Faculty at Monmouth College Votes ‘No Confidence’ in School President

“[The administration] is communicating things that have already been decided, rather than involving faculty in those decisions.”

Posted by Mike LaChance Monday, May 10, 2021 at 12:00pm 1 Comment

More Sharing Options

It looks like this battle sprang from cuts that need to be made due to COVID. They’re basically fighting over lifeboats on the deck of the Titanic.

WQAD News reports:

Monmouth College faculty votes “No Confidence” in school President

Faculty at Monmouth College are calling on the resignation or removal of school President Clarence Wyatt.

In a statement issued to school faculty on April 5 faculty members say “the best course of action would be for President Wyatt to relinquish his position as President of the College or be removed from his role by the Board of Trustees.”

The pressure comes after a year of financial strain brought on by declining enrollment and the COVID-19 pandemic.

WQAD spoke with several faculty members under the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their employment.

“We’ve brought all our concerns to the Faculty Senate at one time or another,” said one faculty member. “We’ve also brought them informally to the Dean and other people in the administration.”

According to the faculty, their concerns, ideas, strategies and general correspondence was largely ignored or dismissed.

“[The administration] is communicating things that have already been decided, rather than involving faculty in those decisions. I mean, faculty understand that sometimes you’re involved in talking about a decision and it doesn’t go your way but that really hasn’t been the case.”

Last Spring, the Faculty Senate was asked to appoint a committee to make faculty cuts.

“Ten faculty and then the Dean was on that Committee,” said a faculty member. “[The committee] looked through everything in their purview and of course, there’s certain things they can’t do, [but] they made their recommendations. [The committee] came a little bit short of the money savings that [the administration] was looking for but no one said go back to the drawing board and come up with more cuts so we assumed that was it.”