Backlash brewing against UW System president
Consolidation plan was deliberately kept secret
Another faculty backlash is brewing against University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross because Republican lawmakers got a heads-up about his far-reaching plans to restructure the two-year colleges while faculty, staff and students were kept in the dark.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported last fall that Cross wanted to cluster two-year colleges with four-year campuses by region as part of a plan to stem rapid enrollment declines on the UW’s two-year campuses. The restructuring is the biggest shift for the UW System since its creation by the Legislature in 1971.
A UW-Madison faculty group sent a letter to Cross on Tuesday, citing several emails obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio. The emails revealed the UW System president intentionally kept his plans a secret from campus governance groups so they wouldn’t be thwarted.
Among the emails was one Cross sent Oct. 17 to UW Regent Gerald Whitburn after the news leaked and before the regents formally approved it:
“(g)etting hammered by the ‘shared governance’ leaders because they weren’t involved in the process; however, had they been involved we wouldn’t be doing anything!!”
UW Colleges Chancellor Cathy Sandeen, who oversees the 13 two-year campuses that are being restructured, did not know about Cross’s plan until the day the Journal Sentinel broke the story. Cross had planned to share the news with chancellors the following day.
When told Tuesday that faculty on some UW campuses were preparing letters of censure against Cross, Sandeen
said she wasn’t surprised that “a number of conversations had occurred prior to the announcement.”
“One would have to vet a decision of this magnitude with elected officials to get feedback,” she said. However, she said, “I was not privy to what was going on, nor was anyone on my team. I think we could have been very helpful with planning and pointing out potential problem areas and barriers. We have always proved ourselves to be team players.”
Sandeen said Cross and the Board of Regents “have a right to make decisions and it’s our job to fulfill and implement those decisions.” Still, she added, “at the end of the day we do have a long tradition of shared governance in the state of Wisconsin.”
On Tuesday, a faculty group at UW-Madison sent a letter to Cross, telling him he had “done further damage to an already damaged relationship” with campus shared governance groups because of his “derision and disregard” for shared governance.
“Further damage” referred to a conflict with faculty during 2016 budget deliberations, when language in state law was changed by Republican lawmakers to limit the role of faculty, staff and student shared governance groups, and change faculty tenure protections.
The faculty group at UW-Madison that wrote the letter Tuesday is a chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The letter reminded Cross that faculty from seven UW System campuses, including UW Colleges, declared that they had lost confidence in his leadership and that of the Board of Regents in May 2016 because of their failure to “defend the institution from a hostile governor and state legislature” and their “abrogation of shared governance” in passing policy on faculty termination over the objections of faculty groups.
Renewed censures against Cross are now in the works among faculty groups on several campuses, according to sources.
At UW-Milwaukee, the University Committee and the American Association of University Professors chapter are jointly sponsoring a resolution of censure to be brought to the Faculty Senate on Feb. 15. It’s expected to be circulated to faculty this Thursday.
Tuesday’s letter from the UW-Madison AAUP chided Cross.
“It does not bode well for the success of your policies that you consider shared governance to be nothing more than an impediment to progress,” it said.
David Vanness, a UW-Madison professor of population health sciences, said Tuesday that he sympathizes with frustrations that shared governance can “slow down the process.” But, he said, “what you’re seeing is steamrolling of governance bodies at the System level.”
Vanness said suggestions have been made on how shared governance could be speeded up when matters are urgent, rather than bypassing the process through “backroom dealing” with lawmakers.
In one email obtained by public radio, the UW System’s director of state relations, Jeffrey Schoenfeldt, stated he had talked with at least nine Republican lawmakers, but because Senate Republicans were in caucus, he “didn’t get as many members there as (he) hoped.”
“All of these people presumably knew of your plans, which were ‘an open secret’ in the Capitol, before faculty, staff students — and even administrators of the very institutions you sought to redefine were even aware — much less involved in meaningful consultation,” the UW-Madison faculty group’s letter says.
“It is shocking and disheartening that you consider your true partners not to be the shared governance bodies of the University of Wisconsin System or the leaders of the communities we serve, regardless of party affiliation, but rather to be politically connected business interests and exclusively Republican legislators,” the letter says.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, UW System spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said system leaders “value the input of our faculty, staff and students, and President Cross has ensured they have a continued voice in the process.”
She said shared governance leaders from faculty, academic staff, university staff and students are represented on the steering committee working on the restructuring.
Cross said at the time the restructuring of the two-year campuses was announced that time was of the essence. He cited a downward spiral of enrollments and said the restructuring could offer benefits including access to four-year degree programs on the two-year campuses as a result of regional clustering of campuses.
Tuesday’s statement reiterated that urgency. “The enrollment challenges facing the UW Colleges are not new and the state’s birthrates continue to decline,” Marquis said. “Over the last seven years, UW Colleges experienced a 32% decline in enrollment of full-time equivalent students, and on some campuses, the decline is more than 50%.
“The status quo is not sustainable, and the UW’s internal restructuring efforts leverage the strength of our four-year institutions to maintain and expand access to an affordable, quality education in Wisconsin.”