And some, ol’ UD can’t help concluding, are just spectacularly, consistently, shockingly, stupid. You sort of feel as though they mean well, and that they have a shaky though sincere sense of what a university is… sort of… And that if you met the folks in the administration you’d say Hale fellow well met! and definitely enjoy the sincere handshake this person would offer.
But one of the trustees holds a diploma mill degree and anyway many of them never show up for meetings… And there’s just a general sense of malaise because they don’t have funds to pay faculty much of anything but they have ten million dollars to give to a new sports arena, only they lie about taking that money from university funds… until they can’t lie anymore because a local journalist won’t let them… and the new president (stupid universities have major president-turnover) instead of saying all the serious and good things he could say by way of acknowledging and trying to right things, etc., says Hey don’t look at me I just got here!
There’s just a no one’s home, not much going on upstairs feel to places like Central Michigan University… a laxity… as in that Dickinson poem… first chill, then stupor, then the letting go…
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UPDATE: There are two detailed comments from CMU faculty members on this post’s comment thread. Take a look.
February 17th, 2012 at 11:27AM
Gee, whiz!
I wonder why Marilyn French Hubbard was named to the board in the first place?
February 17th, 2012 at 11:31PM
Thanks for the publicity. You’ve only scratched the surface, though. The events center stuff is peanuts compared to the medical school. The proposal to create a CMU medical school was pushed through without any meaningful faculty input. The trustees approved it at a board meeting in the summer (when most of the faculty are away) without giving any advanced notice that such a decision was going to be made at that meeting. The financing of the medical school has also been shady. The original plan for the med school was based on the “Caribbean model” (and yes, CMU officials did use that exact phrase), whereby it would be funded purely by tuition. When CMU learned that such a med school would probably not get accredited in the US, the administration concocted other financing schemes—including a $25 million fundraising campaign that seems to have perpetually stalled around the halfway mark. None of the funding has been particularly transparent. In the end, it seems likely that the administration will do what it did for the events center—take the money out of reserves. If the past is any guide, they’ll try to say that this is not really tuition money, despite the fact that reason that there are reserves (and CMU’s reserves are quite large for a university of its size) is that CMU has been charging far more in tuition than it needs to charge to run the place. When the chair of the academic senate asked to see the accreditation application for the med school—in part to find out what the university was saying to the accreditors about the med school’s financial plans–the administration stalled and stalled until the chair of the academic senate was forced to FOIA the documents. These were among the most serious failures of transparency and shared governance that led the academic senate to pass a resolution of no confidence in the administration. The president and provost were reported to have been laughing as they left the senate meeting where this occurred. The board of trustees dismissed this vote as the sign of a minority of people who were upset. Subsequently many individual departments endorsed the vote of no confidence, as did the council of chairs. The administration and board have now acknowledged that there is a problem, and have begun a too-little, too-late attempt to listen to faculty concerns. One is hard pressed to find anyone around here who thinks that this will result in any real change. Oh, and if that’s not enough, here’s one more little gem: Last fall, during a faculty union work stoppage to protest unfair labor practices, CMU’s lawyers went to court and lied in official documents in order to get a judge to order the faculty back to work *and* take away their right to engage in peaceful, non-disruptive picketing (including picketing that was not connected with a work stoppage). I could go on (sham searches for top officials, for example), but you get the idea. If you’d like to pursue this further, I can provide documentation for everything I have just written.
February 18th, 2012 at 10:35AM
Thank you, UD, for bringing attention to our crazy situation here at CMU. Your words “spectacularly, consistently, shockingly, stupid” suit the events occurring at CMU over the past few years to a “T”. As “CMU faculty member” points our, there are many more examples of poor leadership decisions and actions that are making a shambles of CMU. Another example is a recent prioritization of programs run by the provost Gary Shapiro that aimed to evaluate every academic program “based on data”. The program rated #1? The College of Medicine, which, without any students yet, with very little funding, and even before accreditation, had no real data on which to base this high ranking. Programs being eliminated due to low prioritization by the provost? Some low-cost programs consistently successful (as measured by student placement after graduation, student publications, faculty grants, etc.). Every day lately, there is some new and almost unbelievable news about the unethical and illogical actions of the upper administration, including the senior officers and the Board of Trustees. This is truly sad because this university has many high-quality faculty who are excellent teachers, first-rate researchers, and who provide exceptional learning opportunities for students. Thanks again for helping us to communicate the CMU crisis to the wider world.
February 18th, 2012 at 2:07PM
CMU faculty members: Many thanks for the kind words and for the details of life at CMU. I’ll amend the post to direct readers to your comments.