Green River board not doing its job; time for Ely to resign | Guest op

Published 2:54 pm Thursday, May 28, 2015

I am extremely disappointed that the Green River College Board of Trustee (BOT) has again quickly dismissed our concerns. We started warning them of problems with the President over three years ago.

That led to our first vote of no confidence where 92 percent of the full-time faculty asked the BOT to step in. It is time for members of the board to resign, along with President Ely.

This time the BOT spent a few minutes in executive session and then issued a news release the next day, stating that they fully support the President. There was no acknowledgement of any of our concerns. It took us weeks of time discussing the possibility of a second vote, articulating our continued and new concerns, writing the letter, and then holding the vote. And this time faculty signed their names because last time President Ely implied that we had somehow coerced faculty to vote in favor.

While the college has tried to spin the vote saying only 29 percent of faculty voted, they fail to note that we purposely asked probationary faculty and adjuncts not to vote because of potential retaliation. I should note here that the fact that only 29 percent of the faculty are full time is another significant problem. Green River administrators have slowly replaced our full-time teaching workforce with adjunct labor.

The BOT also seems to have dismissed a student vote of no confidence in President Ely, signed by over 200 students. Their lawyer, present at every meeting, tried to help the board silence the students who wanted to testify. After shouts of protest from students, staff and community members, the board finally relented.

Much of the focus lately has been on the programs that President Ely has proposed for elimination. But this is just the latest questionable decision by the Ely administration. Faculty were already planning the second vote (this time to ask for her resignation) long before these program terminations were handed down. Our list of serious concerns is long and extends back several years.

BOT chair Lewis tries to frame this in terms of having to make hard budget decisions because of a lack of money from the legislature and declining enrollments. The truth is that our total enrollments are identical to last year. The problem is not a lack of money but rather where they decide to spend it.

When we had a real budget crisis several years ago, then President Rutkowski called together the entire campus to brainstorm about ways to save money. With this recent supposed crisis, the faculty learned about it three weeks ago when President Ely announced the program closures. When we asked for the data she used to make the decision, it took over a week to get it. Our analysis showed that that not only was much of the data incorrect, but it was generated AFTER she made the decision.

Leadership?

When the faculty held their first vote of no confidence in 2013, the board asked President Ely to talk with faculty. She announced that she would be having what she called “courageous conversations.”

But in order to do so, she insisted that an external facilitator be hired. She next insisted that she choose the facilitator, stating in an email to the faculty, “… the choice of a facilitator is not open for discussion.”

This phrase says a lot about President Ely’s leadership and communication style. This style is completely at odds with the communication and decision-making process that is normal for any educational I know that some people question labor unions and teacher tenure, but the only reason some of us are speaking out is because we feel some level of security that comes with union contracts and tenure laws.

The culture of fear and toxic environment started when President Ely arrived. Since her arrival we have lost almost 200 employees. While some retired, many were fired, others resigned, and some left to find a better work environment. Some who were dismissed had to fight the administration for unemployment claims. So far, the courts have ruled in the employee’s favor. Others are in the process of filing lawsuits that could cost the college millions in the upcoming months.

President Ely recently hired a new vice president of Human Resources and Legal Affair. The “legal affairs” portion of the position is new. Many staff have been visited by HR lately, with little warning, and told that they are either being terminated, reassigned to a lower classification, or that their jobs are being audited. After a recent rally on campus, HR attempted to examine security videotapes to determine who participated. This is the world of fear that we now live in at Green River.

One of the primary responsibilities of the Board of Trustees is to hire and evaluate the president. But, to my knowledge, the board has never attempted to get feedback from faculty, students, or classified staff about the President’s performance. President Ely, when questioned at a State of the College address about whether faculty should be able to provide input into her yearly evaluations stated that faculty should not be involved. In fact, she even tried to prevent her yearly evaluations from being released.

The Attorney General’s Office advised the college that her evaluations should be considered a public record. The last two evaluations by the Board show strong support for Ely’s performance and yet they have gathered no input from college staff or students.

All of the Board of Trustee members are fairly new to the college so we suspect that they might not be aware that the current atmosphere on campus is far from normal. None of the current Board members were serving when President Ely arrived five years ago. And, almost all of the upper-level administrators are new, hired by President Ely. We have never been in such a toxic environment. We have done everything we can think of to educate the Board members but nothing has worked. Their recent decision to quickly dismiss our concerns leaves us with very few options.

Our last hope is that our students and the community will assist us. Because the governor appoints the BOT members, I am hoping that many will write letters to share their own concerns about what is happening on our campus. We are literally trying to save what was once a wonderful “community” college, and we desperately need your help.

– Dr. Stephan Kinholt, mathematics instructor, Green River Community College