7.1
.15.10
What Happened Last Year:
A Transparent Explanation to Reunite a Community
Amy Hruby, Editor-in-Chief
Meredith College President
Maureen Hartford gave her final
State of the College address on Fri
day, August 27, 2010. Presenting an
overview of the 2009-2010 academic
year, President Hartford’s speech
came across as a bit routine after Sam
Ewell’s caution that Meredith “[could]
not afford to continue doing business
as usual.” Regardless of what was said,
the power of the speech was in the
growing murmurs and seat-shiftings
in the audience. As soon as questions
were welcomed, every speaker had
an agenda to discuss—a program to
fight for, a budget decision to deride,
a complaint to be heard. Underneath
these arguments was a simple, un
spoken statement—“What happened
last year was wrong”—and it was
accompanied by a common inability
to articulate what actually had hap
pened last year. Avoiding inflamma
tory accusations and spoken from an
“on-the-ground” student and faculty
perspective. The Herald has attempted
to outline the events of last year with
the aim of clearing the air so that Mer
edith College administration, faculty,
staff and students can move forward
as a unified community.
In July 2009, an Ad Hoc
Committee was assembled by college ,
administration to assess a variety of
college programs, ventures and opera
tions. The Ad Hoc Committee was
given three original goals: to consider
new graduate programs, to identify
new revenue sources and to review
current undergraduate programs.
However, there is no evidence that
their activities moved past review of
current undergraduate programs, and
their reports only indicate the deter
mination of eleven “negative outliers”
amongst undergraduate programs.
Faculty in these outlier programs were
notified of their inclusion on July
20, 2009 and requested to submit
proposals for program revision. The
faculty members were told
that a financial crisis made
it necessary to reassess
programs, but the details of
this budgetary problem and
the end goal of the program
revisions were unclear. All
of the outlier programs had
been completing periodic
program review and report
ing to their Deans and the
Vice President for Academic
Programs on their findings-
-receiving what faculty have
now realized was question
ably little feedback. On
September 1, 2009, depart
ments submitted program
review proposals to the President and
Vice President of Academic Affairs
(VPAP), remaining worried about the
implications of this budget-driven re
view process.
On September 18, 2009, VPAP
Allen Page announced the actions that
would be made in response to the pro
posal revisions. Faculty (and shortly af
ter students and community members)
learned that some proposals had been
accepted (like the Religion Department’s
plan to become the Department of Reli
gion and Ethical Studies) and others had
been rejected, resulting in three elimi
nated majors (French, Public History
and Women’s Studies). These decisions
led to immediate outcry amongst faculty
and students, who requested informa
tion on why programs had been dropped
and faculty positions eliminated when
many programs and faculty members
had recently been positively reviewed.
An anonymous faculty member argued
that this discrepancy occurred because
last fall’s program review was not a
normal, ongoing program review but
rather a “program-cutting review.” This
difference was apparent in that the
“program-cutting review” lacked the
normal wide quality criteria of ongo
ing reviews and focused only on three
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narrow statistics: the number of majors
currently in the program, the number of
majors that had completed the pro
gram, and the student-to-faculty ratio. A
September 21st Faculty Council Memo
explained that only using these statistics
left “departments [feeling] that compe
tition between departments was being
encouraged based on arbitrary goals for
survival.” And the memo further argued
that the program review “[went] beyond
temporary budget measures, raising
critical questions about process and
faculty governance.”
The Just and Equitable Treat
ment (JET) Committee is a standing
faculty committee whose 2009 report
analyzed the college’s shared gover
nance structure and made recommenda
tions for faculty involvement in college
planning and academic decision mak
ing. In relation to this program review,
their report argues that “rationales for
program and positions cuts [were] in
consistent and vague” and outlines that
rationale given by administration in
clude: placement of blame on the Board
of Trustees, constant reference to an ad
vanced budget crisis with “no evidence
of true financial exigency,” and argu
ments that programs were unnecessary
to the college mission. Clyde Frazier, a
History and Politics Department faculty
member on the JET Committee, argued
that “decisions seemed to be driven by
response to perceived student demands
and not by any vision of what we want a
Meredith education to be.” The recog
nition of this lack of common vision,
combined with the acknowledgement of
a questionable administrative hierarchy
involved in the decision-making process
created a discernible sense of discord on
campus. The JET Committee report rec
ognized this discord and most broadly
concluded that it could be healed with
an emphasis on open communication
in academic program affairs and the
development of shared goals between
students, faculty, and administration.
As the community adjusted
to the controversial-program cuts, the
faculty learned of a new administrative
decision made involving tenure. Where
departments had previously been
required to have one untenured faculty
member for budget flexibility, they now
could be composed of no more than
60% tenured faculty. This decision
was made by the Board of Trustees as
a method of saving money in a time of
economic downturn, but faculty were
quick to point out that the change
greatly decreased departments’ abilities
to tenure current faculty members or to
recruit new professors. The tenure deci
sion was paired with announcements
that adjunct professor positions were
not renewed, faculty raises were put on
hold and college contributions to facul
ty retirement accounts were eliminated
for the year. These decisions came as a
shock to faculty, staff and students, and
administrative officials justified choices
as money-saving necessities.
During a time of economic
downturn, financial problems were
apparent to the Meredith community.
President Hartford explained that the
college had been overly generous with
its financial aid offers for the incom
ing class. When a larger-than-expected
number of students accepted the offer,
Meredith was left ■with one of its largest
freshmen classes and barely enough
money to pay out their financial aid
packages. On the Meredith Budget
website. President Hartford poignantly
noted that “salaries and benefits repre
sent (continued on page 6)