That about Covers It
By 
On Friday, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees will vote to hand over the keys to President Eli Capilouto, leaving the governance of UK to him and him alone. This will remove any semblance of an effective faculty voice in shared governance. I write to you in my position as the final elected Chair of the University Senate Council, which will be abolished. I am thus the last person within the University to speak as a representative of all the faculty. The takeover this Friday concerns me. It should concern you, too. You should care because this isn’t just quibbling over regulations, this is a president deliberately and deceitfully disenfranchising organized faculty governance for no apparent reason.
It is a dangerous and reckless program. The President has manufactured an emergency, demanding that his Trustees act rushed and uninformed. The faculty, through the University Senate, offered four times to help. Four times we were ignored. The resulting rules, penned by anonymous hands, are incomplete nonsense: sloppy, uncoordinated, and lacking critical guidance. They threaten academic rigor, student rights, and institutional integrity, remnants of a once-cohesive system dismembered in pursuit of expediency. Deans, driven by revenue targets, can propose courses and degrees devoid of academic rigor or student protections. Review is not by faculty, but by growth-obsessed administrators focused on expanding our healthcare delivery system. Well-run flagship universities do not flail about as we are about to do. Even if there is triumph over this chaos, there was no reason for the chaos in the first place. This is how doors fly off of airplanes, Mr. President.
It was wrought by dishonest means. None of the reasons ever given for this action support the actual measures taken. The President orchestrated messaging designed to set students and staff against faculty. He organized “listening sessions” where he reported what he wanted (the voices of staff and students) and disregarded the rest (the clear concerns of faculty, who were only allowed to participate with their Deans present). The fog continues to the end. On Friday, the Trustees will see almost 300 pages of previously secret documents, first revealed to them only days ago, and written with no input outside of central administration. No faculty, no staff, no students. In particular, the President reneged on a promise to keep existing faculty representatives involved and in place, substituting representatives handpicked by the Deans and the Provost.
Hey but at least we have a new associate dean!