EDITORIAL: No confidence in Ross, Shapiro
The Academic Senate acknowledged the disillusioned mood of our campus and community in its resolution stating its loss of confidence in University President George Ross and Provost Gary Shapiro.
Ross was lauded for his financial expertise when hired, but over the course of his tenure the financial state of the university has gone from healthy, if uncertain, to confused and troubling.
Many confusing statements have emerged on the financial standing of this university as Ross and other administrators stressed to employees the need for "shared sacrifice" and how Michigan is going through a rough economic time.
That's difficult to accept when CMU increases its operating budget significantly year after year. With the College of Medicine slowly becoming a bigger financial burden and the fiscal irresponsibility of both the administration and the board of trustees (for example, spending $1.5 million to add a Mongolian grill to what is already one of the best on-campus dining facilities), the reasons behind possible financial trouble are clear.
More than state cuts, our university's uncertain financial future stems from mismanagement at the administrative level.
Ross should act as the public face of the institution as president of the university. However, his administration is becoming increasingly shrouded in its extensive public relations apparatus, making CMU look like it's hiding information whenever possible.
CMU waited until one business day before the Liaison Committtee on Medical Education came to visit to release thousands of pages of documents about CMED requested by the Faculty Association, A-Senate and Central Michigan Life. Later that day, Provost Shapiro announced CMU would need millions of additional dollars to spend on CMED at the bottom of the email about the documents' release.
Furthermore, at the December board of trustees meeting it seemed like the vote of no confidence was the furthest thing from everyone's mind, despite happening a few days earlier.
While it’s encouraging to see the A-Senate taking action which other bodies on campus seem to shy from, the manner in which the vote was called unfortunately discredited it.
The votes, which were hurriedly taken in the last 10 minutes of an A-Senate meeting, left many confused as to what happened. For what may ultimately be only a symbolic gesture, its underhanded execution robbed it of much of its impact.
Regardless of the manner in which it was done, the vote was still an important step toward recognizing the actual state of the university.
The administration now functions almost entirely without oversight. The board that appointed Ross appears to have little interest in asking hard questions about the administration's spending.
Senators seem to be doing a better job questioning what's going on at CMU than trustees who spend perhaps a total of a week or two every year on campus, yet make decisions determining where millions of its dollars are spent.
After the December board meeting, then-Chairwoman Sarah Opperman said it was time to "begin to heal as a university."
There's little to disagree with in Opperman's statement, but we may need to mend a much deeper wound than she imagined.
