Excerpt from WKEF/WRGT
Wright State University faculty has voted that they have No Confidence in the Board of Trustees.
In February, the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate reviewed a petition that called for a vote of confidence/no confidence in the trustees. After getting 91 signatures in support of the petition and allowing for a rebuttal from the university, the vote was put on.
An electronic ballot was given to all 735 faculty members who were eligible to vote on March 11. A total of 440 members voted, with 382 voting 'no confidence' and 58 voting 'confidence'.
A letter was then sent to the governor's office from Faculty President Travis Doom to report the results of the vote on Monday.
The petition listed a number of reasons why the faculty had reportedly lost confidence in the Board, including that they allegedly led the university into a financial crisis and that the Board failed in their administrative oversight.
The Board then responded to the claims, saying that context was needed for the decisions they've made since 2015 and then addressing each one of the issues.
Like allegations claiming they protected funds for Division 1 athletics over education. The board called that accusation simply untrue.
In their rebuttal they said athletics were cut, including the loss of the swimming and diving teams. But many students say they were not surprised by the vote.
"We knew there would be a vote of no confidence,” said Sarah Marsh.
Marsh said, like the faculty, a lot of students have lost confidence in the board as well. But how can that be regained?
"Personally I think one of the biggest things would be for a lot of the board of trustees to step down,” said Marsh.
Marsh adds addressing what happened during the nearly three week faculty strike and the issues educators still have with the board is another way.
"Coming out and publicly saying this is what our plan is and being completely transparent and saying we want to fix this, we want to build back the community at Wright State, I think that's very important,” said Marsh.
As for student life after the strike some say it has been hard to catch up.
"We basically had to start the entire class over, we had two weeks to learn what we should have learned in about five," said Ashley Laverdiere.
Others say the transition back to normal has been going well.
"They [faculty] came back and continued on where they left off, and didn’t let anything impact our grades,” said Lacey Loger. “They did whatever they needed to do to make sure they got caught up and helped us.”
WSU faculty union members were recently on strike for nearly three weeks. This vote was a grassroots effort led by some professors in the union to try to avoid the strike, but the movement was not led by the union.
So far, it's not clear what comes next for the university.
