News
SGA makes vote of “no confidence”
The Pointer
jpspra793@uwsp.edu
The University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point Student Government Association passed a unanimous vote of “no confidence” in Chancellor Linda Bunnell at last Thursday’s senate meeting.
“A vote of ‘no confidence’ has absolutely no legal standing, nor precedence,” Kirk Cychosz vice president of SGA, said to the assembly. “It is just simply to show that an organization is dissatisfied with the leadership.”
During the meeting, a presentation was given by UW-SP Foundation president, Bob Spoerl, which proceeded to the 15-0-0 vote of “no confidence.” Bunnell wasn’t present at the senate meeting.
The Foundation is an independent organization that works closely with the community to build relationships with potential donors for distribution of money into scholarships and other programs at the university.
Propaganda, lack of accessibility, accountability and transparency of Bunnell served as reasons for the vote.
The role of a university chancellor is to be a chief leader to the campus.
“One of my primary responsibilities is for assuring the quality of education for all students and, of course, I do that by delegating to other people,” Bunnell said in an interview.
The motion was passed by the SGA speaker of the senate, Saul Newton, to vote “no confidence” in Bunnell, citing her recent traffic mishap in Madison as a reason.
“This situation goes far beyond a minor traffic incident; it shows a lack of judgment,” Newton said in an interview. “The Chancellor is the face of this university, our ambassador to the world. Her actions reflect on UW-SP as an institution.”
Many of the Foundation’s concerns began in September when Bunnell removed their executive director without consultation, said Spoerl. According to him, she has also damaged many relationships to potential donors by cancelling, not showing up and leaving early at events and poorly communicating overall.
“Every time there’s that damaged relationship, that’s a seed and that seed sprouts and grows and distributes other situations to other potential donors and spreads that harm, unfortunately, to this university and no one wants to see this university fail,” Spoerl said to the assembly.
The foundation began expressing these concerns to the System last fall, while at the same time, SGA began discovering discrepancies in Bunnell’s suggestions for administering differential tuition on campus.
“…UW-Stevens Point is the last university within the public UW System without differential tuition, which means that our students are not paying different rates for different classes or incomes or backgrounds that they may be coming from,” SGA president Katie Kloth said to the assembly. “It’s all one tuition fee and nothing is backdoor at all.”
The SGA was told by Bunnell that the Board of Regents had passed a vote stating that the Chancellor could independently decide how to manage differential tuition on campus, Kloth said. After consulting the Board of Regents, SGA discovered that this vote had never occurred and wasn’t accounted for publicly.
“She blatantly lied to us and tricked us into going forth on a campaign to bring in money to the university because she had failed the Foundation in that sense,” Kloth said to the assembly.
Last October, UW-SP hosted the Board of Regents visit to the campus. A resolution of appreciation was designed from this visit which stated Bunnell’s use of resources to promote areas of research in “biofuel, aquaculture, nano-technology and geographic information systems, while encouraging students to become engaged global citizens.”
Other contributions Bunnell has made to UW-SP include the facilities master plan, a new waste management laboratory, a new suite-style dormitory in place of Hyer Hall and addition to the Health Enhancement Center and maintenance and materials building.
Since the SGA vote, Bunnell and Bob Tomlinson, vice chancellor of student affairs, have met with Kloth to discuss the concerns raised.
“This [year] is the first time I have not had the opportunity to meet with student leaders on a regular basis,” Bunnell said.
Due to conflicting schedules, it has been difficult for student leaders and Bunnell to arrange for meetings, she said.
“I think that one of the secrets to resolving difficulties is to do things as they pop up and not let them wait,” said Bunnell.
Bunnell also said she is gone a handful of times every month to attend regent and chancellor meetings in Madison.
“I wish I were two people who could go to everything and do everything because so many wonderful things happen here on campus that I wish I could be every place all the time,” she said.
Bunnell has endured a vote of “no confidence” before by the faculty at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs where she was Chancellor in 1999.
“The regents and the president of the university were very supportive of the job that I was doing there and they found no substance behind the vote,” she said.
According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the vote, organized by history professor Richard Wunderli, resulted in 206 total faculty votes: 82 said they were confident in her, 70 said they had no confidence and 52 said they had reservations and wanted her to communicate more with the faculty.
The faculty issues raised at UCCS included “lack of accessibility, lack of trust in her words or actions, and her alienation of many people – including some donors—by her personality and seeming duplicity,” Wunderli said in a recent e-mail interview.
“I was surprised to hear of the action against her coming from the students,” said Wunderli. “I would have thought that it would have come from the faculty.”
An anonymous faculty member of UW-SP has contacted Wunderli about similar concerns in the past. There has been no official record of comments made by faculty yet.
“Nobody else that has information is coming forward because they’re in fear for their jobs and reputations,” Kloth said in an interview.
Wisconsin State Representative Stephen Nass wrote a letter to UW System President Kevin Reilly last Friday, urging him to review the “developing storm surrounding Bunnell.”
As of Monday, April 6, SGA has requested that Reilly conduct a formal investigation within 20 days regarding the evaluation of Bunnell.
“They (the system) are certainly going to have to safeguard the people that are speaking freely and factually about this issue,” Nass said in an interview. This is not “an issue that is, in time, just simply going to go away without a serious review of this matter. That is what I will be pushing for.”
