Sambursky requests to cancel Friday executive committee meeting, pushes for release of documents
June 7, 2018
UPDATE: The meeting has been officially cancelled as of Friday morning.
Trustee Joel Sambursky has called for the executive committee meeting, scheduled Friday, to be cancelled and called on board chair Amy Sholar to convene the full board and consider placing SIU President Randy Dunn on administrative leave.
All board members received information that would warrant the calling of a meeting to consider placing Dunn on administrative leave while an investigation is conducted by an external legal counsel, Sambursky said in an emailed statement.
“Should the executive committee decide to do so, an acting president would then need to be appointed to allow for the work of the campuses to continue while President Dunn is on leave,” Sambursky said. “To be clear, the intention of the executive committee meeting was never to permanently replace President Dunn, as falsely expressed by Chair Sholar and others.”
See more: Board chair announces committee does not have authority to remove Dunn
The special executive committee meeting that was announced on Wednesday was scheduled for Friday had two items on the meeting agenda – consideration on putting Dunn on administrative leave and appointing an acting president.
During executive committee meetings all trustees have the right to attend and participate and any action that is taken by the executive committee is eventually ratified by the full board at a future meeting, Sambursky said.
The executive committee meeting was called according to Board policy, with the guidance of the general counsel of the university, Sambursky said.
“Chair Sholar did not even attempt to reschedule the July meeting and was instead content with waiting until September to meet as a full board,” Sambursky said.
Sambursky said that after Sholar released her statement this afternoon, the university’s general counsel reaffirmed the legal authority for the meeting to take place and potentially take action on the items listen on its agenda.
Sambursky further alluded to Sholar’s claim to transparency in the open letter to the system written last May and called for the immediate release of all documents that the board has received on the basis for the calling of the executive committee meeting.
See more: Board committee to hold meeting, consideration to put Dunn on leave
The regular July board meeting was cancelled and the next time the full board would convene for a regular meeting would be in September, according to the board’s schedule.
“It would be unconscionable for the executive committee to not meet to discuss and potentially take action on matters that are permitted under SIU board policy,” Sambursky said.
Sambursky said that it is apparent that Sholar not only disagrees with his interpretation of the bylaws but also that of the general counsel.
“This sets the wrong precedent for the Chair of the Board to claim the ability to override the majority of the executive committee and to ignore the legal opinion provided by the General Counsel of the SIU System,” Sambursky said.
Staff reporter Brian Munoz can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @BrianMMunoz.
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Karmanski • Jun 26, 2018 at 10:47 am
Loopholes. How convenient that there are an even number of members on the BOT.
In my opinion you have just opened a flood gate. If it happened once it will happen again
and there’s not a single thing you can do about it. All the one sided rules and by-laws are
fine until they aren’t in your favor and there is no one to blame but yourselves. It’s no
surprise you won the international award for eclipse events because you’re all in the dark.
hobo • Jun 11, 2018 at 12:47 pm
Joel, you should have figured out by now that Randy is Sholar’s boy.
Thom Graham • Jun 8, 2018 at 2:23 pm
As a staff member at the Edwardsville campus I find it very concerning that two members of the BOT, both from Carbondale, would try to hijack the process by subverting the rest of the BOT to remove President Dunn. It removes all doubt that the division between SIUE and SIUC is very large and growing. I think that this division would occur with or without President Dunn, terminating him solves nothing.
There has been a lot of talk about how the proposed reallocation of funds from the current 64% for SIUC and 36% for SIUE to a funding model that more closely represents the enrollment and stature of the two campuses. The truth is that the Edwardsville campus will surpass the Carbondale campus in enrollment in the fall semester of 2018, however, there is still a pervasive attitude in Carbondale that SIUE is still the “little sister” of SIUC. What the people in Carbondale need to understand is that we here in Edwardsville have long endured shorter staffing, lower pay, and generally having to do more with less. Many departments at Carbondale have had to lay off more staff than we at Edwardsville have ever had in our departments. In short we have sacrificed tremendously to have the level of financial stability that we currently enjoy while SIUC has watched idly by while their enrollment has dropped for decades. The situation is explained quite succinctly in Aesop’s Fable about the ant and the grasshopper where the prudent ant scrimps and saves for the winter while the grasshopper is wasteful and shortsighted then when winter comes and the grasshopper is hungry he tries to beg food from the grasshopper.
It is quite evident that there is a lot of hand wringing in Carbondale with their looming financial crisis but that is not an excuse to throw good money after bad in Carbondale while neglecting the campus that HAS performed above expectations. The growing frustration here in Edwardsville is palpable although you’d never know it over the din of people like Sambursky and Gilbert trying to deflect attention away from fixing their broken campus. Now that the playing field is being leveled between the two campuses and we are beginning to get an equal seat at the table the Carbondale folks cry foul and claim that they are being treated unfairly and with contempt. We are getting increasingly tired of both shouldering the financial burden while having to listen the nonsense of how unfairly SIUC is being treated. The real problem isn’t President Dunn or Amy Sholar as Sambursky and others have alleged, the problem rests squarely with the gross mismanagement of resources by prior and current SIUC leadership. In summation it is imperative that a significant funding shift in favor of SIUE happen or the system must be dissolved, there is no other solution to the current problems that we face.