If President John Petersen was expecting love letters from the UT Faculty Senate, he’s got a surprise coming in the mail. On Monday, the senate passed three resolutions expressing its disapproval of both the control of Cherokee Farms and the management of Information Technology staff and activities in Knoxville.
Faculty Senate President David Patterson compared the university to a regular, albeit dysfunctional, family living in the suburbs.
“In many ways, UT Knoxville is like an atomistic family living in a home governed by a neighborhood association,” Patterson said. “The neighborhood association controls the IT within the home, manages the sports played by members of our family, skims the interest off our bank accounts to the tune of $22 billion a year and now wants to build a … building on our house’s adjoining lot, Cherokee Farms.
“Even more bizarre, the president of our neighborhood association lives in the eighth floor of our attic,” he added.
Drafted on Oct. 16, about a month after a similar bill was approved by SGA, the Cherokee Farms resolution proposed by Patterson expressed his concern with the control of Cherokee Farms, citing the Board of Trustee’s approval of the 2001 UTK Campus Master Plan, which gave control of the farms specifically to the Knoxville campus. The Master Plan was also approved by the Tennessee State Building Commission.
The resolution expressed the senate’s wish to use the land for research, teaching space, recreational fields and adequate child care facilities. It also asked Petersen to dissolve the Cherokee Farm Planning Committee, which “significantly under-represented” UTK faculty and students, and in its place, implement a UTK Cherokee Farm Planning Task Force “with broad and diverse representation from faculty, student and community stakeholders” who would be appointed by Chancellor Loren Crabtree.
In an op-ed piece for the Knoxville News Sentinel, Patterson shared his personal views on the planning committee.
“The composition of the … committee would lead one to suspect that … system administrators … do not want to hear from faculty and students,” Patterson wrote.
He also wrote that although the administration’s vision for Cherokee Farms as a research site is “laudable,” because of the increasing numbers of students and faculty, the “dreams of … administrators have proven to be illusory at best.”
However, Patterson acknowledged, both in his column and at the senate meeting, that Petersen has recently withdrawn his “Mission of the University” statement, which claimed Cherokee Farms under the management of the system instead of the Knoxville campus, without comment.
Nevertheless, the Faculty Senate passed the Cherokee Farms Resolution with a vote of 41 to 12 and three abstentions. A few senators expressed their concern over both the wording of the resolution and the issue in general, wondering if approval of the Master Plan was a “land-grabbing” venture; yet, both Patterson and former senate President Louis Gross believed otherwise.
“My understanding is that all the property occupied by UT is state property. It is not University of Tennessee-Knoxville property or University of Tennessee-Martin property,” Gross said. “How it is managed is a function of history and assignment. … Who actually manages the property is different than who actually owns it.
“The question is, ‘What was the intent of the Board of Trustees in approving this Master Plan for the campus’?”
When asked by Patterson for the chancellor’s opinion on the matter, Provost Robert Holub said the chancellor would probably agree with the Master Plan.
“If you mean, ‘would he vote for this resolution,’ I don’t think I can say that,” Holub said. “(But) I think Loren probably feels that the 2001 Master Plan is the pertinent document and that the Cherokee Farms is needed for the faculty and students and for plans to expand campus.”
The senate’s concern over IT’s management in Knoxville was the second issue brought to the floor and articulated in two separate resolutions proposed by Gross and Marianne Breinig, chair of the senate’s IT Committee, respectively.
According to Gross’ resolution, the senate has yet to receive a response from its last five memos and letters sent to system administration. The resolution also referred to the Board of Trustees’ March 2007 meeting, which reported IT resources had been shifted from the system to the individual campuses; this shift, however, has not occurred in Knoxville nor has the president established management of IT activities within Knoxville as he “promised” in a memo, according to the resolution.
“The IT system is perilous at best,” Patterson said.
Yet, some senate members expressed hesitation to endorse the resolution because of its aggressive diction. Sen. Gary Rogers, professor of animal science, said he was concerned the final statement about the senate’s lack of confidence in IT management could be taken out of context and used to illustrate the senate’s opposition to the president. Other senators argued that opposing the president’s lack of response to the senate was exactly the point. The resolution was passed with just one dissenting vote and three abstentions.
A motion to change the resolution’s final statement to “… senate expresses its lack of confidence in the management of the IT resources and IT activities of UT by the president,” was offered and passed as well.
The second IT resolution proposed by Breinig, passed unanimously. The resolution urged Petersen and Crabtree to fix the IT situation “immediately,” endorsed the recommendations of a report about the Office of Information Technology at UTK and asked the administration to release the findings of a second report to senate members.
