I oppose this bill, though, because secrecy is not in
the best interest of our universities and colleges, especially when it comes to
choosing the leadership, and the Florida State University chapter of the United
Faculty of Florida passed a resolution opposing this bill as well. Florida has
strong Sunshine Laws, and should be proud of them, and any exemption to those
laws should be unequivocally compelling and narrowly construed. However, there
is no real compelling interest here, not enough to exempt the public from
records requests and meetings regarding president, provost, and dean searches.
While I understand the argument that sitting presidents may not apply because
they don’t want their home institutions to know, why would we want a leader who
is not open with the faculty, students, staff, alumni, and the people of the
state of Florida?
Further, last year, both presidential searches at the
two preeminent universities—Florida State University and University of
Florida—resulted in strong, well-qualified candidates, this despite the
controversy surrounding the FSU search. This included a provost at a peer
institution, an interim president from UAB, and the chancellor of the Colorado
system who had been president at other institutions, among several other qualified
candidates who interviewed for the short list. UF’s short list included a
sitting president of a university in the Netherlands, a provost at the Ivy
League university Cornell, and a provost at the prestigious NYU. That’s not to mention all of the excellent
presidents, provosts, and deans who have led our institutions of higher
learning over the years and who were hired in the sunshine. An open, honest, transparent search that allows for stakeholder input, including faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents, and community members, and allows for accountability is essential for many reasons, including the ability to vet candidates and ask important questions that the search committee may not ask, especially as the search committees are appointed and not necessarily representative of the university or college community. The taxpayers generously provide for our public colleges and universities, and deserve the right to know how those dollars are being spent and how major decisions that affect these public institutions are made, if they want to know. Faculty should also have a say in these matters, as faculty governance remains one of the hallmarks of great universities.
Searches in the sunshine are not good or bad; experienced
and respectable search firms know that such searches are just different, and they
know how to recruit strong, well-qualified candidates. Not knowing why the
finalists for a presidential position were chosen over the others is a secret
that universities and colleges cannot afford and should avoid. I am humbly asking you
to vote no to SB 182.
