Jenna Crowe
Staff Writer
The new Executive Vice President and Provost Laura Woodworth-Ney held a presentation and Q&A session with ISU faculty on October 12. Questions about sexual harassment charges against a former ISU employee, a hiring freeze and allegations of failures and oppression by upper-administration set the tone.
Woodworth-Ney began by speaking about the re-accreditation of ISU as well as the Institution Effectiveness and Assessment Council that was started this year.
Woodworth-Ney quoted the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities while discussing re-accreditation, “[ISU needs to] provide an environment of transparency and collegiality that leads to trust.”
ISU faculty members seem to have a different perspective.
During the Q&A session, ISU faculty members submitted questions anonymously to Woodworth-Ney on problems occurring at ISU. One such issue being a sexual harassment case involving Herb Maschner, the former director of the Idaho Museum of Natural History.
Kelly Pokorny, a former ISU employee, filed a sexual harassment complaint in 2013 against Maschner. A series of events leading to alleged retaliation against Pokorny ended in a lawsuit being filed against Idaho State University in 2015.
The anonymous questioner expressed concern on the perception of ISU as a “sexist institution”. Woodworth-Ney agreed, and then explained that the university is appealing a judge’s decision to send the case to a jury trial.
“We’re pretty sure we will win,” Woodworth-Ney said.
Another faculty member asked her about a perceived hiring freeze.
Woodworth-Ney was adamant there is no hiring freeze, only a temporary hold.
“We are concerned about revenue going down,” Woodworth-Ney said.
With the decrease in enrollment, another questioner asked if it could lead to layoffs.
“We know we’re over-budgeted,” Woodworth-Ney said. “We have built up reserves, but the [Fiscal Year 2018] budget will be adjusted.”
The reserve that Woodworth-Ney mentioned is about $5 million available for one-time use if the university is over-budgeted.
David Delehanty, an ISU biology professor and ornithology researcher, asked two questions.
He first asked if what he said would be protected by academic freedom. The second concerned the portrayal of ISU in the national press.
Throughout the past year, ISU as an institution has been portrayed as being racist, religiously intolerant as well as sexist, in large part because of an article published in the New York Times.
ISU is also currently under sanction by the American Association of University Professors because of administration practices. Delehanty commented on concerns of the community, such as faculty flight, paid personal leave to particular staff members and rumors of ISU trying to cover up a misuse of funds involving the RISE facility.
“All of these failures are the responsibility of President Vailas and his upper administration,” Delehanty said.
Woodworth-Ney claimed that these issues are being addressed on campus, but that they can’t be fixed overnight.
“The RISE Complex is under investigation and some pieces will be made public,” Woodworth-Ney said. “There has been a lot of transition in the past five years, but we’re all in this together and we are committed to being transparent.”
Delehanty discussed in an interview that the issues he brought up at the presentation were merely the beginning.
“President Vailas has been destructive and there is no faculty confidence in him,” Delehanty said. “There was an 80 percent vote of no confidence in Vailas.”
After this vote came to Vailas’ attention, many changes to the faculty senate occurred.
According to Delehanty, who previously held a leadership position in the senate, “Vailas orchestrated the closure of the faculty senate and Woodworth-Ney helped lock faculty governance out of their office.”
Afterwards, ISU faculty came together to form the provisional faculty senate, where all previous leaders were elected into their former positions.
“We formed a constitution that mirrored, almost exactly, the constitution for the BSU faculty senate,” Delehanty said.
Once the constitution was approved, Vailas “sunset” the provisional faculty senate and worked with Woodworth-Ney to reorganize the faculty governance.
“They disbanded the provisional faculty senate, but they called it ‘sunsetting’,” Delehanty said. “They then created the ‘sham faculty senate’ as it’s referred to by faculty members.”
The redesigned government gave complete control to administration. One example Delehanty provided was the change to the subcommittees, which are now independent committees that are “subject to strong influence”.
“ISU is the only American Ph.D.-granting university that has been sanctioned,” Delehanty said. “It’s a huge embarrassment.”
Within his own department, Delehanty claims that he has never seen morale as low as it is now. He states that faculty members have left without another job offer and that there are no junior faculty members. The microbiology department no longer has the amount of faculty it need to give students the attention they deserve, according to Delehanty.
“It’s unfair to students because they are left with the impression that the program has all these attributes when in reality they are severely weakened,” Delehanty said.
He also commented on faculty flight. Faculty members, especially those that are halfway through their career, are starting to leave the university.
“They are either not replaced or replaced by temporary faculty,” Delehanty said.
According to Delehanty, the best way to fix this is to replace Vailas. His recommendation is that the university conducts a national or even international search to find someone to replace him.
“When a business fails, you replace the business leadership,” Delehanty said. “ISU isn’t a business model right now, it’s a political model.”
For more information on ISU, Delehanty encourages students to visit a website set up by the Obama administration that allows people to see statistics about universities: NCES.ed.gov/collegenavigator/.
A recording of the Q&A is available to the public at isu.edu/academicaffairs/presentations-and-assemblies/.
Andrew Crighton contributed to this article.
