PULLMAN, Wash. – The Faculty Senate decided Thursday to accept the recommendation of the Washington State University internal auditor to move forward rather than spend more time and energy trying to determine if bylaws related to leadership succession and the minutes of an April 2004 meeting had been altered.
Minutes later, senators voted unanimously to delete the contentious sentence from the bylaws that reads: “If the Chair-Elect prefers to remain as the Chair-Elect, then the Past Chair shall serve a second term as Chair.”
That sentence provoked a controversy in late August when incoming chair Cathy Claussen resigned from the Faculty Senate to join the Office of the University Ombudsman and chair-elect David Turnbull declined to move into the chair position because of a heavy teaching load. One set of bylaws included the sentence indicating that the past chair should then serve a second term as chair, but a Web version of the bylaws was missing that sentence.
Several senators said they believed the bylaws had been altered along with minutes from a 2004 meeting where succession was discussed.
Concern for senate’s integrity
After the controversy broke, Turnbull agreed to serve as chair and the senate subsequently elected Robert Greenberg as chair elect, according to bylaws that are uncontested.
But several senators, including Christopher Lupke and Gary Collins, argued that the breach, if it occurred, undermined the integrity of the senate and needed to be investigated. In October, the senate passed a resolution creating a special committee to look into the matter.
At Thursday’s meeting, Turnbull said the four-person committee met one time with staff from the Office of the Attorney General. One member of the committee decided to recuse himself from future meetings, and the AG recommended that the committee suspend its work until the senate received a report from Heather Lopez, director of the WSU Office of Internal Audit.
Cost, benefit not worth time, effort
In a letter dated Dec. 9, 2011, Lopez wrote that her office and the Whistleblower Office of the State Auditor’s Office (SAO) both had received similar complaints. The SAO declined to investigate, she wrote, citing the seriousness of the offense as weighed against the cost and benefit of the investigation. Lopez’s five-page letter concurred with that response.
Lopez wrote that she did not believe a full investigation would reliably prove “1) whether the documents were altered; 2) who altered the documents; 3) with what motive; and 4) the state of the original documents. Nor do we believe that such extensive efforts are justified by the negative impact of the alleged alteration, which is minimal.”
Lopez recommended that senate leadership focus on strengthening its governance processes and controls over record management. The full text of Lopez’s letter is here.
Unanimous decision
At Thursday’s meeting, the senate voted unanimously to rescind the resolution to create a special committee to investigate the alleged breach.
“The question now is, ‘Where do we go from here?’” Turnbull said. “The floor is open.”
There was an extended discussion of whether the controversial sentence could be deleted by a simple majority vote at Thursday’s meeting or whether it would be subject to the more lengthy process required to change Faculty Senate bylaws. In the end, a voice vote was taken, with most voting to strike the sentence.
“The motion passes, the sentence will be struck,” Turnbull said.
Discussion sought about WSU’s future
During constituent concerns, Sen. Matt Carroll said he would like to see the senate engage with the administration in in-depth conversations about where the university is heading and what it might look like in five or 10 years.
“As a university, we are undergoing the most drastic changes in anyone’s living memory,” he said.
The number of tenure-track faculty is shrinking, classes are getting larger and there is more emphasis on external funding, Carroll said. People are caught up in the minutiae, he said, and are failing to look at the big picture.
“We are abdicating our responsibility as the academic governing body at this university” if we don’t engage on these issues, he said.
Turnbull said Carroll’s points were well-taken and he would move to facilitate that type of discussion with the president and provost.