CHAPTER NEWS - 99

Howard's chapter of the AAUP issues its first report card on President Patrick Swygert, giving him high marks in political and managerial skills but an 'incomplete' in leadership. Since his arrival at HU in the summer of 1995, President Swygert has established a sufficient record to be evaluated for strengths and weaknesses. The record begs the question, "Is Patrick Swygert a leader of the 20th or 21st century?"

High marks in management were earned by the rapid reversal of HU's financial state and the effective deployment of resources towards HU's mission. In his last address to the faculty in the spring of 1993, past president Jennifer predicted that HU would undergo financial collapse by the year 2000. The interim president, Joyce Lander, announced that HU was running a deficit somewhere between $10-40 million. Even through there were significant decreases in revenues, particularly in federal appropriations, President Swygert proclaimed that the university was in a good financial state six months after his arrival. Today, Moody's Investors Services has improved the University's debt rating from stable to positive and reaffirmed its A3 bond rating. Similarly, Standard and Poor's assigned its single-'A'-plus rating to HU bonds.

How is such a rapid financial turnaround possible? By the improved management of resources that have always been available to HU, according to analyses by HU-AAUP. To receive a positive outlook from Wall Street analysts, Swygert's management team has provided a good university-wide operating performance, achieved a surplus for both the university and its hospital, improved its relationship with Congress, increased enrollment of higher caliber students (one student recently was chosen for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship), and made the university more financially independent from federal support.

Using his political skills, President Swygert has renewed public confidence in HU, attracting new investments and increasing appropriations. This has allowed HU to fund a number of initiatives such as providing faculty with computers and developing the technology infrastructure so that the university community has e-mail, a connection with the internet, and access to the World Wide Web. In addition to numerous renovation projects, new construction is going up including The Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, the Technology Center, a law library and Louis Stokes Health Science Library.

For the first time in decades, the faculty is becoming aware that the university has expendable resources at its disposal and that priorities are being set concerning the funding of new initiatives. This is a departure from the past where faculty was told that HU was barely surviving in a 'hand to mouth' fashion. Now faculty is beginning to ask, "Who are making decisions about resource allocations?" "Do faculty representatives, chosen by the Faculty Senate, have a meaningful voice in the process". First and foremost in the faculty's eyes is salaries.

For years, HU faculty has endured low and substandard salaries which have been justified by the presumptively bleak financial condition of HU. Given the long history of salary compression and inequities at HU, the faculty felt strongly that salary adjustments should be the target with the highest priority for any new funding initiatives.

Armed with the salary data published annually by the AAUP and analyses by the faculty of HU's finance state, the Faculty Senate and HU-AAUP pressed the administration to bring salaries up to the 60% of the national average for each academic rank, a reasonable level considering the cost of living in the DC metropolitan area. As reported in the last issue of THE ADVOCATE their efforts resulted in a significant pay raise in the spring of 1998. Although the 60% has not been achieved campus-wide, the faculty is appreciative and temporarily placated with the understanding that it will take several years of adjustments to achieve the salary standards published by the AAUP.

Although he has consistently granted salary increases, President Swygert receives an 'incomplete' in leadership and vision because he has so far failed to appreciate that the salary issue was and is more than just about 'money.' In 1995, President Swygert came to a troubled campus and inherited a culture that Prof. Taft Broome has called "mutual disrespect" between faculty and the administration. The faculty is painfully aware that top university officers are paid very competitive salaries whereas they are not. This discrepancy is seen as being symbolic of the general contempt with which the faculty feel they are regarded by the upper administration and the trustees.

Like a benevolent patriarch, President Swygert has heard and responded to his faculty. However, he squandered an excellent opportunity to heal a tradition of "mutual disrespect" by not sanctioning a faculty/administration solution to the salary problem. He has failed to affect critical processes of shared governance by which HU will be transformed into a university of the twenty-first century.

Regardless of how many libraries are built under President Swygert's tenure, HU's organizational structure remains unaltered: top-down and autocratic. Faculty are but children to be fed, seen, but not heard. The university has not matured into an adult organization. Yes, the university is working more efficiently, but it is the same old machine.

HU will fossilize as a twentieth century institution of higher learning until there is a full, participatory partnership between faculty and the administration. An organization cannot advance beyond the power and capability of its people. Pat Swygert is but one talented individual in a community of many who have yet to be engaged. He, with myopic vision, has shown little patience or provided few opportunities for faculty to become full and equal partners, to form teams and to develop institutional learning. For this, the HU-AAUP awards him an 'incomplete' in leadership.

Who will lead the faculty from Egypt into the promise land? Patrick Swygert is very adept at balancing all the political forces impinging on his office. He is a capable manager and a shrewd politician. However, only great leaders develop and share power with others.

HU-AAUP is excited about the election of Taft Broome as chair of the Faculty Senate this spring. Backed by Richard Wright as vice chair and Mercedes Tibbits as secretary, he has the opportunity to be an activist (not reactionist), who will seize the initiative and empower the faculty. The chapter is hopeful that these leaders will cultivate a strong senate who will promote the faculty's perspective on fair structure for merit pay increase, work-load distribution, and development of the core curriculum. The administration is pursuing its agenda in these areas: the senate must provide an affective counter-balance.

CHAPTER NEWS - 98

After many years of inactivity, Howard's chapter of the AAUP (HUC-AAUP) was reactivated in the fall of 1992 during one of Howard's bleakest periods. This was a time during which four different presidents would take the helm, hundreds of employees were fired, administrators retired with extremely generous severance packages, and the infrastructural support for research and teaching was rapidly deteriorating. What galvanized the faculty to make HUC-AAUP active was a new Faculty Handbook which effectively abolished tenure and academic freedom. To quell the uproar over the new handbook, the administration offered a compromise that practically restored the situs of tenure from its original site in the University (under the old Handbook) to the college or department and provided a mechanism for severance for those tenured faculties who lost their jobs through restructuring. Clearly, the faculty was being maneuvered to accept massive firing. This retrogressive assault on the time-honored principles of academic freedom, due process and shared governance was justified by the trustees, administrators and some faculty leaders as necessary to meet the financial emergency that was developing on the horizon...the university was being consumed by a corporate-minded cancer.

The HUC-AAUP and the Faculty Senate rejected these compromises of AAUP's principles. During these troubling times, the chapter adopted the motto, "Preserving the soul and integrity of Howard University for present and future generations". Unconditionally dedicating itself to this cause, HUC-AAUP began an independent analysis of Howard's financial state. The data was unequivocal that Howard's financial problems were not the result of a lack of revenues, contrary to the picture being presented by the leadership. HUC-AAUP began a series of newsletters and radio messages warning its members and the community at large of the dangerous position the new Faculty Handbook put the academic future of HU in.

Soon after George Holmes became president, the chapter's efforts culminated with the now famous memorandum to the Board of Trustees on May 31, 1995. The memorandum placed responsibility for Howard's deteriorating financial condition on the Board of Trustees. HUC-AAUP declared that it would not "tolerate any attempt of the Board of Trustees to use program elimination or termination of faculty to bail the university out from its current crisis. The crisis has not been created by academic programs or faculty, but by a bloated and inefficient administration and a weak and collaborative Board of Trustees".

As a result of the memorandum, the head of the Board of Trustees resigned and several other members offered their resignations. Shortly after assuming the office of President in the summer of 1995, Patrick Swygert declared the university to be in in good financial shape. Today, the university community is engaged in a healthy debate about monies available to fund new initiatives, a completely alien concept 5 years ago.

Through these struggles HUC-AAUP became acutely aware that HU, even on the verge of bankruptcy, possess tremendous wealth like all universities. In 1994, HU Hospital reported a multimillion dollar deficit. The chapter heard continuing reports that HU Hospital might be sold as a mechanism to fire tenure faculty and to gain control of millions of dollars in pension funds. Furthermore, many faculty suspected that the dismantling of the university hospital was being orchestrated by individuals who would personally benefit from such an action. On September 28, 1995, the chapter formed a Special Hospital Committee to investigate these and other troubling concerns.

Through a series of letters and inquires, the intent of the HU Hospital Board of Directors was exposed. HUC-AAUP wrote a letter to the President of the HU Hospital Board of Directors on September 22, 1995 requesting a reply with documentation in two weeks to its many concerns. On January 22, 1996, the Hospital President provided a very weak and confusing response. HUC-AAUP had no other choice but to notify the President Swygert of the impending situation. The result was that President Swygert fired the President of the HU Hospital Board on February 7, 1996 and dismissed the entire Board of Directors a week later.

Today, Howard's Hospital is showing a profit. Its grounds have been newly landscaped; it boasts of a new state-of-the-art emergency room, fully renovated research laboratories and countless other improvements. HU Hospital had been preserved to provide superior education and training to another generation of minority and other students in the health professions including medicine, dentistry, and allied health.

The hospital experienced convinced HUC-AAUP that the university's resources were still being consumed by a metastasizing malignancy. Where was the source? The board of trustee sets the theme under which the university operates. The actions of the administration are an expression of the attitudes and desires of the trustees. HUC-AAUP was deeply disturbed that too many individuals were profiting from the university by their positions on the Board of Trustees. HUC-AAUP was in the process of exposing some of the conflicts of interests, when General Colin Powell (Ret., U.S. Army) joined the board in 1996. The chapter was hopeful that his personal example would inspire the trustees to a higher standard of conduct and genuine service to the university. It thought that his presence would provide a rallying point for the altruistic forces on the board. A letter of welcome was sent to General Powell expressing these sentiments. This letter identified major sources of problems and outlined solutions to build a world class university. General Powell responded, "You can be sure that I will make it a point to become familiar with the background on each of these issues...I look forward to working with the HUC-AAUP." These words gave hope and strength to many suffering souls in the university community.

Through the leadership of President Swygert, Gen. Powell and others, the cancer appeared to be in remission. During this breathing spell in the winter of 1997, HUC-AAUP became very alarmed as the plight of University of the District of Columbia (UDC) unfolded in the news media. In the name of financial emergency, UDC and its academic programs were systemically being dismantled by financial maneuvers without public debate or input, contrary to the democratic mandate for public education. The crisis reached a zenith when one third of UDC's faculty were summarily fired in the spring of 1997. Greed and political advantage seemed to be the only motives for this assault. Without UDC, many in the nation's capital had no hope of escape from the cycle of prisons, poverty and repression. The fate of UDC was a real-life enactment of HUC-AAUP's worst nightmare: de jevu all over again.

HUC-AAUP could not stand-by and idly watch as bothers and sisters suffered an execution that HU had just barely avoided. Given the attitude of Andrew Brimmer (Chair, DC Control Board) that UDC was not a high priority, the most pressing issue was to secure the city's commitment to support UDC as a comprehensive, public four- year university. Towards this end, the chapter wrote letters advocating the mission of UDC to President Clinton, Colin Powell, Representatives, Senators, and Andrew Brimmer (Chair, DC Control Board). In addition, HUC-AAUP officers, Drs. Holmes and Wilson, organized a letter of protest to Michele Hagans (Chair, UDC's Board of Trustees) for the unprecedented firing of 125 faculty. This letter was signed by Presidents of AAUP Chapters in the District of Columbia. These efforts have met with success when the District Control Board committed itself to the continuation and revitalization of UDC as a public university in the Nation's Capital. In their January 1998 report, Graduating to a Better Future, the Control Board concluded "that there is a strong present and future requirement for a public university in the Nation's Capital".

Seeing that UDC must embrace the principles advocated by AAUP if it is to survive as a viable institution of higher learning, George Holmes helped to organize an AAUP chapter at UDC in 1997. Then HUC-AAUP formed a Coalition Committee with the UDC chapter and the Faculty Senate of HU to investigate the causes of UDC's plight. On May 23, 1997, the Coalition Committee released a 22 page "Summary Report on the State of the University of the District of Columbia". The report found that the fiscal crisis revealed a "dysfunctional (university) organization lacking essential processes that are fundamental to the functions of institutions of higher education". The report placed the ultimate responsibility for UDC's crisis on the Board of Trustees who "have failed to provide internal and external environments that protect, secure, and advance the mission of UDC." To rebuild the university, the report emphasized the university must develop shared governance with the faculty, due process, and an effective system preserving academic freedom and tenure. HUC-AAUP remains committed to see that these principles are enacted at UDC.

Since the HUC-AAUP became active in 1993, HU has undergone enormous change for the positive. Without question, HUC-AAUP has provided leadership through its many timely and courageous stands.

Today at HU, academic freedom and tenure are secure in the university; the financial books of HU are open; faculty are working with their chairs and deans in directing the finances of their units; there is an evolving debate between faculty, the administration and trustees on setting priorities for resource allocation; and both the faculty and administrators are approaching the Faculty Grievance Commission for a fair, internal resolution of conflicts. By the openness gained through academic freedom, shared governance, and due process, the faculty has the environment and tools to build at Howard University academic and research programs of world class status. HUC-AAUP remains true to its motto, "Preserving the soul and integrity of Howard University for present and future generations."

TO CONTACT CHAPTER: gholmes@fac.howard.edu