INFORMATION PAGE FOR THE REFERENDUM VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN THE PRESIDENT

At its meeting of May 10th, the Senate approved this resolution authorizing a referendum vote of no confidence in President Arminana.

The voting is now over. The results are: 73.4% of faculty voting in the referendum voted no confidence in President Arminana's leadership. The turn out was 68% of eligible faculty. This means that at least 50% of eligible faculty at SSU expressed no confidence.

Further comments from Senate Leadership:

It now falls to the faculty leadership to attempt to interpret these results and propose some next steps. Although the vote focused appropriately on the President’s leadership as the CEO, it also represents an assessment of the support for administrative priorities over the last 15 years.

The significant number of "yes" votes can be interpreted to mean faculty believe that there has been a failure to align institutional priorities with the campus mission, in particular with the core academic mission of student learning and mentoring. It can also be seen as an endorsement of the faculty leadership who have emphasized the centrality of teaching and learning to that mission.

For SSU to retain its reputation as an excellent liberal arts and sciences university, faculty efforts to develop innovative curriculum, provide close mentoring relationships with students, and participate fully in creative and scholarly pursuits must be supported by an administration engaged with our academic mission.

One possible solution going forward could be to engage a professional mediator to facilitate a conflict resolution process involving faculty and administrative leadership that would attempt to find common ground for such collaboration. The current faculty leadership hope that such a process would be welcomed by the President.

Sincerely,

Elaine McDonald-Newman
Assoc. Professor of Mathematics
Faculty Chair, Academic Senate

Timothy Wandling
Assoc. Professor of English
Chair Elect, Academic Senate

Sonoma State University

Pro and Con arguments, data, comments, etc are now posted here.

This site is no longer accepting comments or information. These pages will be left up on the web for a period of time that the Senate leadership will determine. All contents of these webpages will be archived in the Senate archives. If you have any questions please email the Senate Analyst who is maintaining this page.