The University of Hawaii at Manoa, though not completely leaderless, appears now to be lacking the direction that it so desperately needs.
Of course, this disquieting sense of chaos comes in the wake of last week’s controversial dismissal of UHM Chancellor Tom Apple from the helm of the state university’s flagship campus.
Many of the facts behind Apple’s firing are not in public view, so the justification for the action is still cloudy.
That lack of disclosure needs to be corrected, and quickly. Some of Apple’s defenders descended on UH President David Lassner late last week, demanding an explanation. But neither the protesters who sat cross-legged on the floor with Lassner, nor the taxpayers watching with alarm from home, got a sufficiently detailed account.
It’s not just for their satisfaction that the president needs to be more forthcoming with the facts. There are critical problems that need resolution before the start of school in just a few weeks, and certainly before any decisions can be made about administrative replacements for the long term.
Lassner needs to settle whether hiring freezes that Apple implemented in his final weeks are still moving forward so campus departments can implement course offerings for the coming semester.
Looking ahead, he needs to make it clear what strategies he favors for erasing the $20 million shortfall in the UHM operating budget, since Apple’s approach to UH fiscal woes seemingly was at the heart of his "less than satisfactory" job rating.
Anyone named to replace the chancellor — assuming a replacement is forthcoming — must know what approach has the backing of the head office. That backing will be critical to successfully enacting spending cuts that are sure to meet resistance from whichever departments are taking the hit.
Apple’s perception, expressed in a letter he released publicly after sending it to Lassner, was that the president did not back him up in "hard decisions" he had made in efforts to square the budget.
Apple’s fiscal plan, detailed in a July 15 memo to deans and directors that was also made public, included four major components:
» A hiring freeze, with exceptions to be made only with the approval at the vice chancellor’s level.
» A freeze in salary increases that go beyond raises negotiated in collective bargaining.
» A crackdown on programs that ended the current budget year in the red, with any deficit taken out of their 2015 budget.
» Creation of a campus-wide budget committee to chart further deficit-reducing steps.
Apple said he would direct the committee to find savings in utility costs and a redistribution of retirement savings, for example, and boosting tuition revenue by reducing the use of graduate tuition waivers.
Grant proposals also should increasingly include faculty salary costs as part of their budgets, because of state cutbacks in general funds for the university, he wrote.
None of these ideas appear beyond the reasonable range of strategies for a university under fiscal strain. If Lassner didn’t support this approach, the question remains: What is wrong with the plan?
As rumblings about Apple’s termination started reverberating through the UH community and in news coverage, the president expressed dismay about the "public spectacle" that the episode generated.
Lassner said he "maintained confidentiality both to provide the chancellor the privacy and dignity that any of us would want for ourselves in a difficult personnel situation."
It’s unreasonable to expect that in such a fractious community as the university, that this could — or should — remain a secret, or that the public would accept Apple’s termination, two years into a five-year appointment, without seeing any of the justification.
The general public, after all, has the right to know how its money is being spent. And the revolving door of UH administrators is becoming a severe concern for the stability and reputation of the system, as well as for the taxpayers’ pocketbook interests.
Instead of tackling the job he was hired to do, Apple is being given a tenured faculty salary of $299,000, and this is on top of payouts for the top-tier UH officials who preceded him at the exits.
The public is getting tired of this, to put it mildly.
Lassner said in his statement last week that the university’s fiscal challenges will be met "with effective campus leadership in a considered, open and collegial manner with the faculty, students, and staff of the UH Manoa campus and our stakeholders across the state of Hawaii."
In order to merit a passing grade on his own job evaluation, the new president must bring quick order to this UH-Manoa chaos and deliver on that pledge.
