a href=”https://www.dailyegyptian.com/contactus.html”bDE Staff Reporter/b/abrspan class=”realsmall”bDaily Egyptian/b/span

This seems like shared governance, but is it really?

1) Priorities for choosing which goals to fund are left entirely up to the administration, which could, for example, choose to fund the Dunn-Richmond Center at the expense of faculty positions crucial to the academic mission.

2) The original committees compiling the document would be startled by significant changes from the version circulated in August. In August, for example, the “Faculty Theme Group Final Report” stated a goal to appoint “primarily tenure-track faculty (75 percent or higher) in most colleges.” Why was any mention of tenure-track faculty dropped out of the recommendation in this recent draft that we “maintain a minimum 70 percent of all faculty members with full-time status and in continuing faculty appointments” (p.17)? Who sponsored the newest recommendation that “contract faculty” (faculty on contracts from three to five years) “represent 15 percent of the faculty” (p.18)? These are only two examples of numerous changes made by the administration to a report it claims to be the cumulative effort of many members of the University and the community.

Does the chancellor believe that rushing this draft through a historically compliant Senate will prevent anyone from noticing how much administrative agendas have superceded the intents of its original authors? If the administration wishes to continue to claim that “Southern at 150” represents anything beyond its own agendas, then it needs to follow the normal procedure for drafting any document:to return this draft to the original committees and to incorporate their comments and revisions. Otherwise, “Southern at 150” is only another way for the administration to betray the trust not only of the University, but of the community.

Mary Ellen Lamb, Professor