Dear Michael,
The faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences are involved in a struggle to sustain academic integrity and faculty governance traditions in the 98-yr-old college. We are interested in creating a College in the new UT that sustains its relationship with other Colleges, serves the needs of the entire University in terms of the liberal arts, and has a strong commitment to those students of Northwest Ohio who wish to graduate with BA's, MA. and Ph.D's in the many and varied fields of the liberal arts.
We are engaging with the current administration, who took the NC vote by the representatives of 300 faculty as "just one more input" rather than consulting with us seriously. He called a public mtg to "respond" to the vote. None of this would be done by a competent administration interested in sustaining good relations with the faculty.
The lack of attribution by the Dean of some quotations in the article in the Free Press were never even mentioned in the discussions leading to the NC vote. It was rumored about, sometimes wondered about, but did not play any serious role in the decision. The faculty are fed up with incompetence and naked assertions of power. That is what the NC vote is about.
I do not know why you resigned from the advisory board. I hope it was not because of some misperception that the misappropriation in the article drove any of our decisions.
We need the Toledo press to be paying careful attention to what is happening at UT. If nothing else this administration has inspired the faculty to work together in unprecendented ways, and a stronger UT may emerge in spite of the battles currently being waged.
I assume your resignation was due to any perception of conflict of interest as a member of the press that will be covering the situation at UT.
Thank you for your attention and care in pursuing the issues at UT.
Renee
ps. I respectfully disagree with your thoughts about M. Dixon. If I were to be a racist in my personal life who did not believe persons of color should enter the University, and said so in the local press, I would deserve to be fired. I can no longer do my job with any credibility.
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2 comments:
Why downplay the plagiarism? It was obviously important and a deciding factor in some eyes. It isn't really accurate to say that the accusations (are they accusations or actual instances? I'd say the latter) of plagiarism "did not play any serious role in the decision." It's really important that the leader of a college can't come up with more than a few words of his own in a puff piece about nothing less than the role of the college in relation to economic development in Toledo. It played a very serious role...and should have.
Of course Jacobs shouldn't have fired Crystal Dixon. He should have said that he took concerns about her comments seriously, but that those who care about equal rights for all people are only one among many inputs. He should have then guaranteed that she would have remained in place for at least six more months while an outside consulting firm, to start their work beginning Fall semester, would investigate the functioning of the entire human resources department. And then, maybe, some decision about Ms. Dixon's position would be made.
That would be the proper response to the questionable performance of a UT administrator.
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