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– The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States By phone: Online: By e-mail: In person: Letter Policy: facebook.com/theoakpost twitter.com/theoaklandpost youtube.com/oaklandpostonline flickr.com/photos/theoaklandpost [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS oaklandpostonline.com On page 21 of the March 10 issue, the credit for the photo of Constatin Carstea in front of his Game Over Lounge should go to Jennifer Bucciarelli, staff intern.
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On page 21 of the March 10 issue, the credit for the photo of Constatin Carstea in front of his Game Over Lounge should go to Jennifer Bucciarelli, staff intern.
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– The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States
STAFF EDITORIAL
March 17, 2010
Can we take a vote to not have a “vote of no confidence”?
The Post has been covering this saga from its inception during the conten-tious contract negotiations, “strike,” salary freeze/executive raises, and up through the second faculty forum with President Gary Russi.
As next week’s vote of no confidence against the president finally approach-es, we urge the organizers to just stop it.
Cancel the thing. Put the kibosh on it. Get on with finding and implementing
solutions to Oakland University’s prob-lems as opposed to perpetuating them and creating more.
This is such a poor representation of the university, and unfortunately, because of the way our media works, it’s going to be an image that burns bright for at least one news cycle.
What will a vote of no confidence do to the credibility fought for by our profes-sors, the donations, the mindset of stu-dents, the lawmakers who decide how much funding we should get?
It’s not as if a majority vote express-ing a lack of confidence in Russi has any official weight. So best case scenario for those in favor of it is that they prove a point.
We heard you already, loud and clear for the last year. We reported on
your efforts to make a variety of much needed changes, like swifter software purchasing, equality for the LGBTQ community, transparency, and explana-tion about executive raises.
The vote was originally planned for November, but was postponed to sup-posedly let Russi make good on these grievances against him.
But if the hold-off was to give him time to try and address these issues, then why in January did the organizers of the vote say it will take place unless Russi resigns first. Logic begs the ques-tion, what is the true motivation behind this vote?
Since the first forum last fall, there have been a number of things done to work away at the long laundry list of “particulars.” Nearly every one of those items that he has in his power to fix as the president, he has initiated.
He has pledged his $100,000 raise as a donation back to the university, he has kept updates of the meetings he scheduled and committees created to work away at these issues and logged all this information on oakland.edu/thepoint.
These actions speak very clearly that Russi has worked overtime to try to satisfy these demands. Of course they haven’t all been fixed. And they proba-
bly all won’t be. The Post still can’t find the LCME documents that are supposed to be in the library.
We still don’t have a faculty liai-son to the board. Russi has met with board members to discuss this, but it is really not in his power at all to imple-ment that. It’s something the board of trustees has to do itself, and they have expressed no interest in it.
The buck has to stop somewhere, but you know it changes a lot of hands before it ever reaches the person who runs any organization. Especially in light of the sign of good faith from the president’s office, there is hardly reason enough to continue on with this vote.
It’s unfair to the president and to the thousands of stakeholders in this uni-versity to expect that trying to remove a leader who has generated a lot of good will lead to something better. No evi-dence has even been presented to sup-port that case.
What’s the point in a call to action that measures somebody’s approval rating when the very people at the root of the vote seem to have made up their minds a long time ago.
Why vote at all if regardless of the outcome, all we are going to be left with is a bad reputation, no real solutions, and no leaders.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Colleen J. Miller • Katie Wolf • Jason Willis [email protected]
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No confidence in vote
1) How many students won the OUSC scholarship committees essay contest?2) What interactive website gives a little more than the viewer bargains for?3) Why was a blog created for Professor Bhargava?4) What is the Grizzlies’ stated goal for the NCAA Tournament? 5) Who won the face-off: the Italians or the Irish?
