The faculty senate of Eastern Michigan University voted no confidence in the university’s Board of Regents because it failed to withdraw from its sponsorship of Governor Rick Snyder’s Educational Achievement Authority, as it had promised a year earlier, based on its failure.
The Faculty Senate’s resolution capped years of public protest, high-level resignations, and professional embarrassment of the Education Achievement Authority. Ultimately it was the organized sick-out of Detroit teachers that brought the crisis to a head, followed by the drafting of state legislation to disband the EAA. Finally the Board of Regents acted to sever its inter-local agreement with the EAA. It succumbed only to constituents outside the university, showing only contempt for the voices within it.
Two years ago the Dean of the College of Education resigned, after years of suffering the EAA against her will. A year ago the President of the University resigned under cloudy circumstances. Finally the Faculty Senate issued its “no-confidence” vote early in 2016. The Board of Regents was impervious to all of these voices, including the voice of the Student Senate. It demonstrated a disdain for every level of the university population from students to the President. Academic governance has been reduced to the Wizards of Oz conferring behind a fraying curtain.
The Board of Regents represents a generation of oligarchs convinced they have the answers to school reform. They continue to drive reform from the top down, when all research shows that assessment and reform successfully originate from the grassroots of education. Their approach dictates the culture of learning, rather than energizing successful projects within the culture. Their rule is confounding and demoralizing. Don’t the words “Education Achievement Authority” summon the profound spirit of dominance over learning?
A vote of “no-confidence” is the most severe indictment the faculty can deliver to a Board that rules by fiat. It is the last arrow in its quiver, and it may only prove the impotence of a faculty to control its own fate. But it is a message that should resonate to Lansing, where the power to constitute the Board originates. Those powers should listen to what their representatives have ignored, the cry of the “Gored by Regents.” EMU has lost all confidence in its imposed leadership. It is now the blockade, not the highway, to educational reform.