This is a follow-up from my previous post on a graduate student senate.
If subtext of today’s article in the Republican is correct, and I think it is, politics is definitely playing a part on the search committee. The chair of the search committee says grad students should focus on helping the committee find the best candidate. Helping is a vague term, but it clearly doesn’t mean helping decide.
Search committee chairwoman Jennifer C. Braceras said she wishes that critics of the committee make-up would focus on helping the committee find the best candidate.
Trustee Ruth Thompson, who’s also a student, was selected to represent the undergraduates but Napolitano was not selected to represent graduate students. He offered several other names that he believed would represent the graduate student body when he was rejected.
Instead, student Edward Cutting, an active Republican Club member, was selected. Napolitano does not believe that Cutting represents graduate students.
Napolitano said he was never given a reason why he was not selected. But he said he has been outspoken on issues of affordability, diversity and others. He said trustees chairman Stephen P. Tocco “knows who I am.” Tocco could not be reached for comment.
Braceras did not select the committee, but said she is thrilled that there is an undergraduate and graduate student on the panel. She also said that both students “come from different political perspectives and (that) enhances the diversity of the committee.
“I think the group is well rounded.”
She said she has talked to Napolitano and welcomes his comments and suggestions. Rather than continually criticize the committee membership, she wishes he’d be more constructive.
The search committee is rife with the ubiquitous business leaders appointed to oversee so many of the Commonwealth’s institutions. Of course, these CEO’s have experience running large organizations. Search committee chair Jennifer C. Braceras looks like a died-in-the-wool Republican, a contributor to the National Review On-Line and a commissioner on TWPE’s U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She wouldn’t be my first pick. But the Chairman of the Umass Board of Trustees is Stephen Tocco, a Romney appointee and Republican stalwart who served under Gov. Paul Cellucci. The appointment of A. Edward Cutting to the search committee is a nod to the Republican Club at UMass, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d rather see more committee members from the center to the left doing the searching, but unless Gov. Deval Patrick decides to shake things up, it’s going to Republicans steering UMass policy.
–Mb
sabutai says
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A chancellor is a figurehead in terms of running a school. The real decision makers are faculty deans.