Post updated at 1:07 p.m. Thursday, March 19:

A majority of University of Kansas faculty and students who participated in an unofficial vote this month said they do not have confidence in the leadership of Chancellor Doug Girod. 

Nearly 80% of the 2,012 responses to an online survey initiated by the presidents of the Faculty Senate and University Senate expressed no confidence, including majorities of the surveyed faculty, staff, students and alumni. The poll included votes from about 20% of KU’s faculty, with 82% of them voting no confidence. Among students, 547 of 590 surveyed, or about 93%, voted no confidence.

The survey results include a list of written comments submitted by staff and students. Many of those who voted no confidence said they were frustrated by a lack of transparency from administration amid a slew of challenges facing higher education.

“It’s clear from recent behavior that the administration does not trust or respect their employees and only care about their bottom line,” one faculty member wrote.

The results were provided to KU administration and the Kansas Board of Regents. The survey asked 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?”

Presidents of the Faculty Senate and University Senate held the vote after they said they heard repeated concerns from staff and students about KU’s financial health. 

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 in a memo to Girod and Kansas Board of Regents Chair Blake Benson their goal was to provide an opportunity for KU community members to make their voices heard. 

“We encourage you both as leaders of higher education within the state of Kansas to take these results to heart and consider action items that could be done to help better align faculty and academic needs with the necessary restructuring of budgets in higher education,” they wrote in the memo.

KU spokesperson Joe Monaco said the vote was not a valid survey or reliable measure of campus sentiment. He said the survey being open to anyone, including those without KU authentication, and shared with specific groups make the results unreliable.  

Monaco said KU administration regularly uses feedback surveys and tools to measure employee sentiment.  

“It is an entirely unscientific, informal straw poll created by two individuals acting outside KU’s established processes and designed to support the authors’ pre-determined narrative,” Monaco said. “It was shared only with a small subset of the university population — specifically a subset the authors knew would support their narrative.” 

He noted the poll was created by the presidents of the Faculty Senate and University Senate as individuals and not as an official governance action.

Some faculty members who voted they had confidence in Girod said they felt many faculty didn’t understand the challenges facing higher education or the complexities of the job the chancellor does. 

“When people are angry, they naturally look for someone to blame,” one faculty member wrote. “I ask all to question whether they are placing responsibility for issues in the right places. Much of what ails KU is far bigger and deeper than KU. Look to KBOR, the state of KS, and the current federal administration for both systemic, deep, long-term issues and a recent environment of heightened uncertainty.”

One primary worry faculty voiced prior to the no-confidence vote involved negotiations between KU and its faculty union, United Academics of KU, which were ongoing at the time. During the vote, the union reached a tentative agreement with administrators that would establish raises, improve job security for nontenured faculty and protect academic freedom. 

“There is no transparency into Strong Hall whatsoever,” one faculty member said in the survey. “Record enrollment, record research expenditures, largest cuts in my KU tenure. No idea why.”

Financial changes between KU and the school’s athletics department were also a cause of uncertainty among faculty, according to the email.

“Leadership has bet the future of the university on a bloated football stadium and conference center while gutting academics,” one faculty member wrote in response to the survey. “It’s malpractice.”

In the memo, Heggeness and DeltaDawn noted a report that KU would pay student athletes with tax and tuition dollars from the university’s general fund, but KU spokesperson Erinn Barcomb-Peterson last week said the report was not accurate. 

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. In response, KU Athletics decided to cease payments it has made for years to KU of about $15 million as a reimbursement for the free tuition, scholarships and housing provided to student athletes. 

The general fund will lose out on the $15 million that KU Athletics used to send to the university, but no additional tax or tuition dollars will go to athletics, Barcomb-Peterson said.

A spokesperson for the Kansas Board of Regents did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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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