At her last Bloomington Faculty Council meeting, Frances Trix said she had enough with the system.
Trix, the Diversity and Affirmative Action Committee chair, will not be returning to serve on the council next year.
During her time with the council, Trix said she had several problems with the way meetings are run. She said she had been at universities where shared governance and unity are practiced.
IU failed to establish a similar environment, Trix said.
“I have never been treated so disrespectfully as my standing committee has been this year,” Trix said. “It was demoralizing.”
The committee met bi-weekly to put an inclusion report together, Trix said. However, they were never given time at faculty council meetings to speak about their goals and findings.
The committee was constantly ignored, Trix said. Instead, she said IU paid California-based consulting firm Halualani & Associates a large sum of money to conduct their own diversity assessment report.
“The report was nothing but expensive PR,” Trix said. “Administrators were afraid of our project.”
As Trix delved into her series of complaints during the last Bloomington Faculty Council meeting of the semester, IU Provost Lauren Robel’s hand rested on her microphone. She let out several audible sighs, which echoed throughout the room in Franklin Hall.
“I don’t want what happened to my committee in the past two years to any other committee,” Trix said.
Council members primarily discussed the campus’s faculty scholarly activity systems policy, which was proposed by outgoing council president Cassidy Sugimoto. The system, which measures and evaluates faculty performance data, was passed after more than 30 minutes of debate.
Pete Kollbaum and Richard Van Kooten, members of the Research Affairs Committee, proposed several motions to amend the policy, as well as a delay so committees could spend more time revising its guidelines.
Although Sugimoto’s policy passed almost unanimously, several council members voiced their concerns about the lack of time given to look over the policy with greater detail.
“If we have standing committees relevant to the resolution and policy, it’s odd to bypass them,” Robel said. “This resonates with the complaint they got last week.”
At the prior Bloomington Faculty Council meeting, Trix interrupted the presenters to express her dissatisfaction with the year’s proceedings. She said the council had discussions on diversity, her topic of interest, without notifying her committee.
During the meeting, Long Range Planning Committee Chair Alex Tanford updated the status of his group’s report, which addressed several of Trix’s concerns. The report will outline a five-year plan for what the council aims to accomplish, including a complete restructuring and making meetings more action-oriented.
Tanford said the current organization of committees dates back to 1974, when the campus was last reorganized.
“There wasn’t a Provost’s office, or core schools, and many things have changed since then,” Tanford said. “Do we have the right committee structure to take the campus going forward?”
Bloomington Faculty Council president-elect Rebecca Spang said she agreed with the council’s motions to update their policies. She said the next year will be one where the council becomes more productive, continuing the work Sugimoto started.
“May I move that we pass a resolution of gratitude to our outgoing president?” Spang asked near the end of the meeting, which uncharacteristically came to a halt fifteen minutes early.
Laughter erupted in the crowd, followed by a series of cheers. For the last time this year, the meeting was adjourned.
