The RIF appeal hearing for one of the three RIF'd UTMB faculty senate chairs is scheduled for 9:00 AM today in the Main Administration Building on campus. As previously discussed on this blog, three of the last five were RIF'd, and both the Blogmeister and the UTMB faculty noticed that those three chairs were the ones who actually tried to participate in shared governance in a meaningful way rather than simply take orders from administration.
Avoiding the RIF:
A chair who avoided the RIF was told by President Stobo in 2006 not to discuss the proposed compensation plan at a faculty senate meeting. He went back and actually told the senate that they were forbidden to debate the plan and, to the consternation of the senators present, did his best to obey orders. He's the same one who threw softball questions, screening the tough ones submitted by faculty, at a question-and-answer faculty gathering with high-level administrators. Ultimately, administrators strong-armed the controversial plan down faculty throats with the predictable result that individual faculty salaries could be expanded and contracted almost at will by administration, depending on whether or not a faculty member was perceived as a "team player." The faculty senate chair during the time the compensation plan was being peddled to faculty may have done a disservice to his colleagues, but he sure kept his job, eh? Not coincidentally, the past chair trying to salvage his career at today's hearing was one of the voices who tried to speak reason to President Stobo and his administrators.
The Blogmeister figures that today's hearing will run for four or five hours, although it is scheduled for only two. The past chair has gathered an impressive array of witnesses and a stack of documentation that will take some time to go through. I'm afraid it will all fall on deaf ears, and if it doesn't, President Callender gets the last say anyhow. They want a cowed faculty senate that will do what it's told, mere window dressing that they can point to when SACS or other academic accrediting agencies come to town. With the public execution of three careers, they'll most likely get what they want. The Blogmeister hears that the new chair, due to take office on September 1st, isn't exactly known for courage.
Today's hearing will last only a few hours, but its effects will last for years.
