Honesty is a virtue; spin is not

by Richard M. Berthold

Daily Lobo columnist

It is certainly not much of an intellectual challenge to understand why the Board of Regents hired David Schmidly as president. He came from a high-profile school - Texas Tech - and could bring with him an attractive basketball package of coach and assistant coach. Of course, this Texican triumvirate will cost the University almost $1 million a year, but why quibble when it comes to the reputation of the University - which is to say, our basketball program?

At first I thought, "Well, Schmidly at least has a real degree in a real academic field - unlike his predecessor, Louis Caldera, who had less of a connection with academia than someone simply driving past the University." But then, in his traditional first duty as president - expanding the central administration - he proceeded to leave past UNM presidents in the dust with his creation of new vice presidents and associate provosts of this and that. Once again, however, this is only standard policy among a growing number of American universities, which equate institutional quality with the size and compensation of the administration. Hey, you get no respect if your CEO is only paid a half million.

Incidentally, it may be that no one at UNM actually knows exactly how many administrators are on the payroll. The number and, more important, the names of these offices are constantly changing. And many of the incumbents, for incomprehensible reasons, have faculty status, even though they have not seen the inside of a classroom for years. I would like to invite some energetic student to investigate this question by checking the Big Book of UNM Salaries, which is on reserve in Zimmerman Library. Just count the people who have job titles involving any combination of vice, assistant, provost, president or director and add up their salaries.

Now the argument offered, or at least implied, for all these positions is that they are absolutely necessary for the functioning of a major university, which we presume to be. This is of course a bit baffling, since 30 years ago, with roughly the same enrollments, UNM managed to get along with fewer than half as many administrators. Although it may be said that, judging from recent scandals, many of today's administrative placeholders are not performing any detectable functions. Nevertheless, it could at least be claimed, albeit with little credibility, that all these people served someone's idea of the University. But now, we discover that Schmidly has a $153,000 media consultant. Wow. UNM is like Exxon or the White House.

Which is exactly the problem - Exxon and the White House have compelling interests to avoid the unvarnished truth. Are we to conclude that the UNM administration does also? Are their actions and policies so arcane and complicated that they need to be explained? Or are faculty, students and staff so ignorant that they cannot be trusted to fully understand what is going on, as in the case of the North Golf Course?

OK. So, spin and distortion are inevitable in any large organization, even, ironically, the university, which is ostensibly dedicated to the truth. But for Schmidly to talk at the same time about "transparency" is an absolute outrage and an insult to the members of the University community. Why not be more honest about it and bestow on Mike Collins the title vice president of propaganda?

Allow me to suggest that media consultants, spokespeople, fluffy newsletters, institutional screeds such as the Campus News, closed meetings and bogus search committees hardly contribute to "transparency." You want open, honest governance? Fire the consultants. Open up all meetings - especially those of the regents - and issue an annual and brutally truthful state of the University speech.

But then, how would the University possibly work with the state political establishment, which thrives on obfuscation and outright deceit?

Richard M. Berthold is a retired professor of classical history at UNM. He is the author of Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age.