I thought this anonymous comment was significant:
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Anonymous said...
(1) The Faculty of ATS took no vote regarding whether to send the resolution to the Exec Comm.
(2) The chair of the board asked to address the faculty, but did not invite faculty to address the exec comm. That anyone on the exec comm would compare the faculty's holding its own session with the exec comm's total disregard of the faculty demonstrates a basic and almost incomprehensible lack of understanding of the doctrine of "shared governance" that defines the seminary (for accreditation-related policies, see www.ats.edu).
(3) I have heard repeatedly that we have a north-south problem at Asbury Seminary, where I serve on the faculty. This is not quite true, I think. We do have a cultural problem, but it is not determined by the Mason-Dixon line. Rather, it is expressed in a president who speaks forthrightly and directly versus a number of southerners on the board leadership who speak and act in less direct ways. They think President Greenway is autocratic because they are unaccustomed to having a leader simply tell them what s/he thinks!
(4)Here is what I believe should be especially worrisome to anyone concerned about the longterm health of Asbury Seminary: If (as I have come to believe) some members of the board have been orchestrating a coup for some time, then Asbury has a much bigger problem than simply how to address the present crisis over President Greenway. If (as we are told to believe) no one on the board has been orchestrating a coup, then it is a serious matter that trust has eroded to such a degree that many of us, a majority of us, have reached a place where we do not trust the board leadership and are ready to believe a false account of these events. Either way, the troubles are deep and systemic. Either way, the need for genuinely spiritual leadership by the majority of the board could hardly be more acute. We are praying that the board as a whole will seek justice and exercise wisdom.
(5) Why do I refuse to sign my own post? It is because we have been threatened against making negative comments about the board, about members of the board, or about this whole process. Tenured and non-tenured faculty alike have been running for cover.
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4 comments:
while it is fine for Ken to post his opinions, i want the readers to remember that this blog is for "things [Ken] finds interesting" about the situation at ATS. but i find your reporting quite biased.
the forum where your posting and taking your own info "Alumni Coffee House" (internal only to the ATS community), has a number of posts which you have not bothered to communicate here. let me point out two - not from an "anonymous faculty member" who "fears" retribution (oohhh - scary), but from a longstanding, tenured faculty who has spoken out, Lawson Stone.
I will post two of Lawson's posts (which was made on tuesday and thursday - not covered by Ken) to illustrate to level to which "Schenck's Thoughts" have been just that - "Schenck's thoughts." DO NOT read them as if he is the insider who has the whole truth and should now be on the EC.
posted by stone on tuesday -
"to assert full confidence in a person the board says they have some problems with [jeff g], and to demand immediate full reinstatement, to demand the resignation of the chairman of the board, and to cancel convocation--these are very aggressive moves and they amount to a gauntlet being thrown down before the board. The several pages of narrative behind the motions voted upon also had a tone I found unnecessarily confrontive.
A motion to strip the resolution of all 5 calls and to delete nearly all the narrative failed by just a vote or two, by the way. Almost half the faculty was that uncomfortable with the measure as a whole. The vote at the very end was in a rush as we all needed to get to classes.
Also, such motions should not express what people are "feeling." These should be statements that are deliberative, measured, balanced, and nuanced. It's better to say and do less, and have unanimity, than to run over or leave behind about a fifth of the total faculty. I felt and still feel deeply violated by what the faculty did during that meeting.
But I also know that there have been times when I've been over-stident or ideological on something and have trampled on the sensibilities of colleagues as well, so none of us can claim a monopoly on "high ground."
I have a feeling when all this is over, all of us on both sides will deeply regret things we've said and stands we've taken. We'll lament our premature judgments, and we'll realize that our crusading and posturing likely served only to exacerbate tensions and make this all that much harder to resolve.
While I think what think on this, I also think we will all be pondering a path of penitence in several months."
posted by Stone on Thursday -
"As far as I know, Peter Kerr's whole article is rumor. He gave no sources that I could really check. I've been in the ATS community long enough, and am intimately acquainted with persons who have even longer memories, to know how these meetings could happen. I know my colleagues here as well. I know well the controversy of 1949-1951. I wrote major sections of the evaluation report around the ESJ school controversies back in the late 1980's, which was also very much a President-Board-Faculty controversy. I also recall some of the high-stakes politicing that surrounded the major bequest we received some years ago, groups meeting to ask if all that money would destroy ATS, others worried that someone would take control of those assets and ruin the school, etc. We've had some hum-dingers around here, though normally about a decade apart to catch our breath.
Based on my knowledge of the history of this school, my knowledge of my friends and colleagues, and the abundant supply of rumors and speculations floating around, I can easily project a number of meetings happening. In fact, I've seen it happen several times and i'd be surprised if it did not happen this time. I could almost write the script for it.
That's actually due to something I think is really good about this place.
ATS is a getting-together-talking-about-it type of community. We meet, talk, rant and fume, vent and then go ponder the possibilities. Folks here end up knowing a lot, and we talk a lot, on and off the record. I like that a lot, because I'm also a think-out-loud verbal processor of things. I like being able to rant and rave at you or Joe Dongell or Dave Thompson, then have you guys calm me down and talk more rationally about an issue.
So I don't object to any meeting by anybody to talk about any subject they want to talk about. It would trouble me if they were doing so while are presenting themselve as innocent apolitical lambs who are just waiting on God's will while their lawyer drives a hard bargain for the severance package demands, demanding the board remain quiet, and delaying the Board's response for 10-12 days while they get their story out via surrogates on forums like this, who don't have to take responsibility for anything said. That would trouble me a lot, were it actually to happen. It would also bother me if they were upset that somebody might know about their meeting, or guess at it (how hard would that be anyhow!).
In my scenario, I'm imagining one or two members because I was interested in the point someone had made about the Chair being the only person who was supposed to communicate about issues on campus. I forget who made that point. So, I hypothesized as I did for the sake of raising the question of opposition. My speculation that the majority on the board likely favor Jeff's departure derives from the evaluation committee vote, 5-1, the exec committee vote, 12-2. That of course could all be wrong, that's why it's hypothetical. How might such a meeting square with the board policy the other person here had mentioned?
Anyhow, I hope that answers your questions. I'm a great deal more out of the loop than people like Peter Kerr, who seems to know everything. The friends I have who do know a lot are being very careful about maintaining confidentiality, so I'm stuck with rumors and my fetid imagination."
-Ken has not given any mention of these. perhaps he just missed them...?
Well anonymous, welcome to the internet age as Schenck has suggested, where all of us get to participate in the conversation about what is happening at Asbury. We form our own opinions based on what little we know and have a world wide forum to express them. In this new world doing things behind closed doors gets harder and harder.
Thanks for posting the other side, anonymous pro EC. I wholeheartedly welcome them because I am interested in the truth, not in a pre-favored side. If I have misled, I sincerely want to eat my words in the name of truth. By all means, everyone post no matter your side!!!
I read Lawson's posts and have in fact mentioned him a few times here. I think it is clear that Lawson is one of the minority of professors who tend to side with the EC. Or at least he is trying to bring balance to the picture. We remember that 16% of the faculty did not support the immediate reinstatement of Greenway and we can imagine that Lawson was one of them.
Lawson is a great guy. He taught me Hebrew and taught one of the most memorable classes I had at ATS (Dave Smith was in it too!). It was a read through Isaiah 1-12 in Hebrew. It was excruciatingly hard and delightful at the same time, a kind of early foray of mine into intellectual sado-masochism.
Yet Lawson's personality is not one to be involved in administration central. He is a genius who I suspect would just as well be playing his guitar at a night club as engaging in school politics. He is awesome. I feel like his posts are in part defending his friends (a Schenck thought to be taken as such).
But, his place in the food chain puts him in a much less informed position than other high administratively connected faculty who have found Peter Kerr's sequence of events to be generally accurate. Lawson actually does not question the "event" accuracy so much as the interpretation.
So as I commented to a fellow faculty member here at IWU about the basic claim that the EC had it in for Greenway (rightly or wrongly) well before his failure to return, "I just can't see any other conclusion... if I'm wrong then logic isn't real and the entire universe will explode." The fellow prof agreed with my logic, but stopped short of universe explosions.
But I can tell you this about little old Schenck Thoughts. There's no way I would teach at Asbury with the current EC. I had a delightful email conversation with Lawson the other evening in which I wrote him that I could see in this crisis the end of my association with Asbury. I will continue to recommend the faculty of Asbury as top notch, but I wouldn't recommend anyone to teach there, if the current EC remains in charge.
I am a significant representative of the Wesleyan Church in relation to Asbury. I do not know what our two representatives to the board will vote and I have not contacted them. But I do not know a single IWU professor or Wesleyan anywhere with a positive view of the EC right now. And I know people (so you can imagine the Alumni Coffee House is far from the only place I am hearing things).
That is something the broader board should consider. We might seem insignificant to those whose main goal for Asbury is to use it to reform the UM church. But in the real world, IWU is the largest single feeder of students to Asbury (not just Wesleyan, but we have a sizeable UM clientele), and the Wesleyan Church is a major student contributor on the whole.
Beyond that I heard that a local UM pastor here told a UM freshman UM student here that he might not necessarily think of Asbury, because it's UM accreditation might be in question. Asbury already has a bad reputation among so many UMers. This crisis is just adding fuel to the fire. And I've had online students this semester question whether their degree will be worth anything. Of course I think these are not realities either. The board will settle this in October and life will go on one way or another. But you can see the effect this crisis is having.
So Greenway may go, but here's a warning to the broader board from its constituencies, among which lil' old Schenck Thoughts must be considered a major representative. Maybe Greenway needs to go. But you'd better boot Jumpin' Jim Smith and Dirty Dan Johnson as well just to hit the reset button and clean our mouths from this bad taste. Otherwise the stench of this crisis will linger and you just might lose a hefty part of your constituency.
Who is the BOT responsible to? Us, the alumni and feeder schools. That makes people like me Jim Smith's boss. Jim Smith, Dan Johnson, Jim Smith, Dan Johnson, Jim Smith, Dan Johnson...
What are you doing, Ken? People target the names they know. Everyone knows Greenway's name, so he's the easy target regardless. They should equally know these names so that any pruning is done on the basis of facts, not on the basis of what names are known by the public.
I still believe that Jim Smith and the other 3 on the EC in the "Not OK Corral" think they are doing the seminary a service. I had a very friendly conversation with Dr. Johnson and no doubt would enjoy his friendship under different circumstances. If I didn't think it was important for me to work for a fair process and for the interests of those I represent I wouldn't try to hammer them. In fact, I don't think I have hammered them too much thus far.
But let's get their names out in the open so that they also are part of the mix, out where everyone can fairly evaluate their actions. Who knows, maybe they will be partially vindicated? Maybe the universe will explode as they are completely vindicated? But their names should be on the line with Greenway's. Anyone want to post the names of the other two in the "Not OK Corral"?
Sure, I will post those other names. If you are wondering who the Review Committee was, this would have been Jim Smith, Dan Johnson, Joan Krupa, Ira Galloway, Karen Thomas, and Jim Holsinger. If you are wondering who "the Big Four" are, this would be Jim Smith, Dan Johnson, Bill Johnson, and Ira Galloway. These are all on the ExecComm. (See the board list: http://www.ats.wilmore.ky.us/about/trustees.htm), with support especially from Paul Baddour.
One more thing, to the pro-ec anonymous person who wrote "oohh - scary" regarding a reference to a perceived threat of retribution: It is unclear to me why, if the threat of retribution is not real, this person remained anonymous. As for me, though, I have seen the memo from the board chair which warned employees of the seminary from speaking negatively about the board, any of its members, and the process. So I will join that earlier colleague in maintaining anonymity with this post.
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