Dear colleagues,

Yesterday I attended the Board of Trustees meeting as a member of APSCUF-KU Exec.  I wanted to give you a brief description and commentary of the meeting for your consideration

The open portion of the Trustees meeting was called to order at 4pm.  I was surprised to find that the media had already set up their cameras and taken positions.  I wasn’t surprised to see the media there, but I was surprised that the meeting felt very much like a press conference.

As expected the Board introduced a resolution expressing their support of President Cevallos.  Orwig, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, called for the “aye” vote, and then announced that the vote carried unanimously.  He did not ask for “no” votes or abstentions.

After the vote, Orwig introduced President Cevallos.  Similar to the letter he sent to the faculty a couple of hours before the meeting, Cevallos attributed the problems and issues raised by APSCUF-KU as “problems of communication.”  He said he is always open to working with the faculty.  As reported in the Morning Call, Cevallos “asserted his authority as the school’s chief manager,” saying “I am the one in charge of making decisions.”

When President Cevallos concluded his remarks, Orwig opened the floor to any questions or comments from members of the Board or observers.  At that point, Dr. Mike Gambone rose and asked permission to address the Board.  Gambone first said that he was hoping that there would have been time to have an honest and open discussion before the Board voted, but that was not the case.  Gambone said that the Board will have to decide if APSCUF-KU’s actions are a result of, as suggested in the media, “sour-grapes,” or real concerns about the quality of education.

Gambone then addressed statements Richard Orwig made to the media—in particular, his claims that he had “no idea” that the faculty has such concerns or that this was the first he had heard of the APSCUF-KU’s concerns.  Gambone told the board about the meeting that Orwig had called him to on April 30, 2007 to give a review of President Cevallos’s job performance—in part, because the Board had some concerns themselves.  In addition to Orwig, Dr. Thomas Krapso, the PASSHE Vice Chancellor for Human Resources and Labor Relations, and other members of the KU board were in attendance.  Gambone read the opening summary paragraph which concluded “Presently, there is significant support for a vote of no confidence against the president.”  Gambone then handed out copies of the five-page list of particulars that he gave to Orwig and others at that April 30th meeting.  He explained, again, all of the steps both he and the APSCUF-KU leadership has attempted to take “privately and through existing processes” to resolve these issues.  “We’ve had endless discussions, but no actions,” he concluded.

Orwig responded to Gambone’s report of the Board’s previous knowledge of faculty concerns by suggesting that he kept issues of job performance reviews private.  Then, clearly angry, he turned to Gambone and said, “the concept, sir, is to meet and discuss, not meet and agree.”  Orwig’s statements seemed to emphasize that the administration is under no obligation to resolve issues brought to them by APSCUF-KU.  After his statement, Orwig moved onto the next item of business.  At that point, we left.

We talked with reporters from the Morning Call, the Reading Eagle, and WFMZ-69 News for about a half an hour after that.  While we could hear the loud laughter of Board members behind the closed door, Gambone explained more of the particulars in the document he handed out.  For example, there has been a rapid increase in the number of students with disabilities without any increase in staff, raising questions about Kutztown’s ADA compliance.  Or concerns in the borough about the impact the new dorm will have on the town’s ability to handle the additional sewage in its water treatment plant.  Or the very real impact of the rapid increase in class size.  In each case, APSCUF-KU raised the issues through the appropriate process in an attempt to get some movement toward concrete solutions; in each case the administration has refused to respond in any concrete way.

This morning I posted to the blog <cevallosnoconfidence.blogspot.com> today’s articles from the Morning Call and the Reading Eagle and last night’s WFMZ-69 News story so people can see how the issue was covered.  I’ll leave my analysis of the Trustees meeting out of this post.  I just wanted to make sure everyone got a sense of what happened at the meeting.