Last weekend, Chancellor Andrew Leavitt responded to the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Faculty Senate’s vote and petition of no-confidence in leadership decided at the end of last month.
If you would like to see his response, click here.
To accommodate for his lengthy defense, Leavitt took to his blog on the UWO website to address every point made against him in the Faculty Senate petition.
If you would like to reference the petition for yourself, click here.
The title, “Earning the confidence of future Titans,” really sets the tone for the letter. Although it would’ve been nice for us Titans currently enrolled here at UWO to receive a letter, too, I get why he did it since enrollment and retention rates are down. The Faculty Senate, who called out Leavitt’s lack of an enrollment budget, may agree that this is probably too little, too late, unfortunately.
To combat this claim, Leavitt gives four bullet points, all of which can be summarized by the idea that people just don’t want to go to college as much anymore. He also adds that this has been a national stressor for the past few years, making me wonder what makes UWO unique in its debt if every other college seems to be dealing with the same thing.
One bullet point states that Oshkosh has many high-paying jobs without degree requirements that deter young people from enrolling at the university. While this is a valid point, I don’t believe that this is specific to Oshkosh. As a (partial) resident, Green Bay has a lot of the same opportunities.
If retention and enrollment rates aren’t to blame, who, or what, is? In their petition, the Faculty Senate suggests that it could be due to “significant growth in upper administrative positions and salaries,” referring to the unnecessary amount of chancellors UWO had before the layoffs.
Leavitt defends the multitude of interim positions by saying that they were a result of combining Fond du Lac and Fox Cities campuses under the same university. While this does make sense, it still doesn’t explain why he didn’t cut some of these positions or their salaries sooner, or why he waited until the last minute to do so. Leavitt does say that he “eliminated 21 managerial positions through the layoff process,” but I think we can all agree that those positions should have gone well before the first wave of layoffs. Twenty-one in comparison to the total 140 doesn’t seem like much, either.
Leavitt also defends this notion, saying that “repeated layoffs would have threatened UWO’s competitive posture, year after year. And one might argue such moves would have been inhumane given UWO’s previously healthier bank of reserves.” Again, while both of these claims have truth, neither are a good enough excuse.
The irony of avoiding repeated layoffs to uphold our competitive position (aka our reputation) in favor of one massive layoff, is that the latter definitely seemed to attract much more attention in the long run. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But, if we’re going to talk about what’s inhumane, I think it’s obvious that students losing their favorite staff members and resources all at once is definitely harder to cope with than it would be to lose them over a span of time.
This was especially tumultuous for diverse members of our student population, who typically need more support and were hit the hardest by layoffs. According to Leavitt, the leaders of UWO human resources conducted a (required) “adverse-impact statistical analysis” to “gauge whether protected groups (by gender, age, race and disability) were discriminated against in the workforce reduction process.” According to Leavitt and these results, they would not impact these students. I think most can agree that this is not the case. Those with learning disabilities who depend on accommodations and Project Success are not getting access to the resources they need, and many minority groups have been lumped together as a result of DEI defunding. We are not statistics or numbers, and I wish he had relied on the thoughts and opinions of his students instead of trying to simplify us into a math equation.
We students are not alone, however. Perhaps the most critical and pervasive argument against Leavitt in the Faculty Senate’s petition was his lack of “shared governance,” specifically in regards to his usage of a consulting firm to discuss layoffs versus consulting those actually impacted by and committed to UWO, namely staff and faculty members. Leavitt admits to doing so, adding that faculty members were consulted during a “September Institutional Realignment Plan workshop.” While I applaud this sentiment, I also wonder if the staff members just want to be in the loop on things without having to attend a workshop. Whatever the case may be, there seems to be some sort of disconnect between the staff and students and the chancellor.
While I don’t know why that is, I can make a guess. One common theme I see throughout his response — the title, the lack of accountability and the rationale for some of his (questionable) strategies — is that he seems to be more concerned with image when he should be focused on the people that make up UWO.
As I learned from my organizational communications professor, an organization is not a building or a system. In fact, an organization is nothing without people, and nothing without communication. Maybe it’s time we go back to basics and recenter our focus on what really matters.
I can imagine that being a chancellor is hard, and I also have no doubt that it’s been challenging with the pressures of inflation and decreasing enrollment rates. But, I also know that almost every other Wisconsin university is dealing with the exact same problems and that we seem to be doing the worst out of all of them. We don’t need excuses or defenses; we need accountability, transparency and communication.
I acknowledge that we haven’t always been easy on Leavitt, but it’s because we care about this institution and we want it to succeed. This institution that he manages is the one that encourages me and others to be honest and forthcoming, and has also given me the confidence to speak on injustices. This is what I’m doing now. Although we may not align on everything, I know Leavitt wants this institution to succeed, and I also know that this is one thing we can all agree on.
I am not here to dump on Leavitt, but I also refuse to be complacent. I am just here to call out what needs to be changed, whether that means a change in Leavitt’s mindset or a change in leadership. Most of us don’t want to have to do the latter, so I hope he changes his mind and ours. Moreover, I hope that we can all come together to find a solution for this crisis.
If you would like to see his response, click here.
If you would like to reference the petition for yourself, click here.
