2008 Woodie Awards
The time for talk is over
Tom Jones
Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
The Academic Senate recently conducted an opinion-gathering poll of Humboldt State Faculty on a number of options regarding action to be taken in response to the behavior of the current administration of the university.
The polling ballot contained five options: (1) Should the senate initiate a vote of no confidence in President Richmond? (2) Should it expand the vote to include his administration? (3) Should it admonish Richmond and his administration with a senate resolution? (4) Should the senate develop a policy paper on the future direction of the university? or (5) Should it take no action at all?
The results are now in, with the president losing on all five issues. It should first be noted that of 408 eligible faculty, 278 cast ballots. What should the senate do with the 138 who cast no ballots? The same as is always done with those who choose not to participate in democratic processes: Honor their choice. They have in effect said, "We leave the decision to others." Nonvoters play no role in national, state, or local elections. They should play none here.
Next to be considered are the 213 cases of voters not responding to a question. What weight is to be given to them? Again, the same weight that is given year after year to blanks on election ballots at the national, state and local levels. They should be ignored.
Additionally, there were 160 respondents who, rather than agreeing or disagreeing with one of the five options, indicated that they were "not sure" and one indicated "maybe". The indecisiveness that these 161 voters brought to their ballots was, of course, the same indecisiveness that lay behind the Academic Senate's original paralysis, the overcoming of which was the whole purpose of its information-gathering poll. Not being sure itself, the Academic Senate decided to take its lead from the faculty by gathering information from those whom it apparently felt were sure. So let us ignore these 161 unsure respondents and turn instead to the 1,016 responses from faculty who cast clear yes or no votes for all five of the questions the ballot raised.
Of 249 ballots responding to the foremost issue (whether to hold a vote of no confidence in President Richmond), 156 of them favored holding the vote, indicating a level of support (62.6 percent) generally regarded as a clear mandate. But if we ignore (as we ought) those 33 votes that declared themselves "not sure," we then have 156 out of 216 favoring the no-confidence vote. That is to say, of those who actually voted, the issue was approved by the even greater margin of 72.2 percent. In other words, it won by a landslide!
Confining our statistics to those casting clear yes or no votes on the other four questions, of the 190 who voted on expanding the no-confidence to include Richmond's administration, 115 (60.5 percent) agreed; of the 190 who voted on the question of admonishing Richmond, 116 (61 percent) favored doing so; of the 216 who voted on the question of drafting a policy guide to the future direction of the university, 168 (77.7 percent) said yes; and finally of the 204 who voted on doing nothing, 153 (75 percent) opposed doing nothing. On every one of these issues, the faculty voted overwhelmingly (from 60.5 percent to 77.7 percent) against the president and the direction that he has taken this university.
Looked at another way, of the 408 eligible voters, no more than 51 of them declared themselves in favor of doing nothing. This 12.5 percent of the whole is apparently mouthpiece Mann's "happy" faculty.
Given the statistics emerging from Martin Flashmann's Faculty Blog site, where of 74 (91.3 percent) of 81 anonymous faculty have so far voted no-confidence on an up- or-down choice, and given the 64 past and present faculty thus far sufficiently bold to sign their names to my petition of no-confidence, and given now the figures of its own fact-finding poll, it would seem that the Academic Senate has no choice but to take, at a minimum, the following actions:
1. Hold a faculty vote of no-confidence in President Richmond.
2. Pass a detailed resolution admonishing the president, independent of the results of the no-confidence vote.
3. Develop a policy paper for the future of the university.
In the face of the data now available to it, to do anything less would appear remiss on the part of the Academic Senate.
Meantime, I shall continue with my petition-whether as a supplement to, or substitute for, senate action only time will tell.
Jones is a professor of European
Cultural History at Humboldt State
The polling ballot contained five options: (1) Should the senate initiate a vote of no confidence in President Richmond? (2) Should it expand the vote to include his administration? (3) Should it admonish Richmond and his administration with a senate resolution? (4) Should the senate develop a policy paper on the future direction of the university? or (5) Should it take no action at all?
The results are now in, with the president losing on all five issues. It should first be noted that of 408 eligible faculty, 278 cast ballots. What should the senate do with the 138 who cast no ballots? The same as is always done with those who choose not to participate in democratic processes: Honor their choice. They have in effect said, "We leave the decision to others." Nonvoters play no role in national, state, or local elections. They should play none here.
Next to be considered are the 213 cases of voters not responding to a question. What weight is to be given to them? Again, the same weight that is given year after year to blanks on election ballots at the national, state and local levels. They should be ignored.
Additionally, there were 160 respondents who, rather than agreeing or disagreeing with one of the five options, indicated that they were "not sure" and one indicated "maybe". The indecisiveness that these 161 voters brought to their ballots was, of course, the same indecisiveness that lay behind the Academic Senate's original paralysis, the overcoming of which was the whole purpose of its information-gathering poll. Not being sure itself, the Academic Senate decided to take its lead from the faculty by gathering information from those whom it apparently felt were sure. So let us ignore these 161 unsure respondents and turn instead to the 1,016 responses from faculty who cast clear yes or no votes for all five of the questions the ballot raised.
Of 249 ballots responding to the foremost issue (whether to hold a vote of no confidence in President Richmond), 156 of them favored holding the vote, indicating a level of support (62.6 percent) generally regarded as a clear mandate. But if we ignore (as we ought) those 33 votes that declared themselves "not sure," we then have 156 out of 216 favoring the no-confidence vote. That is to say, of those who actually voted, the issue was approved by the even greater margin of 72.2 percent. In other words, it won by a landslide!
Confining our statistics to those casting clear yes or no votes on the other four questions, of the 190 who voted on expanding the no-confidence to include Richmond's administration, 115 (60.5 percent) agreed; of the 190 who voted on the question of admonishing Richmond, 116 (61 percent) favored doing so; of the 216 who voted on the question of drafting a policy guide to the future direction of the university, 168 (77.7 percent) said yes; and finally of the 204 who voted on doing nothing, 153 (75 percent) opposed doing nothing. On every one of these issues, the faculty voted overwhelmingly (from 60.5 percent to 77.7 percent) against the president and the direction that he has taken this university.
Looked at another way, of the 408 eligible voters, no more than 51 of them declared themselves in favor of doing nothing. This 12.5 percent of the whole is apparently mouthpiece Mann's "happy" faculty.
Given the statistics emerging from Martin Flashmann's Faculty Blog site, where of 74 (91.3 percent) of 81 anonymous faculty have so far voted no-confidence on an up- or-down choice, and given the 64 past and present faculty thus far sufficiently bold to sign their names to my petition of no-confidence, and given now the figures of its own fact-finding poll, it would seem that the Academic Senate has no choice but to take, at a minimum, the following actions:
1. Hold a faculty vote of no-confidence in President Richmond.
2. Pass a detailed resolution admonishing the president, independent of the results of the no-confidence vote.
3. Develop a policy paper for the future of the university.
In the face of the data now available to it, to do anything less would appear remiss on the part of the Academic Senate.
Meantime, I shall continue with my petition-whether as a supplement to, or substitute for, senate action only time will tell.
Jones is a professor of European
Cultural History at Humboldt State
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