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No Confidence in No-Confidence Votes
If your campus can avoid a no-confidence vote, do so. Constructive alternatives such as the SUNY campus-visitation system are better for everyone involved.
By Joseph Petrick
Faculty sometimes use votes of no confidence as a tool of last resort to express opposition to a college administration. Unfortunately, however, such votes often have limited effect aside from further damaging relations between administrators and faculty. At Alfred State College (formally known as the State University of New York College of Technology at Alfred), we averted a no-confidence vote by scheduling an official "visitation" to deal with a conflict between the faculty and the college administration. Under the governance procedures of SUNY’s systemwide University Faculty Senate, the senate can arrange a visitation upon written request from a campus president and local faculty senate. The system senate selects a team of SUNY faculty who visit the campus with an ex officio member of the system administration to investigate and report on a problem. At Alfred State, the visitation process called the attention of the system administration to our campus conflict in a way that a no-confidence vote or media coverage never could have done, and it helped us to resolve difficulties between the faculty and the administration.
In summer 2003, the faculty and staff at Alfred State awaited the arrival of a new president, Uma Gupta, who had promised to bring progressive change to the campus. She did indeed introduce changes quickly. Early in her presidency, she dismissed the vice president for academic affairs and expressed a desire to fill the position with a former colleague. The faculty senate, which was not averse to her request, nonetheless responded slowly because of its procedures. President Gupta, unhappy with the lengthy search process, asked the faculty senate to revise its structure to make it less encumbered by committees and better able to act more rapidly. Although dismissals continued over the following months, the faculty continued to be generally enthusiastic about working toward a common goal of improving the college.
In late March 2005, however, sixteen months into the Gupta presidency, the dismissal of two vice presidents precipitated a crisis. These dismissals caught the Alfred State Faculty Senate completely by surprise, and it reacted to them cautiously. The SUNY system administration subsequently assured the faculty senate that President Gupta had done nothing wrong. Afterward, the senate passed a resolution asking the president to produce an action plan clarifying how her administration intended to manage future change and conflict.
In summer 2005, faculty members, many of whom had grown increasingly concerned about the climate on campus, began a Web blog about President Gupta's administration. The blog allowed faculty, staff, and administrators to correspond with an immediacy that would have been impossible if they had waited for faculty senate meetings or other forums.
The Visitation
SUNY's University Faculty Senate is composed of representatives from each of the state-operated campuses in the SUNY system. It functions like other senates but focuses on systemwide issues rather than on matters pertaining exclusively to local campuses in the system. Also like other faculty senates, it operates in an advisory capacity to the administration, in this case the SUNY system administration.
A few days before the Alfred State Faculty Senate was slated to discuss a resolution calling for a campuswide vote of no confidence in President Gupta, the University Faculty Senate informed members of the Alfred State Faculty Senate about the visitation process. The university senators explained that we would host a visit from faculty members from other SUNY campuses who would advise faculty governance leaders and the college president about ways to resolve the tension on campus. The senators told us that there were no guarantees: the process would not necessarily produce an outcome favorable to the faculty. Nonetheless, the resolution calling for a vote of no confidence was defeated by a vote of 25 to 23, and the faculty decided to pursue the visitation process. University Faculty Senate president Carl Wiezalis, a professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, worked with the Alfred State Faculty Senate and President Gupta to arrange for a visitation.
After the visitation had been requested, Jim Grillo, the vice president for administrative affairs whom President Gupta had dismissed soon after her appointment—he had returned to his faculty position—became chair of the Alfred State Faculty Senate. His election demonstrated a resolve among faculty to oppose the attempts of the administration to dominate the activities of the faculty senate. It also gave the faculty a strong leader in subsequent discussions with the visitation team and SUNY's system administration.
When the visitation team came to campus, it met with the faculty senate, college administrators, and individuals who wanted to express their concerns privately. The team emphasized that it aimed to find ways to bring stability to campus, not to take sides in the struggle among the disputants. After the visit, the team drafted a report and invited faculty members and administrators to comment on it. A final report was released on January 30, 2006.
The report made several recommendations. It advised the college to ask the system administration to appoint an interim chief academic officer, and it suggested that the Alfred State Faculty Senate revise its bylaws and engage in ongoing evaluation of campus administrators. In addition, it proposed the establishment of a joint committee composed of faculty, staff, and administrators to discuss the team's recommendations and report on their implementation in a timely fashion.
The Outcome
The recommendation that the college ask the system administration to appoint a seasoned interim chief academic officer was not implemented. It is not surprising that a college president might not follow such a recommendation when a chief academic officer of her choosing was already in place. But when it became clear that she was not going to pursue the recommendation, SUNY chancellor John Ryan assigned executive vice provost Anne Huot to mediate the conflict among the faculty, staff, and administration at Alfred State. She regularly traveled to campus to communicate directly with all interested parties. The college had not, however, asked for her involvement, nor was she actively engaged in running the institution.
By the end of the spring 2006 semester, steps had been taken to initiate other recommendations of the visitation team, but none had been carried to conclusion. The Alfred State Faculty Senate had begun to revise its bylaws, and the joint committee of faculty, staff, and administrators had been formed but was not yet functioning at a level that would permit effective implementation of any of the recommendations.
All this became moot on June 21, 2006, when it was announced that President Gupta was resigning her position at Alfred State. She had accepted a new post offered to her by SUNY to increase the number of female and minority students on its campuses in the fields of mathematics and science. Two days later, Chancellor Ryan announced the nomination of John Clark as interim president at Alfred State College.
No one can be sure what would have happened if the visitation process had not been available to the Alfred State faculty, staff, and administrators. It is, however, safe to say that the faculty and staff would have pursued a vote of no confidence had no alternative been offered to them. The impact of a no confidence vote cannot be calculated, because such a vote does not necessarily mean that a president will resign. Presidents sometimes do not resign even after repeated no-confidence votes, which create bad publicity for the institution in their wake. Bad publicity often leads to lower enrollment and decreased revenue, which further worsen conditions at the institution.
Regardless of a no-confidence vote, it is clear that the situation on our campus would not have been resolved without cooperation and communication among faculty, staff, and administrators at Alfred State and the SUNY system. The resolution of the conflict testifies to the value of shared governance in higher education and the good judgment of those at Alfred State and SUNY who have advocated for it. Shared governance may not be the most newsworthy way to deal with contention, but many people at Alfred State today are grateful for its effect on the difficulties that had developed on our campus.
Joseph Petrick is technical services coordinator at the Hinkle Library of the State University of New York College of Technology at Alfred and a university faculty senator to the SUNY faculty senate. His e-mail address is petricja@alfredstate.edu.
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