Reporting for TMN News, I’m Shannon Mahon.
There is a feeling coming from some faculty and staff at Fort Hays State University that the school might be approaching a crisis moment due to mismanagement by President Mirta Martin.
“Today our university is clouded by anxiety and dread, much of it generated and exacerbated by the statements and actions of President Mirta M. Martin. Dr. Martin has repeatedly and publicly spoken with heightened emotion, supported only by one anecdote, the threats to the job security of staff and faculty if we fail to support her plans for the university,” according to the statement read by Carl Miller, President of the FHSU Faculty Senate, to the Kansas Board of Regents during their recent visit to campus.
According to Darrell Hamlin, President of the AAUP:
“The students should expect that this will be kind of ongoing and hopefully the lives of the students will remain the same. Whatever is happening to the students will happen in this larger environment. What AAUP and Faculty Senate want students to know is that everyone is doing what they can to make things as good as they can around here. But faculty in particular because we have such a close relationship with students. You come to us when you’re young. You put your training, your preparation, your career, your life path, in our hands. We feel very protective about students and what we’re able to do in the classroom with you. There’s also relationships between faculty members that we feel have been disrupted. These kinds of agreements where people are on different sides. We are also concerned about the relationship with the university and the larger community. We want to make sure that it remains stable.”
The university would save an average of $320,851.06 during the 2016 academic year when overloads were shifted from faculty to adjunct professors. That is in comparison to the almost $1 million cut from the schools budget in March of this year.