University of Kansas staff and students will voice whether they have confidence in the leadership of Chancellor Doug Girod, after the presidents of the Faculty Senate and University Senate initiated a vote this week amid concerns over the financial health of KU.

In a joint email to faculty Monday, Faculty Senate President Misty Heggeness, a professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration, and University Senate President Poppy DeltaDawn, a professor in the Department of Visual Art, said they had heard repeated concerns from staff and students about KU’s financial health. 

The email contained a link to a simple survey asking if people “have confidence in Chancellor Girod and Senior Vice Chancellor/CFO (Jeff DeWitt’s) ability to lead the University of Kansas through these turbulent times in a way that is transparent and in the best interests of the academic enterprise and university community?”

They originally set a deadline for people to vote by noon Wednesday, but they have extended it to Friday, March 13.

The email the pair sent outlines some of the concerns they have heard from faculty. 

One primary worry involves ongoing negotiations between KU and its faculty union, United Academics of KU. Heggeness and DeltaDawn said the Faculty Senate and University Senate have mostly stayed on the sidelines of the negotiations process as it has dragged on for nearly two years.

Negotiations on salary increases have stalled recently, with KU saying last week if the union did not accept its “last, best and final offer,” the university would file a petition with the Kansas Public Employee Relations Board seeking the declaration of an impasse in negotiations. If that were to happen, the two sides would enter mediated negotiating.

Financial changes between KU and the school’s athletics department are also causing uncertainty among faculty, according to the email.

KU Athletics operates as its own financial entity, but for years has sent KU about $15 million each year as a reimbursement for the free tuition, scholarships and housing provided to student athletes. 

But a settlement in a lawsuit last year allowed for the first time universities to pay athletes directly, capped at $20.5 million across all sports. With the change, KU Athletics, which has run a budget deficit the last few years, decided not to continue the payments to KU in order to use that money to pay student athletes.

“All this uncertainty begs for the need of an external audit of KU finances and a university-wide vote to identify whether the university community still has confidence in leadership given these recent events,” Heggeness and DeltaDawn wrote.

Heggeness and DeltaDawn said they would send the results of the vote to KU administrators and the Kansas Board of Regents when the vote is completed next week. 

“Our goal in this process is simple,” they wrote. “Hold power accountable to the needs of its constituents.”

KU spokesperson Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said in a statement the university welcomes “continued conversations with faculty and instructors about ways to move the university forward.”

Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.

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