Any university can list; it can drift into a dead calm, an eerie sort of nihilism in which presidents give speeches at campus events, and football teams take the field, yet (quoting Stevie Smith), they’re not waving, but drowning.
The ship of Coppin State is listing, and its faculty have had it. They’ve overwhelmingly voted no confidence in the school’s president.
The second-highest administrative position in the university, the provost, has been filled by four people in the same number of years; the number of cabinet-level staff members has more than doubled under Avery, increasing the university’s debt; three of Coppin’s five schools have not had deans at their helms for several years; the institution [failed] to disburse $800,000 in need-based aide to students in 2011; and [there have been] questionable hiring practices …
The administrative nothingness is the most dire part. It suggests a president intent on autocracy, slowly dismantling the very apparatus of the school so as to assume complete power.