UH tries to avert censure
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
The University of Hawai'i administration hopes this morning to heal a rift with the Manoa Faculty Senate, which believes it has been shut out of the planning process to reorganize the community colleges and the president's office.
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With a resolution for censure hanging in the balance, University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle and the interim vice president for academic affairs, Deane Neubauer, were to meet with Faculty Senate representatives at 10 a.m. to ease tensions that have arisen in the past week.
UH President Evan Dobelle is in a rift with faculty over planning the reorganization of community colleges.
"This is the first serious rift between the faculty and the president," said Frank Sansone, a liaison officer with the senate's committee on administration and budget, which proposed the resolution to censure the administration "for failing to consult adequately" with the senate on the matter.
"We've been waiting for concrete proposals to come from the president's office ... and the first time we see something concrete proposed, we've been completely circumvented," said Sansone.
Neubauer, who takes blame for failing to officially consult with the senate, said the changes sought by the faculty are "reasonable suggestions" and will be adopted. They include:
- A one-year limit to Joyce Tsunoda's term as vice president for international education, followed by an international search for a successor.
- An international search beginning this month for a vice president for academic affairs, the position held by Neubauer on an interim basis.
- Language in the plan ensuring consultation with faculty as the reorganization goes into effect.
Censure is essentially the formal registration of a faculty complaint that is issued as an official rebuke. It carries no punitive provision.
This is the first time in memory that a UH administration has been threatened with censure by a Faculty Senate. According to Sansone, it's a sign that the "honeymoon" with Dobelle may be winding down.
It comes on the heels of other difficulties for Dobelle, including the resignation of Board of Regents member Michael Hartley over the president's endorsement of Mazie Hirono in the gubernatorial race, and the resulting tiff with Gov.-elect Linda Lingle, who called the endorsement "inappropriate."
Oceanography professor Christopher Measures, who was on the Faculty Senate executive committee in 1999 when a censure of then-UH President Kenneth Mortimer "was in the air," though no resolution ever surfaced, calls this threat a "sledgehammer" approach that may be "pent-up frustration" over years of budget cuts and top-down management under Mortimer.
"This has been a long time simmering. We've been suffering for the last seven years," said Measures. "They may be the unfortunate recipients of something they may not deserve."
Neubauer said that he had many informal discussions with faculty over the past few months and that Dobelle informally briefed members of the systemwide faculty senate after the Board of Regents meeting last month about proposed changes. But the formal request for feedback gave respondents only two days to reply.
"It was a short window," Neubauer admits.
"I mistook informal consultations for supplying the need for the formal consultations," he said, "and the faculty has a right to be concerned about that."
The UH Student Caucus raised a similar issue last week, and Neubauer subsequently set up a monthly consultation session with Dobelle to provide student input on the reorganization.
Under Mortimer, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits the university, faulted the university for inadequate consultation with faculty.
"The bigger issue is that failure to consult is threatening to the faculty role, and a concern for how the university works," said Michael Forman, chairman of the Faculty Senate.
"I hope this is just a miscommunication or some kind of a slip that we can straighten out."
But Forman said the issue could spell trouble because of a spring visit by the Western association's accrediting team.
If the compromise isn't in place this morning, the resolution may go before the senate at 3 this afternoon.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
