Dear colleagues,

In what follows, I want to offer some of my thoughts about APSCUF-KU Executive Committee's decision to call for a discussion about a no confidence vote in President Cevallos. I've waited a few days to respond in part because I am all too conscious of the history of "flame wars" on this list. I wanted to give myself some time to reflect.

I’ll warn you ahead of time: this is long. Please delete now if you are not interested.

Keeping it within the family v. public discussion

I know some people have expressed concern (some outrage) about how public this discussion is and how the story quickly circulated in the media. For me, I guess it comes down to how I understand my job here at Kutztown and how I understand the calling of teaching.

First, should we "keep it in the family" and not let the broader public get wind of this for fear that it will give KU negative PR? This is certainly not a question to be taken lightly, for sure. After all, we know that issues that get raised about our university will affect how people view KU. Parents, for example, might begin to inquire about sewer gases leaking into Risley Hall where their children might take a dance class. Job candidates might start asking questions about travel funds and adequate office space. Students with disabilities might start asking about accessibility to services and accommodations. Prospective Elementary Education students might question Kutztown as their choice if they hear the Administration is trying to close the ELC. The ACLU and others might become interested in why The Keystone had part of its funding pulled. The list goes on.

I can understand the impulse to want to not "air our dirty laundry." Most of us love our students and are working extraordinarily hard to try and make this the best university possible. There is no doubt in that. I understand the desire to want to protect what we work hard for. However, I think there is a cost associated with keeping this discussion private. To keeping the discussion “within the family,” so to speak. If we “keep it within the family,” maybe things will get better. Maybe time will, after all, heal all wounds. If we just keep doing what we do maybe, just maybe, things will get better. We can hope (I’ll return to hope later). In the meantime, we keep up appearances. But as a State institution—publicly funded and with a service mission—it seems to me that when things are not going well, the public has a stake in the discussion.

To Whom are We Accountable?

For me, my primary commitment to teaching—and academics more broadly—stems from my commitment to democracy and critical citizenship. That is, I didn't get involved in academe to have social status, to enjoy the 'life of the mind,' or get my summers off. No. For me teaching and scholarship is a calling to service—service to my students, yes, but it is also a service to democracy and social justice. I talk to my students every semester about the "double-purpose" of higher education. On the one hand, it is to train students in a particular field and credential them for a job. On the other, it is to train critical citizens to expand and deepen democratic participation.

One of the main reasons I turned down other jobs and chose to come to Kutztown had to do with the mission of this university and the students we serve. I believe that teaching at a State university carries with it a special relationship with the preparation of future citizens (I am using “citizens” in the broad sense, by the way). When our university breaks down, when it has internal problems that impact the quality of education and the quality of work, the public is impacted. For example, students are directly impacted when they view our university’s pictures of dorm rooms thinking that is an accurate representation of what they can expect. Instead, they find themselves cramped in triples meant for one or two students. It impacts students when the promise of small classes is eroded by the experience of 2-3 classes in the Academic Forum their first semester.

But this break down takes a toll on us as faculty as well. Not only in terms of the size of our classes or the increase in workload, but when we do not have sufficient space to meet with students, to prepare for classes, or to do our research. It hurts us when there are increasing scholarship expectations without a corresponding increase in material support for research. And it hurts us when we cannot retain faculty members because they arrive at Kutztown to find that their offices are in closets and they cannot get adequate IT support for academic technology.

My case?

Now, I fully understand that my position on APSCUF-KU Exec affects the way I see these problems. But what I see is not encouraging. The ELC was a case in point. It was a last-minute, unilateral decision made without adequate input from all stakeholders. For example, very basic questions remained unaddressed—where would Elementary Ed students do their observation hours? What kind of impact would that have on the department’s and the university’s liability? How would faculty oversee these students? Further, how would the loss of the ELC impact NCATE accreditation—especially when the ELC was pointed to as a bright spot? Furthermore, there are concrete tangible consequences for parents who send their children to the ELC. Any parent knows how intensely difficult it would be to find a pre-school in which to place their children at such short notice—especially when Cevallos waited until May to make the announcement. The list goes on. Remember, the parking issue? Commonalities and SAP? Wonder what happened to +/- grading that was passed by the faculty two years ago? How about placing BUS classes in the Academic Forum resulting in a faculty member quitting and the Business School being faced with accreditation questions? Or the unilateral pulling of the Sexual Harassment Policy that faculty and administration worked on for two years and signed? Or the Center for Lifelong Learning’s rapid expansion of courses that by-passed the curricular process?

My point being, it’s not simply one issue. It’s a pattern of management that is pretty consistent. That is, there is a lack of planning and poor management of rapid growth. Now, I expect that some will say that these problems are not Cevallos’s fault. Then we go to the question of leadership and accountability. One of my colleagues reminded me of the sign Harry Truman used to have on his Whitehouse office desk. The sign read: “The Buck Stops Here!” In his farewell address in 1953, Truman said, “the President—whoever he is—has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” It seems to me that a president need not only be accountable for the decision he or she makes, he or she also needs to know what is being done in his or her administration. If a president is unable to coordinate the actions of his or her staff, there is a problem. If the president is unaware of what his or her staff is doing, there is a problem. We are all familiar with students who present us with endless excuses for why their papers are late, why they are always missing classes, or why they are unable to complete assignments. After we notice that a student has a repeated pattern of shifting responsibility to “events beyond their control,” we have to hold them accountable. Or at least I hope that is what we do.

The buck stops here.

The Way Things are Done at Kutztown and Other Possible Futures

During one of my first semesters teaching here I asked why student evaluations were done in the middle of the semester. There must be a reason, a logic, a rationale. In other words, somehow it must make sense. I figured it was strange to me because I was new. But the only answer I could get was “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Eventually there were more interesting versions of the narrative: it had to do with the computing capacity of East Stroudsburg computers; student evals were supposed to be used to improve teaching and not used for evaluations; or, well, let’s say there were some very interesting conspiracy theories. But no one could tell me for sure. It was mysterious. Until this year. In November, Mike Gambone and Karen Epting dug up the local agreement. That’s right, there was a local agreement establishing weeks 9-11 for student evals. It was not mandated by our contract. There was not a big conspiracy. It was agreed upon by APSCUF-KU and management in the 60s. Now that we know that, we can change it. And if we can change it, we can finally get in line with every other university in the country that does student evals at the end of the semester—if we so choose.

My point is two-fold. If we kept with the “way things are done” logic, we would have to do students evals in weeks 9-11 until we are all long gone. And the next generation of faculty would inherit our “lore” about why student evals are done when they are. But under Mike’s leadership, we asked why and found an answer. My second point is that at some point we have to take responsibility for the direction of our university as well. When we notice a problem, we need to address it and resolve it. We need to make our cases with reasons and evidence, not simply accusations about supposed intentions or convenient narratives. For example, when we KNOW that enrollments are increasing, we KNOW that we will need more faculty to teach the classes. That points to the need for faculty offices to house those new faculty members. So, knowing what we know, we could concretely PLAN and BUDGET for that future. But as we know, that’s not what happens. Instead of dealing with concrete questions and real solutions, too often we have seen Cevallos’s administration steamroll ahead and leave us—faculty, staff, students, town members—to play clean up. I think we have a choice to make about the way we govern this university. I do not think we can rely upon the shield of positive PR to protect us from the problems here. I think we need a new managerial strategy. One that is willing to work with us all to provide long-term budgets and plans. One that makes real the promises of our mission statement.

I don’t think we can continue doing what we are doing if we want to change this university for the better. I don’t think President Cevallos has made good on the promises he offered us when he came to KU in 2002. Worse, I think we can see a persistent track record of poor management—one that has been topped off with a Tier 4 ranking and poisoned faculty members in Risley Hall. I have no reason to believe that continuing to do the same thing—“the way things are done at Kutztown”—will do anything but give us more of the same. I have lost my hope in the status quo. I think we need a very un-Kutztown approach. I think we need change.

A Final Word on Hope

I do understand the desire to want to keep on working hard with hopes that things will get better. We need that very hope to carry on doing what we do. But I am constantly reminded what the critical educator, Paulo Freire said in his book, Pedagogy of Hope:

The idea that hope alone will transform the world, and action undertaken in that kind of naïveté, is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism...The essential thing, as I maintain later on, is this: hope, as an ontological need, demands an anchoring in practice in order to become historical concreteness" (9).

In other words, if hope is not anchored in concrete practice it will lead us to cynicism and hopelessness. Why? Well, because every time we "get our hopes up" we will be let down. We will hear, for example, "that's a great idea, but there's no money in the budget for that." We will continue to try, but get increasingly frustrated if we do not have concrete reasons to believe—to believe in Kutztown. We might decide to just embrace the cynicism and throw our hands up, declaring as Margaret Thatcher did, “There Is No Alternative.” That is, we might just decide there is no hope.

I’m not ready to go there. In my second year at Kutztown, I remember raising similar issues about the inaction and ineffectiveness of our APSCUF-KU local. I argued that we needed to build a strong union, one that helped established an agenda not simply complained and fed into the cynicism of this place. I remember being told, “if you don’t like it, then maybe Kutztown is not the place for you.” An interesting rephrasing of “love it or leave it.” Well, I guess I didn’t accept my choices. Instead of framing options in those terms, I worked to change this local. And look at what we’ve been able to do. That gives me hope. Not just in terms of our union, but in the possibility of Kutztown.

Coda

In everything I have posted to the <cevallosnoconfidence.blog