UMass Rapprochement

September 29, 2007 by limako

Since the spring, the relations between the UMass Amherst faculty, president, and board of trustees has been strained. When the trustees announced plans to have a retreat with the goal of generating action steps, there was some concern raised. Today we held a general meeting of the faculty with a set of resolutions in place to express our lack of confidence. But the trustees decided to have an open meeting, rather than meeting in a secret retreat and so we backed away from the resolutions. One trustee, James Karram, attended the meeting and spoke briefly. I'm encouraged by the positive steps and I hope we are beginning to move away from the series of confrontations that have driven faculty governance relations since the spring.

I was involved in drafting a resolution for the meeting related to the governor's Readiness Project -- this is a commission that has been drawn up to study education in the state. One subcommittee is supposed to study public higher education. Pat Crosson, a highly respected former-provost, is on the committee, but no current faculty, staff, students. We drafted a separate resolution to encourage the commission to hold open forums at the UMass campuses. I drafted the following resolution (with help from many others) to try to provide some guidance to the new readiness project subcommittee: