 |
|
|
 Editorials | Opinions | September 2007 
Tyrannosaurus Academicus - Part 3
 Dr. Mark B. Ryan - PVNN
A telling sign of the administration's attitude towards communication with the community was in the one annual report that he has given in his two-year reign. The delivery of that report before a university-wide assembly is a long-standing tradition at the University; eventually, in Palou's third semester, such an event was held. But for the first time in history, the faculty in general was not invited-only administrators, professors in administrative roles, and a legion of outside guests with political ties. An event that had always been conceived primarily as a report to the community, and especially to its prime constituency, the faculty, was clearly directed to the outside political world-where, it was increasingly felt on campus, the rector's ambitions really lay.
In prominent attendance was the governor of the state-the rector's former employer-who had been implicated in a scandal in which he is accused of conspiring to have a courageous woman reporter jailed. The reporter was investigating a pederasty ring that involved some of the governor's financial supporters; while in custody, she was beaten and threatened at gunpoint. (She has subsequently received an award from Amnesty International, and the case is now before Mexico's supreme court.)
By the spring of 2006, the rector's veracity was widely in question. In his graduation address, he dramatically announced the establishment of a new medical program, which he presented as the beginnings of long-dreamed-of medical school for the University. The program was given credibility by its stated integration with prestigious programs at an established American university with whom the UDLA has long had links, Texas Christian University (TCU). A few days later, the Chancellor of TCU called an old associate in Puebla, fuming over the rector's exaggeration and making clear that no such intimate link with TCU's medical program had been established at all, and would not be. Officials at Vanderbilt, with whom the rector also made declarations of intimate ties, also expressed concern over the exaggerated claims.
Some days later, an announcement was made about a "future" US $65,000,000 fund-raising campaign, though the administration had no structure to handle such an effort. Personnel ostensibly designated to manage that campaign have since left or been fired. The rector's closest associate on campus was his designated Vice Rector for Development, a former diplomat with no background in either fund raising nor academic administration. Before leaving office early in 2007, the Vice Rector had spent well more on extravagant travels for himself and his close associates, including trips to Europe and China, than he had raised.
In June of 2006, on the last day before faculty vacations, one hundred administrative workers were dismissed, immediately followed by a dozen more faculty. Under the University's financial circumstances, a cutback of staff was defensible, and might well have been necessary. But those firings were approached simply as cutback quotas to be realized instantaneously, not as part of a comprehensive plan to be accomplished with rational and just means. In the case of faculty, it was left to newly appointed department heads, chosen in the fall without input from their own faculties, to name individual professors that would be eliminated. Inevitably, such eliminations were easily tainted by the department chairmen's personal conflicts, or by those of higher authorities. The community was kept uninformed of whom in fact had been dismissed; there were no official announcements, and the names of the unfortunates were circulated only by word of mouth. Further, the Administration pressured these professors, most of whom who had years of service to the University behind them, to "voluntarily" resign, thus depriving themselves of some of the due remuneration required by law in firings without "cause."
When an eminent professor of law-one who had made major contributions to the community-refused to do so, he was subjected to petty harassments in his campus house: the cutting off of his telephone, the "booting" of his parked car. The timing of these firings, on the last day before faculty vacations, clearly had been intended to reduce protest, but it left a number of summer courses, then several weeks underway, without instructors, staining further the University's reputation among visiting students. Faculty discontent soon was reflected in resignations of eminent professors, including one of the top researchers in the sciences, another in the humanities, and another in the arts. Five members of the department of Linguistics announced their coming departure, severely curtailing that department's offerings and undercutting one of its most prestigious programs.
In the appointments of higher officials, the administration continued to pursue awkward and cryptic procedures. In September of 2005, two associate vice-presidencies had been created, one for "Learning and Information" and another for "Research and Post-Graduate Studies." They were filled with highly competent and long-term professors-the post of one was elevated from a previous deanship with largely the same charge. The appointments were to be for four years. In June, only nine months into the appointments, the rector abruptly announced that the positions would be changed- downgraded-to deanships, and that therefore new appointments were in order; the incumbents, should they wish to continue, would have to apply for their own jobs. The announcement came as a shock even to the vice rector two whom these two figures reported; he not been consulted on the change and had been quite satisfied with the performance of both.
All the co-workers of both incumbents perceived their work as excellent, and the suspicion grew that the reason for this unexplained and abrupt change was owing only to the fact that one of them had dared to advance criticisms to his superiors-not publicly, but directly. As in the instance of the regentes of the residential colleges several months earlier, there were no announcements of a search committee, and interviews, such as they were, were conducted only by one person, who was himself not responsible for making the selection. The result of this abrupt change of high-level positions was further instability-uncertainty about what goals and procedures, worked out over the previous nine months, would remain in place.
The announced deadline for making the appointments came and went, and another month went by with nothing being said by the administration. Finally, it was announced that the two "Associate Vice-Rectorships" had been filled, one of them by the incumbent. The supposed rationale of downgrading the positions to deanships had somehow been dropped, without explanation. But the incumbent who had voiced criticisms returned to the professoriate.
In Palou's second academic year, a principal point of conflict was freedom of expression on campus. The student weekly newspaper, La Catarina, criticized the rector's remoteness, unilateral decisions, and political ties. Supervision of the newspaper was in the academic department of Communications; in October of 2006, the rector moved against the department. Its chairperson, an energetic young academic with a doctorate and impressive research to her credit, was abruptly forced to resign as chair. In her place, without consulting faculty, the rector appointed an outside political associate, a person with no advanced degrees whose experience had been not in academics but in public relations. The department's advisor to La Catarina was also forced to surrender his post. Written protests of the majority of the department's faculty to these dismissals were ignored. Students of the department then responded with peaceful protests, which included marching, the brandishing of signs and the wearing of arm bands, but which did not disrupt any essential university functions.
Despite the orderliness of the protests, participating students were aggressively videoed by university guards and subsequently sent before the University's disciplinary committee. The charges, initially vague, were eventually that they had harmed the University's reputation. According to later reports of figures involved in the discussions, the rector wished to expel fifteen of the students and to fire the dean of the residential colleges, who had come to their defense. The threatened resignation of the provost and an associate vice-rector persuaded him to settle for lesser penalties, which included barring some of the students from any roles of campus leadership.
A newly promulgated "code of ethics" stated that neither professors, employees, nor students could act in a way that "negatively affects the institution's image," essentially forbidding public criticisms of the administration. Any "public declarations" that do not reinforce an "image of the Institution as prestigious, solid, cohesive, pluralistic and open to dialogue and constructive criticism" implicitly became punishable, whatever the reality. Arguments before the disciplinary committee had amply demonstrated that the administration would equate protests and criticism directed at itself with "denigrations of the institution," which the "code of ethics" forbade "under all circumstances." At the end of the term, apparently as a warning to the Communications department, one of its professors, a respected filmmaker and teacher who had also directed a popular campus film series, was fired.
|
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us