EDITORIAL: Who will hold CMED accountable?


The College of Medicine has asked for a lot from Central Michigan University:

Funds until they can be reimbursed by donations, patience, special consideration for contract concerns and well-paid staff for a not-yet-profitable program, to name a few.

But there is one very important thing it has not given in return.

Accountability.

Accountability does not allow for an announcement of $5 million more in upfront costs and an estimated additional $3 million more yearly to be appended to the end of a press release sent out on a Friday afternoon — sneaking the figures into the public record mere days before those numbers would be presented to an international accreditation organization.

Accountability does not allow research costs — obviously a substantial concern for a graduate school at a public university — to be either forgotten or de-emphasized in initial estimates.

It does not allow a provost, who said in a talk with Central Michigan Life’s editorial board he was dedicating “50 percent” of his time to CMED, to neglect said figures.

CMED does require a great degree of oversight, but if a program receiving such a large share of his attention is allowed to play so fast and loose with financing, it's concerning to think what may be happening with programs receiving much smaller fractions of his time.

The Academic Senate has made efforts to establish greater transparency regarding CMED, particularly in terms of curriculum and finance, but they have been unable to establish an open, cooperative relationship. Further, the A-Senate seems unsure about how much power it truly wields in this situation, if any at all.

Students, alumni and taxpayers looking for accountability from the rest of the administration or the A-Senate, neither of whom seem to know what measures taken in protest of CMED actually mean, will not have much luck, either.

There is only one place left to look.

The CMU Board of Trustees must not pass the buck back down to University President George Ross. It must not rubber stamp more measures proposed by officials who seem less and less competent in the task set before them.

There are plenty of hardworking, intelligent Mount Pleasant residents who could approve and move items to the consent agenda just as well as our trustees do, if that’s all we ask of them.

In a system where cooperation between faculty and administration collapsed, it falls to the board of trustees to hold those responsible for the university's most audacious project accountable for, well, accounting.

Consider this to be this editorial board’s plea to those entrusted by the State of Michigan to guide the development of CMU:

Do not do the easy thing. Make the administration, the faculty, the students’ and your own lives harder now so we may have a better university tomorrow.

Hold us accountable.

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