St. Cloud State University is in an unprecedented budget mess, which keeps spiraling downward and getting worse. For long now the focus has been on getting more money from the government, donations, grants, and other sources, but not on how efficiently and profitably available money is being spent. The energy industry, for example, made the transition from the focus on producing more energy to keep up with demand to focusing on educating customers on various ways of using energy more efficiently and reducing energy waste. Minnesota State Universities can learn a thing or two from the energy industry.
I know that this mess the university finds itself in did not happen overnight, but it got worse in the past five years. It is, however, a matter of decency to point out that favoritism and nepotism are neither virtues nor leadership traits. For this reason, they must not be encouraged, extolled, defended, or practiced in any workplace. The use of favoritism, nepotism, and the creation of sinecure positions are a drain on a budget that is already at its worst. It is not complicated! Much of this mess is brought about under an administration that has invariably looked down on and ignored the intellectual prowess and acumen of its excellent faculty, staff, students, and St. Cloud community stakeholders for the past five years. Many of those serving in advisory positions and have open access tell what they want the leadership to know but not what it should know about the exigent realities on the ground. The prevailing facade on the university campus is only a semblance of unity, whereas pent-up anger, frustration, indignation, resentment, low morale fester below the surface.
For the first time since I have been at St. Cloud State University, from the time of President MacDonald forward to Dr. Earl Potter and Ashish Vaidya, I had never been asked to fill out a form and wait for the decision to be made whether I can see the president or not. Before, you were told when the President had an opening to see you. I don’t recall ever experiencing the level of secrecy and lack of transparency of the past five years at St. Cloud State University. Equally lamentable is the degree of partiality, such that some professors who are feared for whatever reason, easily intimidating their bosses, and perceived to pose a threat appear to have foreknowledge of the details of planned reorganizations that are kept from all else. Some of these individuals are chairpersons, which, according to management/labor contract, are not the bosses of the faculty members in their departments. Knowing these secret plans, some of these chairpersons discriminately supply the administration with disinformation about curriculum changes that end up being inimical to minority professors in their departments.
St. Cloud State University became a campus where: Administrative Directors got all elevated to Vice Presidents; exceptional classroom professors become Directors with new offices in the Administrative Services building; interim administrative positions become permanent without official search protocol; sinecure positions abound involving people who give arrogance a new flare; two very competent, accomplished, and distinguished minority professors at the helm of the university’s faculty union are being demonized and vilified for courageously carrying out their contractually required role in a supposedly shared governance with administration; vindictiveness is unleashed with a kind of there-is-nothing-you-can-do spirit; one is labeled a “trouble maker” for not asking how high when told to jump; one gets the silent treatment for daring to tell the truth without permission; one is disregarded for pleading for fairness to reign; the truth has become an allergen that must be suppressed by all means; cherished iconic university “discuss” and “announce” listserv are discontinued to obviate the sharing of facts and truth; minority professors are isolated and clustered in rosters that include faculty members who have taken the Board Early Separation Incentive (BESI) and others that were slated for retrenchment in an earlier round of reorganization, in order to conceal the motive of getting rid of minority faculty in a subsequent round of retrenchment; curriculum changes are made and submitted to the university administration as changes agreed to by all in the department, even though it was without the knowledge and input of the minority faculty colleagues in the department; Technology Education (formerly known as Industrial Arts) was stripped down and what was left was shifted to Engineering in a deliberate scheme to render its minority faculty with doctorate degrees in Technology Education superfluous; attempts to alert the administration—via the now removed iconic “discuss” and “announce” platforms—of systemic prejudices against minority faculty members fell on deaf ears; minority faculty who write to alert the administration of prejudices and discriminatory practices in departments are told to direct their grievances to the Vice President for Affirmative Action if they feel they are being discriminated against and to desist from disseminating such through mass communication; retaliatory measures against the faculty positions of the two minority President and Vice President of the university’s Faculty Association have been slated for retrenchments, marking the first of its kind since I have been around; some administrators much after protecting their jobs avoid incurring the angst of their white subordinate employees by granting their wishes to the disadvantage of subordinate minority employees; many minority employees can’t seem to catch a break and are always getting the short end of the stick; minority faculty have been told seventy-eight faculty positions have been marked for retrenchment and academic degree programs and minors at our regional comprehensive university have been stripped down to merely 94 degree programs and 35 minors, respectively; things are so bad that three very important personalities have served as Presidents of St. Cloud State University (Presidents Wacker, Lee, and Dietz) within 2024; Acting President Dr. Larry Lee, announced shortly after his appointment, that he had been offered and accepted to be the twentieth President of Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois; unfortunately, Acting President Dr. Larry Lee implied that reasoned criticisms about the nature of the specific changes at the university were tantamount to opposing change and growth.
Don’t get me wrong, I know change is inevitable, especially in a world of rapid technological change and one in which doing the right thing seems to have become a rarity and no longer the rule. Yes, change is inevitable, but how that change is introduced is paramount, to say the least. To introduce change willy nilly because one can and has the power to do so without prior consultation and regardless of what powerless stakeholders think, demotivates stakeholders, breeds stakeholder resentment, and lowers the morale of stakeholders. Unfortunately, where there is resentment, lack of unity, and low morale, synergy cannot be optimized. This reminds me of the golden rule to treat others as you want them to treat you. It’s a matter of respect for those in the trenches, who are the ones doing the work. The functionality and growth of the university can never be realized when these hardworking employees are nonchalantly, unnecessarily, or inadvertently put in a depressed mode. How can you keep praising workers for doing more with less but keep tightening the screw at the same time? Enquiring minds deserve to be convinced that St. Cloud State University can achieve growth through annihilation, strength through exhaustion, or sustainability through depletion. As Albert Einstein said before me, you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. I learned from the wise that those in charge are not necessarily competent and working in everyone’s best interests. That is why we must think before we follow; power is not greatness, but greatness will always find its power. Furthermore, it has been said before me that following the path of least resistance is what makes rivers and some people crooked. I don’t know much, but common sense is not complicated!
I will end here by welcoming to St. Cloud State new Interim President Dr. Larry Dietz and wish him a successful tenure here.
