Admin Responds to Kenny No Confidence Petition
By George Agathos and Michael Kelly President Shirley Strum Kenny has not been directly addressed by those who signed the Stony Brook University faculty petition declaring a loss of confidence in her leadership, a university official wrote in an email. Kenny also does not foresee any direct resource conflicts between the College of Arts and Sciences and the new university programs. Lauren Sheprow, director of media relations, wrote that the level of undergraduate education remains “enormously important” to the university. She added that the university remains on a strong path, citing increased average SAT scores and a higher four year graduation rate. Sheprow wrote that the amount of full time faculty in the CAS department has increased over the time period stated in the petition -- not decreased, as is alleged. She wrote that CAS had 450 full time faculty members in the 1997-98 school year; they now have 493 full time faculty members. “Additionally, funding has been given to CAS to hire additional faculty beyond replacement faculty,” she continued. “Of the 76.5 new lines allocated last year University-wide (in addition to those lines to be refilled) 36.5 were allocated to the College of Arts and Sciences.” A line refers to a base budget allocation for the funding of a new faculty member. |
Sam,
We see your point about wanting to see the original petition. However, we did not provide a direct link to the petition for ethical reasons - it's complicated, but as online news grows up, there is an unfolding debate about when and where links to primary sources are appropriate. Just last month, NPR's ombudsman came to the conclusion that, with the accessibility of google searches, etc., it is not always necessary or appropriate for journalistic outlets to provide links for primary sources. I advise you to google "Concerned Faculty of Stony Brook."
As for the factual stuff, this story is developing as we speak, and we're working hard to continue coverage of it. Keep checking back - we want to continue reporting to provide context to this story, and dig up enough facts for readers to be able to come to their own informed conclusions about the petition, and the causes behind it. Know that finding this stuff out is high on our priority list.
Thanks a lot for your interest,
-- Will James, Managing Editor
Independent reader 'Saminsetauket' seems to be suggesting that someone hypocritically or one-sidedly characterized the faculty complaint as "inaccurate". I find this confusing, because I am only looking at this Independent story, and it the word does not appear. Was it from another account of the dispute, or was it edited out of an earlier version of this Indie piece? I do, however, share the comment-poster's apparent analysis of the university PR response as obscuring the issue through very selective focus.
The decision by Sheprow to focus on 1997 instead of 1994 may be cherry-picking figures, but Saminsetauket's criticism may not be entirely fair here. It is true that the small print of the faculty petition mentions 1994 as being significant to the statistics they cite, but the main body of the petition's text frames their criticism in terms of the decade from 1997-2007—so if there is fuzziness as to where to draw the lines around the numbers to introduce as evidence, that confusion may have been introduced in the complaint from the Concerned Faculty.
It seems like this article is based on one email from the University's PR department with no follow-up, exchange, or opportunity for reporters to challenge the source with specific questions—is that the case? Did Sheprow not make herself available to answer questions or were Independent staffers too weighted down with end-of-semester coursework to compose them?
If the latter was the case, I would sympathize with overburdened Indie staffers. I wrote about this dispute in the Press and assumed that, since the administration had declined to response to the criticism when questioned by Newsday, they wouldn't talk about it with a student newspaper. It was more convenient for me, and I reassured myself that I or someone else from The Press could follow up after the petition was formally presented to the President—but of course our final issue of the semester came and went before that happened. So I would understand if the Indie writers wanted to bang out a quick paraphrase of the University's spin session.
The question is particularly relevant, however, because half of the faculty's complaints were about the administrators' exclusionary decision-making process, such as their withholding of information relevant to deliberations. And the campus would be better served by student reporters (talking about you and me and everyone else) who, rather than just reporting on disputes in a he-said, she-said style, got into challenging the parties with the arguments of their rivals and maybe even did a little independent investigation of the disputed claims. Maybe this is exactly what you intended—I know the Independent’s rolling coverage style of irregular online publication allows you to add piecemeal to a body of stories on a given subject.
Here are some of the questions I would ask Sheprow today, if my newspaper was scheduled to publish anything in the next couple months:
• Addressing Saminsetauket’s concerns, does looking at the numbers from 1997 instead of 1994 create a misleading picture?
• The statistics you cite relate to absolute faculty figures—while they do seem to refute something the faculty said, they ignore the main thrust of the criticism which is about the ratio of faculty to students. Your response totally ignores how the number of students has risen dramatically—do you have an answer for the faculty’s real complaints about the faculty to student ratio?
• Your statistics refer exclusively to the number of full time faculty. The petitioning critics were talking about not only current full time faculty but tenure-track faculty. Tenure-track faculty would represent an investment in maintaining the current level of full-time instructors, as opposed to planning for a future with diminishing full time instructors and increasing use of adjuncts and TAs. What has happened to the number of people in the pipeline of future full-time tenured faculty over Dr. Kenny’s tenure?
• The faculty critics have accused the administration of using questionable figures and not revealing the definitions and absolute measurements that would allow independent confirmation of the faculty to student ratio. (I know that, when I was looking at the composition of faculty, student and administrative members of the University Senate, I couldn’t get the figures out of the University’s media relations staff as to the population and historic population trends of these various campus constituencies.) Exactly where did your numbers come from, and have you been forthcoming with the basic information that would allow independent observers to verify the numbers?
• Increased average SAT scores are cool, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the experience of undergraduate while they are at Stony Brook. And while increased graduation rates are a measure of success on campus, they don’t necessarily reveal much about the quality of the educational experiences students go through en route to that graduation. How are these figures a relevant response to the criticism of the trends in the quality of education students receive while at Stony Brook?
• Is the President satisfied with the classroom space available on campus? Will the president be making specific budget requests of Albany for construction funds for buildings dedicated to academic purposes?
• Is Stony Brook competitive with similar institutions in the opportunities for potential faculty to find fulfillment of their desires to both teach and learn?
• Does the administration’s planning process meet the standards of careful forethought and openness to broad campus involvement in the broader academic world and Stony Brook’s own history?
Talk about inaccuracies: Why 1997 rather than 1994?
I was wondering why the administration's faculty numbers start in 1997 rather than 1994. If you are going to accuse petition authors of "inaccuracy," it would be nice at least to read the document. It says there, right up at the top, that the numbers and ratios in question start with 1994. And isn't that the year Shirley Kenny arrived--so really the best basis for comparison?
Why are Kenny's spokespeople cherry-picking their numbers, and distorting those of petition authors? Why don't they tell us what the numbers really were in 1994? Makes you think they're trying to hide something....