Apparently the faculty has been in hibernation… but now that it has crawled out of its hole, it has discovered that SMU is a major contender for the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
The faculty has decided to question the Bush library and its place on campus.
Ed Board wants to know what took y’all so long???
A committee on the subject at hand was originally formed six years ago, but the majority of the faculty chose to speak up only weeks before the official announcement.
The discussion on campus was actually triggered by a letter written by two professors that this paper published.
Once the faculty awoke from its slumber, a call for an open debate was issued. The faculty wanted a forum where it could voice its “concerns.”
We completely agree with that sentiment.
So the Faculty Senate decided to initiate a forum where concerns could be heard and the situation discussed openly… and by openly, they meant behind closed doors.
The faculty shut out not only the students from its meeting, but the press as well.
This is odd because the Faculty Senate has begged to be part of the discussion, but has decided to make it as hard as possible to hear what it has to say.
In the spirit of education and the pursuit of truth, the faculty needs to be more open about its thoughts instead of calling for one thing and doing another.
It does no good to demand open forum for debate and then circulate a letter to give to President Turner.
It prevents any actual debate from occurring and instead creates the current situation – reporters from the New York Times sneaking into meetings and a storm of needlessly bad publicity for the campus.
Ed Board sympathizes with the faculty’s concerns regarding the Bush Institute as a component of the library. Like the faculty, Ed Board is still unsure how well the institute will fit in on campus and does not like the idea of a permanent spin control office for the Bush presidency. And yes, Ed Board wonders what the criticisms will do to the university’s reputation.
But we think the concern of the faculty is a case of too little too late.
Where has the faculty been before November 2006?
What took so long for the faculty to speak up?
These are questions that we should not have to be asking right now.
Instead of working together to get the best possible situation for SMU, the entire university is engulfed in internal strife.
And this could have been avoided if something had been said sooner.
Kind of like the war in Iraq…