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 Editorials | Opinions | September 2007 
Tyrannosaurus Academicus - Part 2
 Dr. Mark B. Ryan - PVNN
The style of the rectoría was soon perceived as a sheer imposition of power, often on a minimal basis of knowledge. The arrogance reflected in remodeling soon affected educational programs. In a cost-saving maneuver, courses were abruptly cancelled at the very start of the fall 2005 term, with no planning, knowledge-or even inquiry-about how they might affect academic programs or students' careers.
Leadership in the residential colleges was scrambled, ignoring all terms of appointment: the college's faculty directors, or regentes, were dismissed with no review, or unaccountably moved from one college to another, the decisions made in flagrant ignorance of how the colleges actually function. New department chairmen were appointed entirely by fiat, with no solicitation of opinion from the affected faculties. In one case, the imposed leader was from outside the University faculty, a former political associate of the rector's with questionable credentials for the post. Another former associate was suggested for a different department, until it became clear that the candidate's dismal record of professional ethics would precipitate an open faculty rebellion.
Under the then-Vice Rector for Academic Affairs (VGA), who was appointed by Dr. Palou's predecessor, a large study group was spinning goals and plans, but the real decisions, it turned out, were being taken with little reference to those emerging aims. In no way did the study group contemplate the sweeping structural changes that, by November, were made without faculty consultation: the abrupt merging of the University's five schools into three, and the similar merging of various departments, some of which had no close relationship to one another-all with the designation of new deans and chairmen, and all, again, without any internal planning. Previous deans were told of the decision two hours before it was publicly announced; previous chairmen were informed of the termination of their charge by curt e-mail messages. All, of course, were in the midst of official terms of appointment, and none received due recognition for their past efforts and accomplishments.
The administration refused even to explain its decisions. The rector's brief and cryptic communication referred only to the goal of encouraging "interdisciplinarity." When the department chairmen of the former School of Social Sciences collectively asked for a meeting with the rector and VGA to clarify the reasoning and practical implication of the decisions-for example, how it might affect program reviews then underway-the meeting, and further discussion, was refused, with the words that "the communication is sufficient." As in the earlier cancellation of courses, many of these decisions quickly proved so ill-advised that the administration was forced to reverse them. An impression already in the air became firm: that the administration was making major decisions with little understanding of the consequences, and that it would not defend its decisions. Accountability was not only ignored but disdained.
At the end of that fall term, without forewarning, the administration declined to provide the customary year-end bonuses, or aguinaldos, to part-time faculty. Pay for part-time teachers is meager in any case, and most of them depended on bonuses to meet year-end expenses. Presumably this was another cost-saving measure, but in the face of expensive remodeling and the administration's public pronouncements about the solidity of finances, it seemed to reveal, even more fully, a low regard for the faculty and its functions. The University had long depended on the commitment of its part-time teachers; but when some assembled to discuss the situation among themselves, the administration responded with threats: videotaping, demands that department chairs identify participants, and withholding teaching assignments for the subsequent term.
Then came the first wave of firings, in December of 2005. Twenty-four full-time members of the faculty, some with as much as twenty years of service to the University, were abruptly dismissed, without formal review. The reasons, publicly declared in the media, were for low student teaching evaluations, but in at least some cases, that was demonstrably untrue. In a university that preaches respect and tolerance, one veteran and well-evaluated teacher, a former department chairman, was told, at least according to subsequent reports, that her religious convictions were incompatible with the UDLA. The dismissals included not only long-time professors well-evaluated for their teaching, but at least one younger one, respected for research and newly admitted to the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI), which in Mexico is the measure of research legitimacy. Some of the fired professors were known to have had differences with their dean.
In its treatment of these professors, the administration's arrogance gave way to ruthlessness-a harbinger of what subsequently was to continue. Some reported having been watched and followed by security guards before their firing, and of later being threatened by their dean and accused of "conspiracy" by the head of campus police for meeting to discuss their plight. They reportedly were told that if they exercised a legal right to protest their firings, their severance pay would be halved; some were even threatened with the firing of family members who also worked at the UDLA, irrespective of the latter's performance. The data on which their firings were supposedly based was not revealed to them, and the rector declined to meet with them or their elected faculty representatives, just as he refused to meet with students who came to their defense. The newly fired professors were prohibited from returning to campus, and only later were they allowed, under supervision, to retrieve belongings from their offices.
The disregard of standard institutional procedures extended to cases involving students as well. In January of 2006, the University's computer system failed catastrophically, apparently due to the intervention of hackers. Two students, who had been engaged in a study approved by the department of Computer Science, were charged in the incident, and taken before the University's disciplinary committee. The case proved complicated; and as the duly constituted disciplinary committee was wrestling with its intricacies, the administration abruptly removed it from the committee's consideration and imposed penalties of expulsion on both students. It did so without interviewing the accused, or confronting them with the evidence against them-ignoring a fundamental principle of jurisprudence (one of the students, after being expelled, later was exonerated). The then-Vice Rector for Academic Affairs argued for institutional judicial procedures, but that stance soon contributed to his own resignation, under pressure, from his post.
Student views on matters affecting student life, of course, have been no more heeded than the opinion of the faculty. When the University's student government wrote to question the decision regarding the supposed hackers, the administration failed to acknowledge the letter, much less address its concerns. The same fate awaited a letter from the student government of Cain-Murray College, which respectfully questioned aspects of a gardening project in its precincts. Student opinion on campus, especially as expressed in the student newspaper, began to question more and more vigorously the administration's actions. An exception, however, was the executive committee of the student government, which often took the rector's side in disputes. It was later discovered that students on that committee received unpublicized trips to Europe and China. In such a way is the administration forming the ethical sensibilities of its chosen students.
The rector is a polished public speaker, but he proved to be a reclusive campus presence. From the start of his administration, he has displayed little visible interest in forging a connection with the community that he governs. In the public perception, he is an absent figure, not only failing to explain controversial decisions, but seldom receiving members of the University community in his offices, and often not even present at major University events. Employees within the Rectoría report his being absent from the office for more than a month at a time.
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