IU needs stabilization above all else

IU trustees, we have a problem.\nAfter many faculty gripes, you will meet Saturday to discuss the job performance of IU President Adam Herbert and the structure of the IU-Bloomington chancellor, who also happens to be the University-wide senior vice president for academic affairs. \nWhat you'll do with Herbert is hard to say; you have been entirely too genial about the controversy so far, and have backed him since the beginning. We're imagining you won't do much there. \nBut it appears you're on track to split the position of senior vice president for academic affairs and IUB chancellor. You might think that will satisfy some faculty complaints, or make the positions more appealing. But in reality, it probably won't do much but add to the administrative laughingstock we're becoming in higher education hiring. As Einstein said, you can't solve the problem using the same kind of thinking used when we created it.\nIt's going to take a lot more than just potentially splitting the IUB chancellor position into two separate jobs to solve the problem. The problem really seems intrinsic to the IU administration and with the search committee looking for a candidate to fill the position.\nThe IUB chancellor position looked attractive once upon a time. Now it's imminently less attractive because of the controversy last semester. Very few candidates would want to come to a school where leaders are leaving, the dean of the largest school on campus is unknown and support for the president is tenuous. Splitting the position won't help much, and outside of solving the institutional insurrection, only a time-traveling DeLorean might make the position more attractive.\nSecondly, splitting the position won't solve the other problem: the fact that the search itself has been botched. It took more than a year to start the search, and once the committee gave candidates to Herbert and he rejected them, it was immediately unclear about what to do with the new search. No new criteria were laid out. There was virtually no public discussion about what went wrong. We still don't know why Herbert didn't like the candidates we had. We're not the only one confused; some search committee members feel this way as well.\nTrustees, we urge you to proceed cautiously with splitting the chancellor position, and we'd like to see you use your muscle to pressure Herbert and the search committee to get their acts together. \nIt's become clear now that the class of 2006 won't see an IUB chancellor by graduation. Hiring a chancellor has always seemed like the highest priority for the University. But watching the committee scramble and the faculty cry out against the president has shown that what IU needs right now is stabilization. Once we've begun to stabilize everything -- from the top down and from the bottom up -- then the pieces of IU's future might begin falling into place.