At its four-hour meeting Tuesday, the Board of Regents passed two resolutions supporting President David Schmidly, Regents President Jamie Koch and Executive Vice President David Harris.
The resolutions come a week before the faculty will meet to discuss a lack of confidence in Schmidly, Koch and Harris.
Schmidly, Koch and the regents' advisers expressed a desire to see UNM's faculty, staff and students present a united front during the legislative session and hold off on the meeting.
However, state Sen. David Ulibarri said the Board of Regents and Schmidly should open a dialogue with the faculty as soon as possible.
"I don't think that you can present a front right now. You have a faculty with a no-confidence vote on the administration and the regents," he said. "I feel that the regents and the administration should address the issues that are at hand right at this point."
In his open letter on Feb. 4, Koch encouraged those who signed the petition to set aside their differences.
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"Now the regents ask the faculty to join with us in moving forward as a unified institution, as leaders in these troubled times," he said. "We must not be just one more interest group fighting for our piece of the pie."
Schmidly referred to Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech when calling for unity in the University community.
"In the midst of a deep recession, with the Legislature trying even now to close a half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and Congress considering unprecedented commitments to higher education, this is no time for the UNM community to be a house divided against itself," Schmidly said in an open letter Feb. 2. "Instead, we should be pulling together, as one, to remind the Legislature of UNM's importance.."
Ulibarri said he, like those who signed the faculty petition, thinks UNM is "top-heavy" and that the issue ought to be addressed.
"(The faculty) are a part of the equation. I think that they have a voice in what happens in the University," Ulibarri said. "Now's the time to look and review what we're doing, with these tough economic times, and (UNM) is top-heavy. We should . start putting more emphasis in the faculty."
Chaouki Abdallah, a distinguished professor of electrical engineering, said the faculty's complaints against Schmidly cannot wait and that the faculty tried to meet with Schmidly several times before the financial crisis.
"The faculty did not come to this step lightly, and they did not come to it out of the blue," he said. "We've tried to have a conversation multiple times, and either they delayed or they gave us things that were not full disclosure."
Physics professor Douglas Fields said the administration would be insincere if it were to delay dialogue.
"These are issues that we've been trying to get addressed for a long time, and so saying that this just came up, and 'Why do this now? Why not wait until later?' is a little bit disingenuous."
Abdallah said meeting with Schmidly during the legislative session is especially important because the Legislature and the faculty have similar concerns with UNM's administration.
"My feeling is that what the Legislature is saying is really exactly what we're concerned about, and if they want to talk to us, we're willing to talk to everybody," Abdallah said. "We've got to put our position out there during the meeting, and if somebody could convince us that there is no crisis of confidence and that they're taking steps to remedy the problem, then we're fine."
Fields said he's concerned that a negative image of UNM in Santa Fe will result in budget cuts.
"I don't know that the legislators are going to look at these administrative salaries and retribute against UNM," he said. "I hope they don't do that, actually, because that hurts the administration a lot less than it hurts the University."
