Goodbye Bonita - You Won't Be Missed

The News & Record has reported the latest UNCG shuffle and it seems that with it the dancing has continued. Bonita Brown did the fox trot out the door on September 14 and with no mention of 'better opportunities.' In fact, not much of a mention at all.

A quick Google search for Bonita brings up on the first page only that she was once named vice chancellor, a video of a protest on UNCG campus and the three blog posts I wrote about her. I wonder what she can do with herself now that 50% of her public reputation is soaked in failure?

It's interesting to note that the people who were driven out of UNCG by the bizarre and embarrassing debacle that was the Brady administration have continued to let their creative talents shine through, while those included in the parade of shame (Mason, Brown, Cathey, Chun, and Brady herself) haven't managed to do much of anything of note with themselves at all.

Karma's a bitch.

Once Upon a Time: A Tale of Faculty Bullying

In light of the recent faculty satisfaction survey and the lack of an accompanying staff satisfaction survey, I wanted to paint a picture of some of the things that staff experience while working here at UNCG. It is unfortunate, but bullying is not confined to the upper administration and if we are looking to recreate UNCG as a positive working environment we can neither assume inherent and homogenous benevolence on the part of one part of our community nor complete and unanimous wrong doing on another.

Too many people assumed that by removing Linda Brady, all that had gone wrong at UNCG would disappear. However, there has still been absolutely no acknowledgement by either those who have managed to cling to power or by those who have come to assume it of the wrongs that were done. The absence of any such profession of truth has left some of these bullies with the feeling that their particular brand of abuse is sanctioned and that they enjoy absolute immunity to continue unchecked.

Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, in a department not far away there was an administrative assistant named Cordelia*. Cordelia had graciously served the department and was a dedicated and hard working member of the community known as Uncglandia. She made phone calls, scheduled appointments, supervised a band of student workers, and generally made herself most useful. She was pleasant and polite and her value was obvious to all. Well, to nearly all...

You see, in this otherwise idyllic department in Uncglandia there was a creature who could only raise herself up by pushing others down. On the outside, this creature looked very much like any one else, but all those who had come into contact with her over the years had found themselves in a desperate struggle to maintain their sanity in the face of her unpredictable and irrational assaults. Unfortunately, this creature had imbibed of the potion known as 'tenure' and it had caused her become nearly invincible and to further swell with pride.

Innocent Cordelia had come to this department unsuspecting of the nature of this creature. Many of those who had been given this same potion had used its protective power to fight valiantly, to explore bravely, or to create beauty. And so, Cordelia was surprised to find herself the object of its wrath. She began to be ever more fearful as the slightest wind could blow the creature in to breathe fire down her throat, leaving her in tears and the recipient of sympathy from kind, but equally powerless, graduate students.

Whenever Cordelia tried to answer the creature's questions or respond to its baseless accusations, the creature put out her hand and silenced her with a gesture born of her power. The vile words and unreasonable demands could be heard echoing through the hallways, infecting everyone with their poison. It was clear that no matter where this creature resided, it would bring naught but terror, trial, and confusion.

One day, after a particularly bad bout of burning had been visited on Cordelia, a young and noble graduate student dared to comfort Cordelia in her sorrow.

"Is there nothing that can be done to stop these outrages? This abuse of your goodness surely cannot go unchecked!" The graduate student declared.

"Alas," sighed Cordelia, "I believe I must resign myself to my lot as the creature has imbibed from the fountain of tenure. Sadly, there is nothing to be done except for me to contemplate my escape to somewhere more peaceful."

Turning away, she remembered all of the others who had been lost in this same way. Uncglandia was growing weaker as vibrant and vital members of its community were driven to flee from the onslaught of this creature and others like her. Some had appealed to the grand high Vice Chancellor's for help but it had been discovered that they were nothing if not the very source of the corruption in the land. They sanctioned evil actions and punished those who dared cry out and they remained afoot, despite the mysterious disappearances that had troubled their ranks.

I ask you, dear reader, what is to be done? Is Cordelia to be allowed to suffer? Is there no power that can rise and speak the magic incantation that will either banish or cure these terrible creatures?

To be continued...

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*names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Officially Discovering What We Already Knew

There's nothing like a blinding flash of the obvious.

Last year, UNCG administered a survey known as the COACHE survey in order to make an effort to measure faculty satisfaction. Just on the off chance that outbursts, protests, letters, the AAUP survey, position statements, and general conversation didn't REALLY represent what faculty were feeling.
If there's one thing I always say about the faculty is that they are uncommunicative; it's just so hard to get them to really open up and talk...

In any case, Provost Dunn created a PowerPoint that summarizes the findings from this survey. Here are the absolutely unsurprising results:

It turns out, faculty are generally satisfied with each other and their departmental leaders (although that falls off a bit at full professor - probably not difficult to understand why that might be). Faculty are generally satisfied with tenure and promotion policies and procedures.

This next one, and this is the doozy, so let me say it clearly: FACULTY ARE OVERWHELMINGLY DISSATISFIED WITH SENION LEADERSHIP AT UNCG.

I'll give you a moment to get over your lack of surprise.

So, Brady is gone, although threatens to return to the classroom to bring her trademark wit, warmth, and wisdom. Imogene Cathey is gone, Paul Mason is gone, Edna Chun is gone, etc. etc. However, there are still plenty of sharks left over and it seems to me like it might be time to take a real long, hard look at them.

I'd say it's probably high time that anybody in executive administration didn't just get to continue to coast. The default assumption shouldn't be that they are doing fine. Instead, they should have to prove themselves, reapply for their position, demonstrate that their overwhelming failure to gain the confidence of the entire faculty isn't just something that can be brushed off as if unimportant.

And it would be difficult to imagine that a staff satisfaction survey (which was never administered) would show anything except for another section of our community that finds senior leadership to have performed well below expectations.

If an academic department, or heaven forbid a center, were to receive this kind of feedback, the entire area would be under review with the threat of closure/dismissal/defunding - why should senior leadership get a pass? That's the fat at the university and yet we act as if they are indispensable and absolutely immune.

If Gilliam wants to start from anywhere but in a hole, he's going to have to clean up this mess that was left behind before him. The message is clear.

Now, I'm just going to wait for the survey to determine if it's a nice day outside, so I can have my fill of finding out what I already know.

Shutting the Door on Bonita Brown

While I do have to admit that after Brady was forced out excuse me, I meant, left on schedule as anticipated, Bonita Brown took on a sense of humility that I would never have believed possible for her. I'm not saying she was humble, I'm just saying the fact that she would be anything but her typical haughty, condescending, bullying self, even for a moment - even in her own self-interest - was surprising.

I think she could probably sense the end of her reign as an untouchable member of the Brady bunch and her self preservation instincts were kicking in.

Needless to say, that hardly led me to forgive her for her behavior nor to admire her character. It's easy enough to play nice when you see yourself on the line, I reserve respect for those who do good when they don't have to.

In any case, her past behavior had put her on the UNCG Least Wanted list and any pandering she may have done to try to pull herself up out of the muck wasn't enough to take her off of it. She has been instrumental in creating the authoritarian culture that Brady created as her legacy, acting more as an attack dog than anything else. We could have saved the state a fair amount of money by hiring a bouncer and a Doberman - and at least the Doberman would have been acting selflessly.

Word going around is that she is finally showing herself the door and I've always been an optimist, so I hope it's true.

I'm going to go ahead and turn down my music so I can hear it slam shut behind her.

UNCG's Financial Condition...Again

UNCG's budgets are big, complicated things. This makes it easy for people to blow smoke in your face when you try to talk about them. The favorite line is that money is already earmarked for certain things and that nothing, including a PowerPoint presentation from God, could change that. I will state, as I have so many times before, that is simply not the case. There's a pretty good chunk of change that could be repurposed towards our academic mission, but instead it is sitting on Wall Street earning some pretty fat dividends for its investment team. The choking off of these funds from the money flowing through the university is part of an overall scheme to shift money towards the bloated administrative machine by making the cries for austerity on the part of everyone else feel like they result from a budget crisis.

This isn't some half-cocked conspiracy theory, it's a well orchestrated in-the-open business practice. The numbers I've been giving don't come out of thin air, they come from:

• The State Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and Office of the State Controller Monthly Budget Report
• Fiscal Research Division - North Carolina General Assembly
• The College Board
• State of North Carolina Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
• 2014 Bond Report
• UNCG's 2013 Audited Financial Statements
• UNCG Office of Institutional Research
• 2014 Board of Trustees Report

This doesn't mean that I don't get a laugh when I imagine the folks in Mossman going into a Gringott's like vault to let gold coins run through their fingers as they plan their next heist...it just means that nobody should think that's what I really believe is happening. Throwing a couple of pie charts onto a website and calling it budget central doesn't really clear up the questions that I would need answered before I could let this rest:

Who earns money off of the investment of these unrestricted funds?
Why weren't they used as the rainy day fund to compensate for the disastrous $12 million 'giveback'?
What exactly ARE we saving this for if not that?

Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do and if they can't do it in language that everybody understands, they need to be fired and replaced with someone who can...that shouldn't be that hard, our university is filled with people who make it their profession to explain things to those who do not already know them.

Who Benefits from UNCG's Cash Hoard

We've all heard that things are tight, and it's true, but only because the money is being choked off. You know who isn't feeling the crunch? The private equity fund managers who are being compensated through performance fees to care for both the endowment and UNCG's $80 million hoard.

This saved money should, by no means, be spent down to 0 and obviously the endowment is tricky, but imagine if we had used that savings account to deal with the $12 million give back. Or to provide copy paper to the campus or to pay for employee parking or, well, any number of things that would have been better than keeping it on wall street for the profit of others at our expense.

I'd say the new chancellor's first task would be setting our financial house in order - and clearly. I love his commitment to fun, but it's hard to have fun in the wake of the Brady disaster and even more difficult when the wages you live on leave you struggling to make ends meet while still paying increased parking fees just for coming to work. Add to that the distinct feeling (and overwhelming evidence) that we're being lied to about the money and it moves from fun to funereal.

Maybe in this context it's a little easier to understand the bad taste we get when we hear that the chancellor only flies business class, rides to country clubs in a shelby cobra, needs a new butler, and has gotten a fat pay increase over his disastrous predecessor. As the 'needs' at the top get bigger, the money gets diverted from below.

The NY Times has recently addressed a portion of this hoarding - using the example of Yale, but instructive for us as well. It raises questions.

Gilliam will either address them or allow himself to be bought, the choice is still his.

Has Imogene Cathey Been Re-moted?

Here's a question that maybe some of you folks can answer for me:

The last I remember, Imogene Cathey was demoted to Deputy General Counsel because of, "the increasingly complex issues and evolving landscape across higher education, including compliance, Title IX, capital projects, public-private partnerships, and many others that require wide-ranging experience and strategic thinking." 

Now, however, if you go to the UNCG website, you find her listed as a non-modified General Counsel. I know that Betsy Bunting was interim, but where has she gone? Well, her name is on the position in a PDF out of the Provost's office. 

Is she still Deputy GC but UNCG accidentally fired everybody who could update the website? 

If she's Deputy GC still, is it really a good idea to let her hang onto a title she doesn't have anymore? 

Or has something happened here that I don't understand?

Probably would be more transparent if the interfaces that were most likely to receive interaction from people outside of the Executive Administration's offices were updated to reflect the current state of reality. It may seem like a small thing, but when you perform as poorly as Cathey did in her position and still manage to get a big ole salary, the least we could ask for is that she work her way down the ladder and not be seen as still having one foot going up.

Screen Capture 9.8.15