chicago City College administrators. And another of my more cynical colleagues has been referring to CSU's "City Colleges Reemployment Program" instituted by our ex-Chancellor of City Colleges.

And just to add to this summer melange of mandates and counter-mandates, out comes the Chicago Tribune with the gloves off. We are again on the front page and subject of an editorial and cartoon (that one really hurt)for keeping students with low gpa's enrolled (and I guess able to get financial aid). Of course the CEO was shocked, shocked to find out that this was going on, this practice didn't start with him, he's only been here for 2 years going on three, so no one should blame him for this, that would be unfair because after all he didn't know anything about it.

In the summer, CSU changed its mission and vision and is touting some kind of new "brand." Having lived through the time of the Noel Levitz consultantcy back in the day (does anyone today remember that brand?), I'm wondering if the time isn't right for a name change. The "C" now most certainly stands for Chaos.

If you are as disaffected by all the chaos on campus, let your Senators and UPI reps know. Attend the Board of Trustees meeting coming up in September and let them know how you feel during the public comment section. It may not change anything immediately, but the discontent will go on record. Better yet, join with some students who are trying to organize a meeting to develop a student group to become active concerning campus issues/problems as well as other issues. See the poster below and pass along the info to your students.

ATTENTION: CONCERNED STUDENTS
COME SPEAK YOUR MINDThere are many problems that affect students, teachers, and campus workers at Chicago State. We need to do more to address them. Students (and others) who would like to become active from a social justice perspective should assemble
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 31 AT 12 NOON
OR
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1 AT 12:30WILLIAMS SCIENCE CENTER 1F CONFERENCE ROOM (1F LEVEL, WEST SIDE)
Topics of interest for concerned students may include, but aren't limited to:

• Bookstore policy of not allowing students to select their own books
• U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adequate services for veterans
• Need for a student newspaper
• Automatic billing of $500 for health services
• Health care cuts in the Chicago area, closing of Oak Forest Hospital; service cuts at Provident, Stroger, and health clinics

• Police abuse, “consent” searches on the street and in cars, support for prisoners
• Student-centered radio station addressing student issues
• Problems receiving good service from financial aid office
• Cuts to state aid to elderly for prescriptions and health care
• ANY OTHER ISSUES AFFECTING US


This announcement has been prepared by those who wish to encourage more students to stand up for social justice. For information contact Pancho McFarland, x2333

CJC&FE

So if the conventional wisdom in the academy is that a university reflects its faculty, what has become of CSU faculty? A bit more than two years ago, some faculty expressed concern that the applicant selected by the Board of Trustees to manage the university was not qualified to become president of this institution. He was (is) limited in his understanding of the function, operation and culture of doctoral degree granting institutions. There was concern voiced that CSU was to be turned into a junior college, possibly the new flag ship of the Chicago junior college system, unfortunately the same system that had a 7% graduation rate while being managed by the Board’s candidate. “No,” others protested. Your humble narrator was berated for being a naysayer, a Chicken Little if you will. I was accused of being an “obstacle to progress.” And now two years on, (at least according to a 50 page report from the State University Retirement System) many of us have pretty clear evidence of the inexorable descent from doctoral degree granting institution to junior college serving unprepared, sorry under-prepared, students. The recent top down reorganization of the College of Arts & Sciences and subsequent firing of the long serving dean of the university’s largest college attest to the fact that this regime has only one goal in mind, devolution to a junior college. The recent rejiggering of the CAS was only phase one with phase two coming next year in time for the much anticipated Higher Learning Commission re-accreditation visit. Reducing the number of chairs from 15 to 4 and moving from departments to divisions is clearly a 1980s junior college model. It is not surprising therefore, since the only experience the incumbent has is in a junior college system. It appears as if the CEO is betting that most people will mistake activity for accomplishment. Change for the sake of change, change for the sake of managing by fear and intimidation, change for the purpose of obfuscation are never good reasons for change.
I was struck by the recent memo announcing the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was leaving the university after 35 years. It is possible to infer from the wording of the memo that her departure was expected and voluntary. It was curious to me therefore, when the CEO and Provost were noticeably absent at the going away luncheon hosted in the college on Thursday June 30th. Had her departure been amicable and expected, I am sure the two most senior administrators along with lesser administrators would have wished her well in her post-dean and post university life. I was very struck by this decision being announced during the summer when administrations are notorious for making decisions without any input from faculty who largely are absent from campus. This behavior was the motivation for the Faculty Senate to form the Summer Committee so that shared governance would not be forgotten by administrators during the summer months.
Also curious was the recent elimination of the Economics department and its major and minor programs. One could conclude that junior colleges don’t need Economics so its elimination is understandable as the university's devolution continues. What isn’t understandable is continuing to operate an Ed.D. program or a College of Pharmacy. Those are expensive programs and definitely unneeded in a community college like this university is becoming. I would invite the regime to consider eliminating those two programs which would save at least ten times what is saved by eliminating Economics. And then as CSU focuses on its entrepreneurship mission and selling fish (without Economics?) other programs can benefit from the elimination of those money eating doctoral programs.
Maybe a name change will be in the offing as well. Moving from Chicago State University to Chicago Junior College & Fish Emporium could well be nigh.

New ideas???

So it would probably be hyperbolic to describe the university’s inexorable march toward becoming a junior college as the educational equivalent of the Bataan Death March of World War II. During that event more than 11,000 Filipino and American military personnel lost their lives. But, the current period in the university’s history seems similar in that the university is being driven in a direction of inevitable failure by leadership that does not grasp the significance of the collateral damage it is inflicting by its continued mismanagement. The latest torture the university endures is two-fold.

First, CSU will become a drop-in center for students from Moraine Valley Community College with our or their students taking classes at CSU taught by MVCC faculty. The reasoning for this escapes me. If it is designed to circumvent some first-time, full-time freshman designation for students admitted to CSU who are “under-prepared,” it probably should have been managed a bit more opaquely so as not to attract attention to the fact the regime is trying to circumvent the rules established by the US Department of Education. Also, given that faculty are routinely told that there is limited classroom space, especially for night classes, when would these classes be scheduled and what CSU faculty would be displaced? This professionally unhealthy connection to junior colleges is disturbing. The more we act like a juco, the harder it will be to be taken seriously as a doctoral degree granting institution.

The second scheme is much more disingenuous. In it, students enrolled for more than twelve semesters who are not graduating are to be contacted and encouraged to change majors to an Individualized Curriculum in order to graduate, and the university will foot the bill for them to come back and complete the last semester in the original degree program to which they had enrolled. I must say that if this is the way the regime plans to fulfill the promises of the testimony given by the CEO on March 17^th to the Illinois House Appropriations Higher Education committee, then I am extremely dubious. This type of academic shenanigan is more likely to create an accreditation stir than the march toward becoming a junior college. It also does not consider the reasons for the student not having completed a degree in 12 semesters. The impact on students has not been considered. What message does it send to students to tell them to accommodate the university when the university may not have accommodated them? Given the reported difficulties of ‘under-prepared’, working students, I would have thought the efforts would have been directed to assisting students not finding ways to cheat the system.

I believe this scheme compromises the greatest asset of the university, its academic reputation. Of all of the negative publicity CSU has received in the past 15 years, its academic performance and reputation have not been directly threatened. Students and alumni continue to speak favorably of the academic experience they received. This scheme is a direct assault on the faculty of this institution. Matters that affect the academic integrity of the institution must be discussed and decided upon by the faculty. Most universities have language on the diploma that states faculty grant the degree, not administrators with their inane ideas for gaming the system. And with the reputation of the institution remaining in tatters under management, indistinguishable from the Daniel Administration, this appears to be another series of self-inflicted wounds that will no doubt be blamed on “the white media” who will not give a poorly managed institution a pass on its worse than mediocre administrative performance.

Here’s a suggestion. Raise admission standards, eliminate all remedial courses, do not offer special programs during the summer to compensate for sub-standard K-12 education, and recruit high quality students from outside of the city of Chicago and State of Illinois. CSU will not be recognized as a high quality doctoral degree granting university until it has leadership that understands it is not the local high school.

OD Experts Anyone???

So I was talking to one of my colleagues about the state of the university and posed a question about the efficacy having psychologists with expertise in organizational behavior conduct an assessment of the institution, much like a therapist assesses a patient. I remember from graduate school my Organization Theory professor telling us that organizations are just people writ large. I also recall commenting to a past president that if she wanted to leave a real legacy at the university, she would need to change the corporate culture of the institution, essentially do something to modify its behavior. It appears that presidents come to CSU with expectations of constructing new buildings with little regard for changes to the core of the university. What might a year-long observation and analysis by OD experts of Chicago State University reveal? Would the experts observe that communication is poor? Might they discover there is no culture of accountability? Might they observe that leadership has been negligible? Might they find there is no morale problem with rank and file employees because there is no morale? Might they find a faculty that believes it has been neglected, ignored and overlooked in matters that are central to the sound operation of a university? Might they observe a culture of administrative paternalism that routinely contributes to low retention and graduation rates? Might the high turnover of administrative personnel catch the attention of observers? And if only a fraction of these observations were true, what would they recommend the university do to address them? I don’t think we would need a team of experts to assess the university AND at this point in its downward spiral, could that hurt? Since incoming administrations have a peculiar predilection of not listening to faculty, outside experts might be the only hope of rescuing a drowning university.

The under message

So I realize that human communications is a complicated phenomenon. There are the words that are spoken, the words that are unspoken, the gestures made and withheld and the messages over and under the words. I am curious why over the past three days, I received 50 emails about the Drug and Alcohol Policy at the university. I understand this is the response to an audit finding that the university was not in compliance with Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 (41 U.S.C., Section 701, et.seq.) and the Drug-Free Schools Act of 1989 (34 C.F.R. 86, et seq.). I also understand that creating the paper trail may have required sending an email and a written memo to all faculty and staff but 50 emails. It gives me pause to ask why the massive over-reaction to a fairly straightforward requirement. Does the university get bonus points on the next audit for sending out 50 emails? Probably not. And the message under this response is the regime will generate a great deal of activity with little accomplishment. Discerning observers never mistake activity for accomplishment and I consider myself a discerning observer.

Musical Deck Chairs

So I mentioned in an earlier post that the Titanic deck chair reorganizing continues unabated at CSU. Most recently the College of Arts and Sciences became the latest beneficiary of guidance from on high. Apparently the university has been informed that it has too many administrators and that it needs to reduce the number forthwith. This is curious because one might think this is somehow related to a constrained state budget or maybe ineffectiveness of the previous “right sizing” efforts. Maybe the university is spending too much on administrators and reducing their numbers will save the university money which could be used for any number of other purposes. Sadly, no. This reorganizing will not save any money, combine like disciplines to improve scholarship, reduce workloads to allow focus on core activities nor will the university become more efficient or streamlined. The only benefit will be that the Illinois Board of Higher Education can tell the state legislature that the number of administrators has been reduced and that the higher education machine is now running more efficiently because everybody knows that administrators don’t contribute anything to a university’s function. However, it would have been helpful to inform the discussion to have something in writing, outlining 1) what problem is being solved by reorganizing, 2) what data supports the construction of that problem as a problem 3) what outcomes are being sought to establish that the problem has been solved and 4) what resources will be made available to mitigate the unforeseen consequences of this solution.
Well run institutions use the written word to communicate messages. Regimes past and present at this institution has been reluctant to communicate clearly in writing about what is expected so I am not surprised when the desired outcomes are not achieved.
Faculty and administration should have a productively adversarial relationship because they serve different purposes. However, in this case it is administrators as a class who are being unfairly targeted. Yet it appears to be partially self inflicted. During the past regime in an attempt to weaken the Civil Service and the Union, many employees were reclassified as administrators though clearly they weren’t. Now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. Instead of focusing on weakening the union or Civil Service good leadership looks into the future and asks itself about possible repercussions of its actions.
So here the university is reorganizing the Colleges of Arts and Sciences to eliminate three department chairs. Lumping English, Communications, Media Arts and Theater with Foreign Languages and Literatures doesn’t make much sense seeing as it was done before and failed. Why then would the university repeat something that has failed? Oh wait, I forgot. This isn’t about whether the university looks or acts like a university; it is about something else.
So instead of aligning Art & Design with Music because they are both humanities or History and Philosophy with African American Studies because AFAM has only one faculty member and the program is always ‘at-risk’, let’s be more creative. Let’s reorganize the departments alphabetically. There are currently twenty four departments, degrees or programs in the college. If there were no more than four in each unit, African-American Studies, Anthropology, Art and Design and Biological Sciences would form one department. A second department would be Chemistry, Communications, Computer Science and Criminal Justice. The third department would be composed of Economics, English, Foreign Languages and Literatures and Geography. The fourth department would be comprised of History, Liberal Studies, Mathematics and Media Arts. Music, Philosophy, Physics, and Political Science would form the fifth department. And rounding out the half dozen A-Z departments would be Psychology, Sociology, Theater and Women & Gender Studies. Since disciplinary affiliation has no import here using a numerically symmetrical approach is as valid an approach as any.
Or the college could be aligned by size. There could be one or two huge departments with the bulk of students or faculty and there could be a smaller department with no degree programs like Philosophy, Anthropology, Theater, and Communications.
A third option is to have the departments be randomly distributed through a lottery process with a pre-determined department size of no more than five disciplines per department.
Maybe a musical chair rotating department structure would work. So divide the faculty in the College into five groups. Create five departments, A-E. In year one all of the #1 faculty are in Department A. The next year they rotate to Department B. That way the university can tell its political masters that it is changing things and nothing is the same as it was. That way we can look innovative and distract them from any of the institutions other shortcomings like repeat audit findings.
All of the foregoing suggestions are based on the premise that the administration is unwilling to manage the university as a university and is only interested in maintaining its dysfunctional administrative structure and behavior. Since reorganizing isn’t based on cost savings, organizational efficiency or disciplinary improvement why not try something different.
The administration could look at how the university got to this point and adjust accordingly. If there are employees classified as administrators who shouldn’t be, RECLASSIFY them. If there are that many who can be reclassified, then I imagine that tinkering with the academic side of the university would be unnecessary. The regime could request in writing from the IBHE exactly what they want, create the paper trail and provide transparency. The continued use of ‘oral tradition’ style communication is inappropriate for public bodies. Once the request is received, then the university has something to respond to. Currently it is a shot in the dark with no real target in sight. And then in a bold move the regime could dispute the conclusion that the institution has too many administrators and challenge the IBHE to justify its conclusions. With a thoughtful analysis the regime may be able to refute the conclusion of the IBHE of too many administrators and turn the request back.
I am deeply concerned at unneeded chaos in academic affairs. Most of the criticism this university receives and has received historically has nothing to do with the academic performance of our students or professional accomplishment of the faculty. That would include the graduation rate criticism as well. The criticism has centered around administrative incompetence and it feels like here we go again. The university has demonstrated repeatedly over the past two decades that it does not manage its resources well and this is just another example. The resource here is time. The dean and department chairs have invested countless hours in an endeavor that does nothing to improve the academic activities of the university. The faculty, students, and alumni of this university suffer collateral damage from administrations that either have no experience managing a university, do not appreciate the core activity of the university or are unwilling to fight to protect the integrity of the university by telling its masters they are wrong. The expression ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’ applies to institutions as well as individuals.

Where has my data gone???

So as a long time observer of our administrations, Board of Trustees and the general operation of the university, I was dismayed by a comment made by the CEO at the last BOT meeting; namely that the university has relinquished through attrition its Institutional Research function to another state university. With the former Vice President retired, the Associate Vice President departed and the department administrative assistant re-assigned, the university has sought outside assistance in fulfilling a critical and often overlooked activity. As of the last BOT meeting, Southern Illinois University is now providing the Institutional Research support that the university had provided for itself since 1996. So what’s the big deal you might ask. The university has various reporting responsibilities. We send mandatory reports to the US Department of Education, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), the Higher Learning Commission, the National Collegiate Athletics Association, the various public and private grant awarding agencies and organizations, and various academic accrediting bodies. Institutional Research also supports internal activities like program evaluation. Every academic program conducts a periodic evaluation. One of the elements of that process is provided by IR. For example, numbers of majors, numbers of degrees granted, number of minors, number of credit hours etc. Without that data the program evaluation can’t be conducted. Thus when the IBHE requests evaluations of university programs, the university can only tell them it’s waiting on the data that it had been able to provide for itself since 1996 and is no longer able to provide. Institutional research is an area that provides not just data, but methodologically rigorous analysis of the data that is collected by various offices and departments on campus. Those who know little about research design and data analysis might believe IR is only about querying some mystical cloud database. It actually is a bit more than that as many faculty can attest given their decades of research experience.

So imagine my surprise, given all of the corporate speak of the current administration, that the university had gone to what can only be considered a competitor institution to prepare reports that this institution is responsible for. This exposes the soft data based underbelly of the institution in this way. There is no guarantee that every flaw, defect, imperfection, strength, and asset will not be transferred to an institution that competes for the same state resources. I simply cannot envision IBM turning over a critical function to Apple because it allowed that function to wither. It begs three questions. Did the administration appreciate the importance of the institutional research function? Second, what sort of leadership was exhibited in allowing the department to disintegrate through attrition? Finally, why weren't faculty, especially those who teach research methods and/or statistics, asked to assist the university in a time of need? I am sure those who have years of experience working with data sets, conducting data analysis and teaching students about these topics could make a vital contribution and protect the data integrity of the institution. This is troubling not just in the short term but in the long term institutional exposure given a competitor now has unfettered access to the university’s data. One might imagine such an institution cherry picking the university’s best students or seeking out other valuable assets and making a tenuous situation more untenable.
Or I could be completely wrong about this and it is all normal and part of an as of yet undisclosed process of re-engineering the university into something other than a university.

A different path???

So the inexorable march toward becoming a junior college continues. The pending reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences appears to be providing evidence that the regime wants less of a university and more of a two year institution. Instead of making the bold move of creating two divisions, Humanities and Social Sciences, the College is shuffling departments or parts of departments into other departments. The first question I would ask is what problem is this solution addressing. If this move is being made only for financial reasons, I would challenge the administration to remember what the core function of a university is. If this is just about teaching students, like at a junior college, then it makes perfect sense to lump programs with little disciplinary affinity together. This bottom line of course satisfies administrators who seek fairness in the distribution of cuts not recognizing that administration only exists to support the core function of the institution. I realize administrators don’t like hearing this but they can’t do my job. I can do theirs. Parity or professional equity in terms of importance doesn’t exist. That hard truth plays out in the shadowy ways many administrators attempt to exert their authority. I have long since tired of hearing how hard and how long the recently added highly paid support personnel have been working to clean up the mess left by their predecessors. It is in these moments that I realize these new administrators lack the corporate memory of long serving faculty and thus fail to realize these words have echoed through the campus before. It was under the prior administration that new administrators came onto campus promising to clean up the mess of the prior regime. Now 12 years on, the newest additions to the administrative support ranks parrot the same words and frankly, those words ring hollow. For all of the bluster of the CIO, our technological infrastructure is virtually unchanged. Deck chairs have been rearranged and tasks from now defunct offices taken over by ITD with little productive effect. The audit report and its fallout are indicative of continuing administrative failure. The normal creative tension between administration and faculty has degenerated into low intensity conflict. I suspect most faculty who pay attention to such things would say they have no confidence in the regime to effect the change necessary to keep the university out of receivership or at worst off the auction block. And I would imagine that most administrators realize that faculty have little or no confidence in their capacity to right the ship. Let me provide a recent example. When President Daniel was here, around 2001 or 2002, I spoke to the VP for Finance and suggested the university partner with a couple of banks to provide accounts and debit cards for students. This would give many of our students an opportunity to have a bank account, learn the responsibilities of personal finance and have direct deposit of their financial aid reimbursement. Of course, the past administration couldn’t deliver on this fairly simple idea from a lowly faculty member. Now, 9 or 10 years later, there is the Cougar Card. There are a couple of problems with this system though. First, students weren’t consulted on this project in any substantive way. The paternalistic hubris of this is clear to me. It follows in a long tradition of administrators thinking they act “in loco parentis” when dealing with adult students. Second, there is no option to decline participation. This runs counter to how mature organizations function. And now the newest administrators wonder why our retention is so low? Here’s a clue. Stop treating adults like children. Treat adults like adults. Check the inflated egos at the door and collaborate (good faith shared governance, not symbolic gestures) with those who hold the corporate memory of the institution in order to inform your decision making. Surrender your need to be in charge and lord over faculty. Be the administrators that high functioning universities employ and break with the shameful tradition of administration at this institution, the tradition that has damaged and continues to damage the brand of our fair institution.

Audit report thoughts

So the earthquake of the state audit report hit and now the tsunami in the form of the press coverage has struck as well. Running every 30 minutes on CLTV, the university, now under new management, continues its tradition of honoring the rites of spring with its fascinating tales of financial and operational mismanagement. Continuing to regale the citizens of the State of Illinois with the reasons that the university didn’t properly account for appropriated funds or manage its Purchasing Cards appropriately, or why it maintained a negative balance in the Student Activities account or didn't manage university contracts in accordance with federal guidelines. And if these and similar tales of university behavior sound all too familiar then you would be experiencing deja vu all over again. What is new and not so new is the response of the university to the latest chapter of university mismanagement? Here are two. First, the university is told by its CEO that the institution asked the auditors to dissect the inner workings of the institution and lay its entrails out for all to examine. However, quoting from the recent Tribune article, ‘...Holland, however, said it was a routine audit and auditees "do not determine the scope of our audits."’ So this was a standard audit with the expected results? Why would the CEO try to publicly spin this as something out of the ordinary, knowing that statement could be easily refuted by the Auditor General? Second, in the political world that I have some experience in, whenever a public body or agency experiences a negative event like the audit report then it is imperative that the agency head contact all of the agency’s legislative and executive branch allies to inform them of the situation, strategize about responses and ensure that when the media does contact the legislators they are not blind sided by the reporter. Apparently that didn’t happen in this case. Again quoting from the Tribune article, “He (Senator Maloney, Chairman of the Higher Education Committee and CSU alumnus) was unaware of the audit until contacted by the Tribune.” This should never happen. Finally, if this was just a routine audit what would an incisive forensic audit yield? Is it possible this audit is emblematic of a dysfunction beyond the capacity of all but the most capable leader? The challenges facing this institution will not be solved by someone because they are local and “know everybody.”
Systems must be put in place and a culture developed to ensure those systems function as intended irrespective of turnover. Systems should always trump personnel. Sound systems in a functional culture will work to counter frequent changes in personnel as is common in administration.
I am curious how the next chapter of public coverage of CSU will unfold but sadly I believe this story will remain the same.