The Presidential Search Advisory Committee met yesterday,
this time with even fewer members of the Committee actually in the room than
last week’s meeting (and again, the Chair was not physically present) and many
more on the phone. As faculty and students suggested during the public comment,
with a Committee of 27, this is quite disconcerting, especially when making such
important decisions regarding the search timeline. It was also disconcerting
that the public comment came AFTER the timeline decision was made. As many of
the public comments suggested, the timeline is way too brief to make such a
critical decision.
While I am glad to hear that there is finally an application
deadline, which is now September 2, the timeline suggests that a final decision
would be made just 20 days later. The timeline includes only 4 days for
on-campus interviews (September 15-18) for however many candidates the
Committee decides to bring back to campus after interviewing potential
candidates September 8 & 9. The search firm wanted to do "airport" interviews
on September 8 & 9, but the Chair said the interviews would be on campus.
The reason given for this quick deadline was open government
laws. That is, potential last minute candidates would only be in the Sunshine
for a brief period of time, so I guess this means less time for the potential
candidates to receive presumably negative responses at their home institutions
once folks know that they are applying elsewhere. Others suggest that this
timeline is political, so a decision would be made long before Election Day,
and as we know, Sen. Thrasher remains the front-runner even with the changes to
the search (see the AP’s Gary Fineout’s Tweets from yesterday as well as Tia
Mitchell’s article here and Doug Blackburn's article here).
The search firm will be on campus next week, with a Faculty
Open Forum scheduled Wednesday, June 25, from 9:45 – 11:15 a.m. in the Turnbull
Center. As I stated in my comments yesterday, I certainly hope that the search
firm, after meeting with FSU constituents, will revise the job description and
the job ad to be more in line with the needs of FSU and, frankly, to design a
more professional ad that includes complete sentences and the final deadline.
It is unclear whether the criteria adopted by the Committee in April will be
used, but if they aren’t, I think most constituents would insist upon even
stronger language regarding distinguished academic credentials and academic
leadership experience (see for example the article in the FSView with the giant
headline: What Students Want: Another Eric Barron).
Please plan to attend the forums with the search firm that
are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday (click here for the schedule).
There are forums scheduled for students, staff, and community members as well.
As I said in my comments yesterday, I am encouraged by some
of the recent developments and hope that the search process will continue to
make moves in the direction of fairness, openness, and transparency. However, concerns
about the criteria and the underrepresentation of faculty and students on the
search committee remain, and nothing that has been done as of yet has changed the view that there is just one presumptive candidate.
