In response to the Legislature’s challenge to the merger of USM and UMA, two members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) resigned in protest on April 5 and 6: Wickham Skinner, vice-chair of the board and Donald McDowell. Both members’ terms would have ended in May.
Their resignation came after the Legislature added an amendment to next year’s budget that identified the names and locations of campuses that the university system must maintain.
“You don’t have to be a genius to figure out there’s no role for the trustees,” said McDowell. According to McDowell, the Legislature has taken over the University of Maine system, making the trustees obsolete.
Skinner, who could not be reached before deadline, said to the University of Maine’s college paper, The Maine Campus, “We resigned because the legislature suddenly intruded into the affairs of the university.”
In addition to halting the merger, the Legislature is considering two different bills regarding the university system. The first would require the BOT to consult with the communities affected by future actions of the board. This would include students and faculty as well as the citizens of the townships with campuses in them. The second would permit the BOT to enact major changes in the university system only after getting Legislature approval.
John Diamond, the University of Maine System’s executive director of external affairs, voiced concerns about the level of control the second bill would give the Legislature over the system. He said the bill, as written now, gives the legislature unlimited involvement in managing the university system.
Senator John Martin (Democrat – Aroostook County), who introduced the bill, did not return phone calls asking for comments before deadline.
According to McDowell, the Strategic Plan’s call to merge the two campuses was necessary to “maintain the financial viability of the university system.” But, postponing the merger, according to McDowell, jeopardized the entire Strategic Plan. “I think the Strategic Plan is pretty well decimated,” he said.
McDowell placed the onus of the postponement on politics. According to McDowell, the legislators who live in the Augusta area object to the merger because they want a college campus in the area that isn’t under the control of another campus. But the steps the legislators are taking, of controlling the actions of the BOT, he feels are inappropriate. “They control [The BOT] by selecting who is on the board, rather than controlling the actions of the board,” he said.
Donald Anspach, co-president of USM’s Associated Faculties of the University of Maine (AFUM), disagrees with implementing the merger, and the reasons the BOT has used to defend it. He said AFUM hired a consultant to study whether the campus merger would save the system any money. The consultant decided there would be no savings for the system.
Anspach said the BOT’s insistence on implementing the merger has angered many of the faculty and raised concerns in the legislature. Anspach said that for many of the faculty in Augusta the merger is “a hostile takeover as far as [the faculty] is concerned.” According to Anspach, “no faculty group in the university system has ever supported [the merger].”
According to Diamond, Westphal is committed to the idea of merging the two campuses, but he has agreed to give a legislative committee a year to determine if there are better alternatives. Diamond said that in the meantime, there are steps that the two campuses can take to prepare for the merger.
McDowell, however, does not agree with Westphal’s actions. He said in regards to the merger being halted, “to some degree the Chancellor participated in the process.” He said it was Westphal’s responsibility to see the strategic plan implemented. “The BOT voted to implement the Strategic Plan, as far as I know the BOT has not voted to delay that, or to not implement the plan,” said McDowell.
Bob Caswell, director of USM Media and Community Relations, said the halt on the merger is “going to give us time to focus on a number of issues we already have here at USM.” The chief issue Caswell cited is implementation of the “Transforming USM” portion of the strategic plan which calls for $25 million in fundraising in order to build a University Commons between the Ambromson Center and the Glickman Library.