Category: Education

Do things always have to get worse before they get better?  When then can it ever end?

Yesterday was a busy news day for the University of Louisville.  While I was writing my own article in the afternoon, every journalist in town who has been following the drama within UofL’s administration these past many months was publishing new material!  I envy their information gathering network and their ability to publish something virtually every day.  Nonetheless, it appears that I was prescient with my own comments.  In truth, I would like to think I have been stirring the pot a little.  I will take the liberty of stepping through some of the points I made yesterday as a framework for catching up.

Headlines in today’s issues of the Courier-Journal by Andrew Wolfson, Insider Louisville by Joe Sonka, and WDRB Television by Chris Otts include the following:

• The settlement between the Justice Resource Center and a variety of other parties over the statutory racial makeup of the Board of Trustees was made public.  This appears to turn upside down the timetable of any discussion of a vote of no-confidence in President Ramsey for both the Faculty Senate and the Board of Trustees.  The process of appointing new minority trustees has been initiated.
• The agenda of next Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting makes it official that the Senate leadership intends for its discussion of the no confidence vote to be held in secret.  This has elicited criticism, including from me.
• Governor Bevin has unilaterally acted to decrease current state funding to universities by 4.5%.  This move was followed immediately by a declaration from the Attorney General that such a move was illegal and that his office would file a lawsuit to reverse it.
• Acting University Provost Professor Neville Pinto was named as the permanent University Provost following a limited internal search, also drawing faculty criticism.
• President Ramsey’s crisis management team continues to put out puff-pieces in an effort to offset continuous bad press.

The downside of all the above is that the University will be drawn out further in its institutional agony.  The upside is that additional time has become available for a systematic, transparent, and reliable survey of the faculty concerning their opinion of the leadership of President James Ramsey.  I will elaborate on this new information below. Continue reading “Yesterday’s Explosion of UofL News.  Not All Good.”

“April is the cruelest month.”

It is going to be a busy and certainly controversial month at the University of Louisville.  On April 6, the UofL Faculty Senate – the highest governing body of the University’s faculty – will have its last scheduled meeting before the meeting of the Board of Trustees later this month on April 20.  At the Trustee’s meeting, the Board will re-consider its postponed vote of no confidence in the presidency of James Ramsey.  An aborted effort last March 1st to proceed with such a vote was aggressively blocked on procedural grounds by longtime Ramsey supporters.  I am told that the President’s Office has retained an expensive outside crisis-management consultant.  (I wonder who is paying for this, don’t you?)

Those who have declared their intention to cast a vote of no confidence are being categorized as “dissidents.”  Demonizing one’s opponents is a strategy often resorted to when other arguments prove insufficient. We see examples in the papers every day. I am forced to ask, how can a majority or even a near-majority of the Board be called dissidents?  Would it then follow that if President Ramsey does receive a vote of no confidence, that his supporters would be the dissidents?  I have listened to the language used by both sides.  In contrast to the professional, restrained, and respectful language used by those Trustees unhappy with the current direction of the University, Ramsey’s supporters are becoming even more shrill resorting to personal character attacks. These smack of desperation.  I am not alone in this perception.

By accounts, the vote will be a close one.  Not every one of the 20 trustees has expressed how they plan to vote.  None of the three trustees representing faculty, staff, or students has done so.  It even remains possible that Governor Bevin will name two new trustees who would then be asked to vote on the President’s performance even before they had their required orientation, and certainly before they had any opportunity to observe events as a Trustee. I cannot find evidence that the Postsecondary Nominating Committee has begun their statutory process, but obvious Ramsey supporters are already standing in line to be noticed. Stacking the Board with Ramsey supporters would be a bald political move that would only perpetuate the current weakness of the University’s position. Using the excuse that the Board is illegally constituted to support Ramsey in his understandable efforts to hang on is hypocritical in the extreme. Continue reading “What Does the Faculty Think About UofL President James Ramsey?  Does It Matter?”

Although the the proposed vote of no confidence in UofL President James Ramsey was the major item coming out of last week’s tumultuous UofL Board meeting, several other important things were revealed at the meeting itself, in subsequent interviews, and in supplemental handouts.  One such was the statement that a settlement may be near in last summer’s lawsuit initiated by the Justice Resource Center over to the racial minority makeup of the board itself – specifically that the statutorily required number of African-American Board members was no longer present. It was felt that a Trustee of Hispanic descent who displaced an African-American Trustee from being reappointed was not an appropriate substitution. Since then, a Trustee whose heritage is unknown to me, and the Trustee of Hispanic heritage resigned from the Board thus allowing themselves to be replaced.  So far one new well-respected African-American was appointed to the Board. I do not know at what stage of the appointment process the remaining open slot is.

At last week’s meeting, we were told that two additional African-American Trustees would soon be appointed – one to fill the open slot, and a second to replace an unnamed Board member who would resign.  [Trustee Robert Rounsavall, whose term ends soon, did indeed announce his resignation shortly after the meeting.] Filling this opening would give us 3 minority slots on the Board in addition to any minorities elected by their internal UofL constituencies. Assuming Governor Bevin fills these slots with African-Americans, this would bring the number of racial minority members among the 17 citizen members of the Board up to three, and on the 20-member Board as a whole to four. I am very supportive of the intent of all of this.  I have stated several times that I believe the Board of Trustees should look like and think like our greater Louisville Community.   I believe most of those involved are trying to do the right thing, but in my opinion we are using flawed, illogical, and perhaps even unconstitutional methods.  I believe too that the process is being manipulated for personal and political gain. Continue reading “Settlement Near for Lawsuit Over Racial Composition of UofL Board of Trustees?”

Actual vote thwarted but result essentially the same:
Overall a win for more open and shared governance.

If you are reading this, the chances are that the fact that the University of Louisville Board of Trustees discussed a vote of no confidence in the presidency of Dr. James Ramsey two days ago will not be news.  That something dramatic might happen was no surprise to the army of media people who came prepared to cover anything.  I was there too.  Although longstanding allies of President Ramsey used procedural means to block an actual hands-up vote, those Trustees seeking a more open and shared governance role for the Board succeeded for the first time in presenting their arguments directly to the public, and by their accounts, to the Board itself!   A majority of the Board, including its Chairman and Treasurer, were prepared to vote in favor of such a measure.  At this juncture a vote would have been superfluous, but one is scheduled for the next meeting on April 20.   A lot can happen before then.  I do not see how Dr. Ramsey’s presidency can survive, with or without an actual vote.

Excellent accounts of the meeting have been reported by Andrew Wolfson of the Courier-Journal, Chris Otts of WDRB, Joe Sonka of Insider Louisville, Baylee Pulliam of Business First, and a team of reporters from the Louisville Cardinal.  Because a number of post-meeting interviews were going on simultaneously, each of the above had a little something extra to add.  I will not try to compete with their good work.  I have however been following this emerging story for some time, have a long and intimate association with the University, and wish to lend a few additional insights into what is happening.  At the end of this article, I placed an audio recording of the Trustee meeting beginning a few seconds after they returned from executive session. I plan add as much of the interviews that followed the formal meeting as I was able to capture.  I also post materials that were handed out by the University and a Trustee.  These materials may allow individuals who were not present to make their own judgments about who conducted themselves in a respectful and professional way, and who did not. Continue reading “UofL Board of Trustees Prepare For a Vote of No Confidence in President James Ramsey.”