The following letter was submitted by the Student Re-Visioning Committee on November 5 to President James Wagner via Vice President Gary Hauk and directly to Dean Robin Forman.

Dear President Wagner,

The Student Re-Visioning Committee (SRC), an organization of faculty, staff, and students, is concerned that the recent cuts, developed by Dean Forman and approved by you, have fundamentally weakened Emory University and the Emory community. We are troubled by the unrepresentative and intentionally secretive process through which these cuts were developed.

The administration has repeatedly failed to provide a consistent and comprehensive defense of its general decision to cut programs. Moreover, Emory’s administration has been unwilling to clarify how specific programs were selected for reorganization or termination. Finally, these cuts disproportionately affect women, people of color, and other minority students and faculty; we therefore have concerns about the administration’s commitment to diversity.

Like you, President Wagner, we envision a university that continually strives for excellence and that works to build a strong, integrated network of employees and students. In order to begin repairing the distrust that these cuts have generated in our community and to create a stronger Emory for the future, we demand:

1. An unequivocal reversal of the cuts 2. Formal and meaningful student, faculty, and staff participation on all key decision-making bodies 3. Full disclosure and investigation of the entire Emory College Financial Advisory Committee (EFAC/CFAC) proceedings

We appreciated your willingness to accept a copy of our statement and a list of our questions at the State of the University Address on October 30th. Unfortunately, the limited length of the question and answer session at the event prevented us from broaching other important issues.

We also felt that some of your responses were too generalized to be informative, lacked supporting evidence, or raised additional questions. We have therefore included, along with our three primary demands stated above, a list of questions we wish you and Dean Forman to address in a written statement. We respectfully request that your response be presented at a public venue by November 16, 2012, so that we may have an opportunity to discuss these matters more thoroughly.

The questions we would like you and Dean Forman to address in a written statement are as follows:

1. These cuts and reorganizations disproportionately affect women, people of color, and other minorities. How is Emory’s commitment to diversity reflected in these decisions?

2. These decisions deeply affect our relationship with the Atlanta community. By eliminating the Division of Educational Studies (DES) in particular, Emory University is eliminating long- standing ties to Atlanta schools. Given the current socio-economic climate, these schools need teachers and DES outreach programs that aid disadvantaged students more than ever. What specific plans does the administration have to ensure Emory maintains these kinds of programs with Atlanta schools?

3. Local and national media outlets have commented on the administration’s opacity in this restructuring process (Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2012; The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2012). In defence of its actions, the Emory administration has claimed to be adopting decision-making procedures utilized by peer institutions.

Yet it seems that Emory’s lack of transparency is anomalous when compared to processes used by other universities to evaluate how to invest their academic funding. Recently, the University of Hartford carried out its own restructuring of academic departments and administrative units using large committees with strong faculty representation (Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2012).

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has recently announced that an 18-member faculty committee will evaluate all PhD programs to determine their continued viability. UIUC also publicized some of the specific metrics and data that departments would be evaluated on, including confidential student surveys (The News Gazette, November 1, 2012).

What other universities have recently restructured their academic units using small committees whose mandates were unpublicized and whose actions were carried out in secrecy? What were the metrics used to evaluate departments under Dean Forman’s five broad themes? Was the data used to evaluate departments produced specifically for this process? If so, who generated this information?

4. The Emory administration claims that faculty from the affected departments were made aware of the restructuring decisions ahead of time. Since the College Financial Advisory Committee (CFAC) records are not public, it is nearly impossible to determine when departments were informed that they were being considered for restructuring or elimination.

It appears that CFAC worked in a secretive manner. Even Governance Committee members, charged with overseeing CFAC, were unsure of what the body was doing (Governance Committee Minutes, April 20, 2011; The Emory Wheel, October 29, 2012). Moreover, CFAC’s chair, Dr. Michael Giles, admitted to lying to colleagues about CFAC’s work since the committee’s earliest days (The Emory Wheel, September 20, 2011).

Given the obfuscation surrounding CFAC’s activities, how could the faculty have known aboutthe process and evaluations used to plan the restructuring? How have faculty, department, and student interests been represented, considering the same small circle of administrators and faculty have overseen CFAC since its inception? Why would the administration have expected faculty to volunteer for a committee whose mandate shifted over time and whose work was unpublicized?

5. The dearth of graduate and undergraduate student voices in the decision-making process leading up to the cuts is troubling. Students play crucial roles in the university’s academic and financial functioning and are deeply affected by these decisions.

They support the university during their enrollment and throughout their lifetimes. Why did the administration feel student input was unnecessary? How will the administration ensure the formal participation of students in future decision-making processes?

We look forward to receiving your answers and to continuing our dialogue with you and Dean Forman in order to strengthen our university.

Andrew Zonderman and David Mullins, the authors of this editorial, are SRC Administration Liaisons


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The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.

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