When faculties vote "no confidence."

Black Issues in Higher Education, Feb 20, 1997 by Scott W. Wright

Not long before Dr. Jerry Sue

Thornton selected to be the

president of Ohio's largest

two-year institution, a national

group named her the top

community college CEO in the

country. Now, six years later,

faculty members at Cuyahoga

Community College say that the

woman they once welcomed with

open arms isn't fit to feat the

22,000-student college.

Trustees and others, however,

characterize the growing rift

between Thornton and the faculty

as a struggle over who will control

the college--the president or the

faculty union.

Cuyahoga has gained a

reputation for rough-and-tumble

politics. Trustees fired Thornton's

predecessor, who once lunged over the table and

slugged the board chairman during a trustee meeting.

Late last month, nearly three-quarters of the full-time

faculty cast ballots against Thornton in a no-confidence

vote of her leadership abilities, according

to union officials. But that vote is in dispute. Although the

union says that nearly 300 members cast ballots (with all

but thirty-three voting nay to Thornton's leadership),

trustees say only about 100 faculty members voted

altogether.

"She's autocratic," complains Patrick Masterson, a

speech communications professor and president of

Cuyahoga's American Association of University Professors

chapter, about Thornton. But that's just one of the

complaints. The faculty union has drawn up a

twelve-page list of grievances against Thornton dating

back to her third month on the job in March of 1992.

Thornton, who even critics acknowledge has created

much good will in the Cleveland community, declined

comment. However, she told a local newspaper after the

vote, "My door is always open."

The Politics of the Vote

Some community college leadership experts say the

Cuyahoga case illustrates the difficulties presidents face

when pinched between the conflicting wishes of faculty and

trustees. When such clashes occur, some experts say,

faculty unions increasingly are more willing to wield

no-confidence votes like a club if college presidents resist

their demands.

Dr. Barbara Uehling, the executive director of the

Business-Higher Education Forum for the American

Council on Education (ACE), believes there is a

correlation between the frequency of no-confidence votes

and the financial stability of institutions.

"The most significant factor in triggering them is

financial stress, but second is governance issues," she

says. "And that generally gets down to the fact that

administrators aren't doing something the way the faculty

believe it should be done. Very often it is caused by a

culture clash."

Dr. George Vaughan, a professor at North Carolina

State University and expert on presidential leadership at

community colleges, says no-confidence votes can become

old hat, "Especially in a union situation.

"On the other hand, it's very disheartening for a

campus to reach this stage. When it comes to this, I think

there are major problems," offers Vaughan.

Robert Kreiser, the associate secretary of the

American Association of University Professors, says the

organization, which has about 44,000 members and some

900 campus chapters, does not track the number of

no-confidence votes taken by faculty. But, he says, such

an action is not commonplace.

"It is a rare step for a faculty to take because it means

that all efforts to persuade the president to do what the

faculty would like [have failed]," says Kreiser.

"No-confidence votes are ultimate acts of frustration."

The Effectiveness of the Vote

Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr., former president of Bronx

Community College, says no-confidence votes "generally

don't change the situation unless there is an avalanche of

other factors.

"During my first presidency, I received two

no-confidence votes by the union and each time I received a

raise from the board of trustees," says Dr. Donald Phelps, a

higher education professor at the University of Texas at

Austin. "The third time they threatened it, the board

promoted me to chancellor of the district."

Uehling, the former chancellor of the University of

Missouri and of the University of California-Santa

Barbara, says she has been threatened with no-confidence

votes before but never been the subject of one.

"For a while, it was so commonplace that I don't

think any administrator should have been upset about it,"

she says. "At one of my former institutions

--Missouri--the faculty did it so often and

to so many administrators that the faculty

senate suggested it should no longer be used

as a device because it was becoming

ineffective."

At the University of the District of

Columbia, four of the last five presidents at

the financially troubled institution drew

no-confidence votes from the faculty, says

university spokesman John Britton. The only

president who didn't receive such a vote

stayed just nine months.

Dr. Julius F. Nimmons, UDC's recently

appointed interim president, even received a

no-confidence vote from the university's

faculty shortly after taking the post and

submitting a budget with which professors

disagreed.

Faculty Members Question Governance

The faculty revolt at Cuyahoga was

touched off by plans to switch from a quarter