The Asbury Board's Recent Statement (9-18-06)

The Vice Chairman of the Asbury Board of Trustees, Dan Johnson, posted an update today on the situation as seen from his eyes and no doubt many on the Executive Board. Perhaps wisely, he posted it on behalf of the Board chair, Jim Smith. Some of the Alumni discussion in Asbury's "Alumni Cafe" seems to see Smith as the leader of an anti-Greenway campaign. Whether this is true or not, it is wise for a different board individual to speak for the Executive Board at this time.

You will find Johnson's entire text under the comment section of my previous post "My Recommendation for Asbury." My purpose here is to do a little exegesis of Johnson's statement.
1. For outsiders like me, we encounter for the first time the name of the consultant that Peter Kerr's description saw as biased against Greenway (for the later and more objective version of Kerr's description, a description endorsed by Joel Green, Larry Wood, and Chuck Gutensen, see again the comment section of my earlier "Crossroads or Cross-ways at Asbury"). It is someone named Andringa. Kerr's first post had alleged that this individual had pushed for a different candidate during the Greenway selection process.

Note that Johnson's report does not exactly contradict this statement. It only denies that Andringa had pushed for Steve Moore, a former VP. It remains entirely plausible that Andringa did not think Greenway to be the best candidate for the job. And if this is the case, then Jim Smith's (board chair) choice of Andringa likely indicates a bias on his part against Greenway as well.

And let's be clear. It is perfectly legitimate for Jim Smith or this consultant guy to believe that Greenway is wrong for Asbury. We would not be accusing them of being evil if we concluded that they were working against Greenway. We are not operating on emotion rather than logic when we lean in this direction. We are simply making a truth claim: it is quite possible that Smith, believing Greenway to be detrimental to Asbury, stacked the deck as best he could against him in this evaluation process.

2. The process by which those interviewed was chosen appears to have followed a conflictual model. Greenway suggests references favorable to him, the task force suggests references that come to their mind. I do not know how 360 degree reviews are normally conducted, but this is of course nothing like an objective sampling. If the Task force and the President stand at opposite ends of a spectrum, the result will by its very nature end up looking polarized.

The 84% affirmation of the faculty is a good indication of the potential skew of such a process. If, for example, 2 of the final individuals interviewed were faculty, we have the strong possibility that the result would look like Greenway had 50% faculty support and 50% faculty disapproval. Of course it might also turn out to be 100% either pro or con. But none of the three possible results would be anyway near accurate. I recognize that the questions were open-ended, but the general conclusion I am making here is sound nonetheless.

I notice that there is a gap between the equal number of Greenway/Task force pool and the twelve that the consultant finally called. Of the latter twelve the report only says that some were from each group.

3. Notice that Johnson likely corroborates much of Kerr's account when he mentions the one executive committee member who "violated the process" by expressing the "task force members' concerns" to Greenway, resulting in Greenway's failure to return to the evaluation process. With this statement, we have implicit confirmation that the bulk of the executive committee believes the end of Greenway's presidency to be in the best interest of Asbury.

Are we to think that they came to this conclusion after the evaluation process or that these perspectives were present from the time of the interview selection process? The latter seems much more likely, not on the basis of emotions, but of logic and evidence.

4. Note that "many trustees" think Greenway should be terminated regardless of his evaluation for "insubordination."

So there is my interpretation of the most recent dispatch from the Executive Board. Drury had an interesting comment on the "My Recommendations" entry. The longer the wait, the worse it is likely to be for Greenway. I personally suspect that the evaluation was seriously skewed. But conducting a more objective one may not help because the individual members of the board may already have their minds made up.

As far as Wesleyan interests are concerned, I don't think a change in leadership likely bodes well for the Asbury connection with the Wesleyan Church. It's only Greenway who's paid any attention to us recently. So if the board doesn't want him, maybe they want someone who will pay attention elsewhere? At this point the sinister Drury says, "All the better... We'll start our own seminary for Wesleyans, hee, hee, hee."