Feud At the Fort – Opinion

BY:  KRAIG PIERCE

Do you remember being a child and hearing your parents argue in the other room? It was a difficult situation to deal with. Sometimes you had toys to play with to distract yourself from the shouting, but sometimes you had nothing else to do but hide under the covers in order to find a small grasp of safety in the insecurity. We have all been there. Well, we as students at FHSU are adults now. We may not act like it all the time, but we want to know what is going on in our state, city, and even our university. We as students are learning, adapting, and molding our lives as we see fit. We do not need toys to distract us from what really matters, and no sort of safety blanket can deafen our senses from what is going on around our university. We seek to be forward thinking so that we can show everyone that we are world ready.

Before we get into the specifics of what is transpiring between the faculty and the administration of Fort Hays State University, we at TMN want to let everybody know that we are not swayed in this topic. We are neutral in this situation. We are not a public relations tool for the university, nor are we here to press smear campaigns. We find the truth and present it to you, our followers. In times of hostility, it would be really nice if there was a side that was clearly good and clearly bad; a “dark side” and a “light side”. This is not Star Wars, the fact is this situation is incredibly convoluted and complicated.

The organizational system of checks and balances is the backbone of the United States government and was put into place to ensure no one branch could become too powerful. This form of accountability has been adopted by countless organizations, businesses and in a way, is utilized by FHSU administration. The university president does have the power to make executive decisions but must answer to the Kansas Board of Regents. The Kansas Board of Regents, or KBOR, is comprised of 9 officials appointed by the Governor that oversee all 6 state universities and have the authority to intervene or strike down any sort of presidential decisions if extreme issues occur. The KBOR, which operates out of Topeka, is the highest level of authority in the university’s hierarchy.

Under the President’s authority lies what very well could be one of the most important parts of the university; the faculty. The Faculty Senate, which acts as an advisory committee to the president, is considered by many as an integral part of the president’s decision-making process and on occasion, a voice of reason in times of confusion. It was at one of the August Faculty Senate meetings where President Martin proposed her idea for bringing more money into the school. This proposal revolves around the idea of changing capsizes (number of students) in classrooms. Online classes, which are in many cases taught by adjunct professors, would have the sizes of their class increased and physical classrooms would be decreased in size. The faculty had many concerns with the idea of altering class capsizes, such as the quality of education that students would receive from some adjuncts. There is another problem with this proposal, this problem reaches the core of the conflict, and that is money.

Believe it or not, professors at Fort Hays State University do not make as much money as other professors around the nation. Receiving a tenure does increase the faculty’s pay, but even that does not help very much. This has been a problem for a long time, and the fact that the Kansas state government is cutting ever increasing amounts of funding towards its higher education systems does not help the matter at all. With this comes a side-agenda to Martin’s proposal, which is to transfer some classes that would be taught by normal staff to adjunct professors and eliminates (or decrease) the extra money that teachers make from teaching online classes during the summer time.  These classes are called overflow classes.

According to a few members of the Faculty Senate, when Martin presented these changes, she presented them more as an order rather than an idea. This is what ignited the initial feud, but it escalated when the KBOR came to FHSU from Topeka for their scheduled meeting with the Administration and Faculty.

On October 19th, 2016, KBOR met with Administration and Faculty to get their opinions of how the University is running, and the reception from the two entities were exponentially different. While Martin displayed all of the progress that was coming into place on university grounds a few members of faculty criticized Martin on how she uses her power, communicates to the faculty, and the tactics she uses to get her way.

It is never acceptable for people to have fear about what they can or cannot say, as long as what they say is truthful. Unfortunately, for the faculty and staff at Fort Hays State University, the tides have changed in that direction. According to multiple members of the Faculty Senate, there are members who wanted to speak to the KBOR about the way that Martin treats those she works with, but they were afraid of possible repercussions of saying anything that would go against the president’s wishes.

The fact that members of the faculty are afraid of speaking out against the president is a problem and brings to light the possibility that there may have been other times where faculty members were punished for doing such things. Why would an administration utilize fear to keep their employees to check? This is another issue that goes into the overarching problem that has transpired.

Finally, there are things about the current administration that students do not know about. When Martin began at FHSU, she created new positions that would not increase revenue directly to the university. These positions were said to be of immense importance but, may have actually not been needed. These administrative positions make almost 4 times more than the average faculty member. This is not the only oddity going on when it comes to creating administrative jobs. There is also the fact that many of those hired into these positions are people who worked under Martin while she worked at Virginia State. While Faculty Senate discussed the myriad of issues surrounding them, some faculty members used the claim that the current administration is littered with cronyism.  They claimed that Martin has many cronies under her belt that side with her on mostly everything she wants to get done, and will argue on her side if there is a debate. The fact that cronies are being used could provide evidence that there is something afoul going on with our administration.

Overall, the tension between the faculty and administration at FHSU is a tough topic to tackle. It can be easy to take a side on the issue without considering the other, and that is why it is imperative that the information is presented to everyone that it may concern. Hopefully, a peaceful resolution can be found soon so that education can become the top priority again.

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