Chicago State University is trying to choose a new president, and the process seems to have gotten all twisted.
Chicago State University is trying to choose a new president, and the process seems to have gotten all twisted.
Students, faculty and alumni are up in arms that the school’s board of trustees, after a $75,000 search, has whittled candidates for the post down to Wayne Watson, retiring chancellor of Chicago’s City Colleges, and Carol Adams, Ph. D., secretary of the state’s Department of Human Services.
All but two members of a 15-member advisory committee that assisted in the search has resigned in protest of the choices, and students have staged protests at forums designed to introduce the finalists to the school community. The faculty is reportedly asking Gov. Pat Quinn to remove the trustees to keep them from choosing a new president.
What is clear is that there is some disconnect between what the advisory committee saw and what the trustees see, and that does not augur well for the school.
Certainly, an advisory committee is just that, designed to advise. The trustees are given the responsibility of choosing the next president, and they could take the advice of the committee, or leave it. They chose to leave it.
But, in doing so, it calls into question the credibility of the search process, especially since it seems that the advisory committee was clearly not enamored with either of the trustees’ two finalists. If the trustees saw these two as head and shoulders over the candidates chosen by the advisory committee, they owe it to the committee, to the school community, to explain why. So far, that has not been done, and the students, faculty and alumni are right to wonder aloud if the “transparency” the trustees touted in the process has gotten a little cloudy.
______
To read the rest of this article, subscribe to our digital or paper edition. For previous editions, contact us for details.
Copyright 2009 Chicago Defender. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
About Post Author
