Medgar Evers College, the newest and smallest member of the City University of New York system, finds itself in a familiar but unenviable position — cloaked in controversy — as faculty leaders press for the immediate ouster of its new president and provost.
With the university reeling from a recent round of faculty dismissals and key staff cuts, an ad hoc faculty group has charged President William Pollard and Provost Howard Johnson with exhibiting “offensive and hostile” behavior toward faculty and “shortsightedness” when it comes to addressing the needs of students. The 7,000-student school serves a mostly Black, working class and nontraditional student body.
The Faculty Committee of the Whole, formed in the absence of an official council, also has spawned an offshoot coalition composed of community leaders, other faculty and staff, students and clergy. The Faculty Committee, consisting of 60 professors, most of them tenured, requested a meeting with Pollard that has not been granted. The December no-confidence vote is the latest escalation in the conflict.
In response to the no-confidence vote, Pollard, president since August 2009, issued an open letter to the college to dismiss calls for his ouster, saying the faculty group represented only minority voices of its 188 full-time faculty who are disgruntled with his plans for Medgar Evers. Pollard’s letter also re-affirmed the steps he says he is taking to “refine institutional protocol and processes” at the college; boost the college’s academic reputation and its graduation rates; and ensure that the majority of professors teaching students are full-time faculty, not mainly adjuncts.
During the 2009-2010 academic year there were 310 adjunct faculty at the college, officials say.
Such personnel issues have been a point of contention for the faculty, who charge that union violations are “blatant and numerous” and that “workplace intimidation and bullying” are forcing some in their ranks to step down. In some cases, “faculty whose contracts weren’t renewed were notified by campus police who walked into their classrooms in front of students or informed by e-mail instead of them receiving notifications by registered mail, which is called for in the bylaws,” says Dr. Brenda Greene, an English professor at the college and an active member of the new faculty group and coalition.
Greene and others on the faculty point to the fall 2010 dismissal of key members of the public administration department faculty as one ignition point in the current firestorm. The removal of the chairman of the English department is another. There also are mounting concerns, say the coalition, over budget cuts to the campus learning center, library, computer lab and writing tutorial center and Pollard’s endorsement of a CUNY policy that would end open admissions at the campus.
