While many students this fall have been taking to the app Yik Yak to express displeasure with university policies, some faculty members have found their own forum to express displeasure with the university through the faculty-run blog Deliberatio.
The goal of the Deliberatio blog, as stated on its site, is to “offer our Creighton University community a place to reflect together on our shared future. When a Jesuit university discerns together, its tradition calls it to do so from more than slogans, or from spin, or from mere focus groups.”
The thoughts posted on the Deliberatio blog aren’t just one-time rants — a variety of faculty members have stepped forth to voice their concerns. While the blog began in April, it has picked up speed lately, with four posts in the last two weeks that all share a common theme: the failure of upper-university management to communicate with faculty members and the concerning implications of this lack of transparency.
Echoing the student backlash against the recent “Be More” ad campaigns, the newest Deliberatio post on Tuesday announced the purpose of three resolutions passed by the Faculty and Academic Council.
The first resolution requests that the president of the University Faculty be a non-voting member of the University Board of Trustees, in response to previous unanswered faculty requests. The second resolution asks that the Board of Trustees allows for “meaningful faculty representation” on the Presidential Search Committee and requests that the Board of Trustees amend the presidential search prospectus to require that potential candidates have an earned terminal degree.
Finally, the third resolution encourages Provost Ed O’Connor to produce a concrete plan to push Creighton salaries toward the median salary level of peer institutions (the essay cites data that indicates that Creighton would need to increase faculty salaries by 11 percent to do this), and to release data on all faculty and administrative staff salaries.
The purpose of this opinion piece isn’t to critique or further faculty members’ arguments. The author, Gregory Bucher, presents a nuanced argument that, quite frankly, I could not do justice to in 500 words. Rather, the purpose of this opinion piece is to present the Deliberatio blog as yet another example of an issue that has played out on the pages of the Creightonian Opinion Section a lot this semester: the trouble that many organizations run into at Creighton when there is a lack of emphasis on meaningful, effective and transparent communication.
By not taking students’ opinions into account when releasing a new ad campaign, ignoring anonymous concerns on a social media app, or pushing faculty to the side, certain institutions at Creighton are instilling a dangerous “just trust us” attitude. It’s all too easy to find examples from other universities of how broken chains of communication can lead to problems.
The College of Charleston found itself in the middle of a controversy when its board of trustees ignored the advice of its search committee and hired former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell as its next president. Rather than being able to celebrate a new hire, the College of Charleston found itself in the middle of a media firestorm.
Creighton has had the good fortune to stay fairly scandal-free the past few years. And recent communication woes don’t necessarily indicate that Creighton will find itself in the middle of a protest soon.
But smooth communication between faculty, administrators and students is key to the success of any higher education institution; it is not something that should be ignored in pursuit of larger goals. By placing a higher emphasis on transparency, Creighton can continue to avoid the bad press experienced some of its peers.