An open letter to President Lawrence Biondi, S.J.:

Dear Fr. Biondi,

Your Feb. 27 letter to the University recommends us all to move forward in collaborative and conciliatory ways.  That is surely good advice.  What may we hope to see in that regard?

You promise to work more closely with those who fear their voices have not been heard.  As president of the America Association of University Professors’ Saint Louis University chapter, I hear this as “shared governance”, one of the primary concerns of our chapter.  This is the standard I measure collaboration and conciliation by.

It is that lack of shared governance that has so exercised the faculty for many years: the announcement of important innovations in campus development, without any participation by faculty ahead of time; the subversion of shared governance initiatives such as inclusion of faculty in administrative committees, by declaring the committee deliberations to be confidential; the frustration of faculty input in budgetary matters by hiding important budgetary contours from view; and a general lack of faculty in any meaningful charting of the University’s path.You address none of the concerns.

What would shared governance–true collaboration and conciliation–look like?  It means inclusion of faculty voices in university planning, whether in budgetary matters or establishing of new initiatives and structures: faculty to speak on necessary academic grounding in new centers; faculty to speak on the academic impact of possible financial strictures; faculty to speak to academic needs of classroom and laboratory space for an anticipated size of the student body; faculty to articulate the academic impact of administrative changes; and faculty to express academic visions of  the University’s growth.

Shared governance means transparency in planning:  no more hidden plans, hidden budgets, unstated capital planning.

What is the University’s long-term plan for building?  How do capital budgets fit in with operational budgets?  What trade-offs are possible, contemplated or already committed? What planning is there for SLU’s bicentennial?

Faculty want desperately to help in these matters, to be able to walk with the administration collaboratively.  Where is our opportunity?

Where is the latitude to form a genuinely shared strategic plan for the University–not with secret plans drawn up in closed administrative offices, but with openness and hard work from many hands?

That is the collaboration and the conciliation the faculty are longing for: helping to plan our future in substantive, meaningful partnership.