Senate endorses statement expressing no-confidence in SUNY trustees

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

The Faculty Senate Tuesday endorsed a statement expressing no confidence in the SUNY Board of Trustees, joining the governance bodies at Stony Brook, Albany and a number of the system's colleges in supporting what the statement's originators call an effort to end the "dysfunctional and destructive actions of the board of trustees."

An unprecedented collaboration of the SUNY Faculty Senate and United University Professions, the statement calls for the immediate appointment of a new board of trustees "that will properly carry out the statutory mission of the State University of New York."

Individual campus Faculty Senates and UUP chapters have been asked to endorse the statement by tomorrow. A formal notification of the vote of no confidence will be announced publicly in Albany on April 20, and faculty members across the state are being asked to wear black armbands that day to protest the trustees' actions.

The statement, which the SUNY Faculty Senate and UUP have called a "defining moment" for SUNY, cites numerous instances where the board of trustees has "failed in its responsibilities." Among them are:

- Allowing ideological views to dictate the academic direction of the university

- Seeking to "significantly disrupt" the public mission of high-quality, health-care delivery to the people of New York by attempting to remove SUNY's teaching hospitals from the university

- Violating its own policies by imposing a mandated general-education policy for all campuses without the direct involvement of "legitimate" faculty representatives, chief academic officers or campus presidents

- Disregarding well-established practices of consultation, communication and open discussion within the university community and with the board of trustees and excluding legitimate representatives of the faculty and professional staff.

"We consider these actions of the board of trustees to be harmful to the functioning of State University of New York as a quality system of public higher education, and damaging to its reputation and standing in the academic community," the measure states. "We believe this board of trustees has also disregarded the public's support for public higher education in the State of New York. Never before have we so spoken, and we do so now only from the deep conviction that the university is in a time of great jeopardy." Several UB faculty members speaking at Tuesday's Faculty Senate meeting objected to the inclusion of the hospital issue in the statement, saying that UB does not have "standing" on the issue because it does not own a teaching hospital.

President William R. Greiner had cautioned senators against basing a vote of no confidence on the hospital issue, since it was "not inappropriate" for the SUNY trustees to look for a model on which to operate the other SUNY medical centers that is similar to UB's and because the issue is "clearly a matter for collective bargaining."

Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and a SUNY senator, said that while he felt UB did not have standing on the hospital issue, including the issue in the statement was "critical to the membership of UUP."

He said that although support of the statement might be interpreted by some as opposition to a general-education curriculum-when in fact UB is strongly committed to general education-he said he objected to the way in which the board ignored SUNY Senate President Vincent Aceto's attempts to express his views at the Dec. 15 meeting at which trustees voted to impose the curriculum.

Judith Adams-Volpe, head of Lockwood Library and a SUNY senator, told her colleagues that the trustees' actions have caused "unredeemable damage to the university."

"It's time to take a brave stand on this," she said. She pointed out that although the hospital issue might not affect UB directly, the issue is addressed in the statement in terms "of what it might do to the health care of the people of New York...from that point of view, I think it is a statement we can support."

John Fisher, professor of pathology and a SUNY senator, said that the board of trustees was trying to "destroy the centers of medical excellence" in SUNY and "endangering these centers and their mission of teaching medical students to become physicians and physicians to become specialists." He pointed out that UB's five affiliated teaching hospitals could have their funding cut, like the SUNY teaching hospitals.

Jerome Yates, professor of medicine, said he was concerned that "not every avenue has been explored" in dealing with the trustees. Changes in the health-care system have made it difficult for university hospitals to operate profitably, and many universities are "examining the wisdom" of operating these hospitals, he said.