Rollo Thomassie said:
I don't think there's an ideological angle to the unhappiness faculty, staff, and administrators have with President Gordon and the board of regents. President Gordon has been a mixed bag. He's done a few things right, such as tuition wavers for faculty and staff dependents and clearing away some of the deadwood left over from the disastrous Pattillo years. He's also made his share of mistakes, such as the disastrous eight week semester debacle that he initiated and then refused to accept responsibility for. His biggest problem, though, is that he's apparently abusive toward administrators and denigrates them behind their backs. As for the board of regents, there's a consensus among faculty and administrators that its members neither understand nor care about the academic side of the university. Moreover, there's increasing evidence that they didn't oversee the university finances very effectively. In fact, the new provost recently admitted in a memo to faculty that no one has any idea what the university's budget shortfall will be; there are apparently estimates ranging from twelve to twenty-seven million dollars. Such uncertainty is a damning indictment of the board's competence, and has led some to question whether SFA would be better off in a system.
The debt and allegations of bullying are the biggest concerns to me. Sure, there are gonna be some friction issues, but it kinda irks me when the BOR puts out statements saying "both sides need to offer an olive branch" when the big issues, raises in a pandemic while furloughing staff and potentially being a bad boss all seem to be one sided.
Being resistant to change is pretty typical and if that's the worst that the Deans have done, I'm not really sure what they should be apologizing for. They might need to adapt, but I'm not sure they need to apologize on their part.
Gordon and the BOR though? They need to build some bridges.
