Special Dec. 10th All-Member Meeting

WMU-AAUP Membership Considers Vote of No Confidence in University Leadership

On Friday Nov. 19th, the Chapter’s Association Council (departmental representatives) voted to hold a special all-member Chapter meeting on December 10. The Council called for this meeting in order to continue deliberations about a vote of no confidence in WMU leadership. The motion came after careful consideration and discussion of arguments and evidence presented to them by the No Confidence Working Group, a group of faculty volunteers from across the university.

At the Nov. 19th Association Council meeting, the faculty working group’s presentation documented concerns critical to the university’s ongoing viability, for example:

• continuing dramatic drops in enrollment even as some similar Michigan institutions have begun to boast of impressive enrollment increases
• a significant decline in WMU’s national rankings that coincides with the current president’s time in office
• radical academic restructuring projects initiated without proper consultation with faculty, staff, and students
• a drop in faculty and staff morale that seems at least partly attributable to unjustified staffing shortages, unreasonable workloads, and perceived indifference by WMU leaders to faculty and staff concerns
• an expensive top-down rebranding initiative that has brought embarrassing national attention to WMU
• a failure to properly prioritize and resource WMU’s academic mission and infrastructure even in the wake of a record-breaking $550 million private donation

At the Nov. 19th Association Council meeting, the following points were also made as to why a no confidence vote in WMU leadership deserves further consideration:

• members of the WMU community, including WMU-AAUP groups and leaders, have made repeated attempts to communicate their concerns to WMU leaders through normal channels and received little or no response
• given the ongoing and precipitous declines in WMU’s enrollment, ranking, morale, and academic infrastructure, there is great urgency to persuade WMU leadership to make course corrections if recovery is to be possible
• in light of the severe and ongoing damage being done to WMU, Western faculty have an intrinsic ethical responsibility to publicly express their dissent even if WMU leaders choose to ignore these voices
• although no confidence votes are not binding, they often function as a wake up call that encourages apparently indifferent leaders to listen to colleagues and constituents with greater seriousness and respect

In order to continue this vigorous discussion and potentially move toward action steps, please attend this Zoom meeting on Dec. 10 at 11 a.m. As you consult your calendar, note that the WMU-AAUP includes many hundreds of faculty members, so it is not possible to find a meeting time that will work for everyone. Keeping this extraordinary scheduling challenge in mind, please consider requesting that the time of any conflicting meeting you might have be adjusted so that you can participate.