ucfacultysupportingstudents

Thinking about the Senate motions February 11, 2012

There are three Academic Senate motions to vote on, and they are not all independent of each other.  Two are independent: Motion Concerning Police Actions and Motion Concerning the Chancellor’s Judgment.  The third, Five-Resolution Vote of Confidence, combines multiple issues which are logically independent of each other.  It’s nearly 90 days since Nov. 18, and we still haven’t even seen any report, much less seen any concrete action for improving the flawed process which led to those events, or (even more important in my view) improving the disastrously flawed communication processes evident in the weeks following.    I suspect many of you feel that you can’t quite support the no-confidence statement (Motion Concerning the Chancellor’s Judgment), but you also can’t yet express yes-confidence as the Five-Resolution Vote of Confidence does.  If so, you can still condemn the police actions by voting yes on the Motion Concerning Police Actions.  In my opinion, the Five-Resolution motion was written to inflate the yes-confidence vote by combining it with a lot of other things with which few can disagree.  The other two motions keep them separate.

Another  thing to keep in mind is that  this is not Parliament, in which the Prime Minister is ousted by a no-confidence vote.  There will NOT be turmoil if the no-confidence motion passes.  Katehi is not going anywhere; she has stated that the university needs her.  The effect of passing the no-confidence vote is to send a strong message that flawed processes in the chancellor’s office need to be fixed.  And this is our only chance to do that.

P.S. Need evidence of flawed processes?  Read about the fact sheet and about how they deal with students who wish to meet the Chancellor. Not to mention the flawed process of dealing with campus protests, which ignited all this.