I would like to clarify several things about the resolution requesting an audit passed at UNM's faculty meeting last week. The resolution passed because the faculty remains concerned about the apparent diversion of funds from supporting our core missions of creating, distributing and applying knowledge via research, teaching and public service. The wording of the resolution was specific and aimed at:
1. Illuminating how funds - some diverted from academic units like departments and colleges, some harvested from fund balances that had already been encumbered, some captured from the facilities and administration portions of extramural grants and some resulting in increases from I&G funds provided to UNM from the state - were spent since 2003.
2. Predicting the impact that constructing the Rio Rancho campus will have on I&G funds in 2010 and 2011.
I have seen recent accounts in correspondence, television interviews and op-ed pieces in the Albuquerque Journal suggesting that this information has already been provided in UNM's annual audit. I invite you to look and decide for yourself if those specific uses and sources of funds are accurately addressed in that audit. I can't find them there, and I believe that those responsible for the accounts mentioned can't find them there either. However, don't take my word for it. Please look for yourself. After you've looked, you might ask, "If the information is not there, why do those responsible for managing UNM claim it is?"
Another fair question might be, "Why are the faculty asking questions again? Didn't a group of administrators and faculty spend the summer of 2008 examining similar issues?" Yes, we did. However, the answers were not clear; they were not transparent, and access to data necessary to answer the questions was sufficiently restricted that the faculty members of the group could not accept responsibility for the report. Instead, the faculty representatives refused authorship and referred to themselves as advisers. That situation was outlined at the meeting last week in the statement by the Faculty Senate that I delivered and is quoted below:
"Have some of us been misled? Our last general faculty meeting was called to examine the perception that an increasingly costly upper administration could not be sustained without diverting funds from activities directly supporting teaching, research and public service. We voiced concerns, presented examples and requested an accounting of administrative costs. The administration convened a committee of administrators with faculty advisers and charged them to respond to the faculty resolution. The faculty representatives presented a plan of analysis designed to provide a report that would gain the trust and confidence of the faculty and advised the committee that the report should include salary and all forms of compensation in its analysis. The administrative working group did not use the recommended plan of analysis, and decided to limit the compensation to base salaries and exclude allowances, deferred compensation and bonuses, suggesting that those forms of compensation were inconsequential. Upon release, the final report has been viewed with mistrust by many members of the faculty. Additionally, the report's potential authority has since been further undermined by news that at least one member of the administrative committee received an increase of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation shortly before the administration announced a hiring and raise freeze for Main Campus, and during the committee's work on the report."
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This is one of the reasons that one of the resolutions passed at last week's meeting requests a review by an independent, outside body. We tried to work collaboratively within UNM and failed. Thus there is little, if any, faith among the faculty that a further analysis done within UNM will be truly clear, open and transparent. Being fooled twice would be our fault.
Trust and confidence have been injured greatly at UNM. Recovery may be possible, but it will not come as long as the direct questions and concerns of the UNM community are misrepresented, belittled and avoided.
Howard L. Snell is the president of UNM Faculty Senate and a professor of biology.
