Category: Education

I suggest two potential immediate remedies!

The University of Louisville Board of Trustees had a major annual meeting yesterday, Sept 3, 2015.  It was a busy day with an overview orientation in the morning for the three new Board members, two committee meetings, and a long Trustee meeting.  I will have more to say about some of the proceedings that included a misfire or two such as the Trustees being asked to vote on the recommendations of the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance that had not been distributed, and a surprise vote on an internal review of the governance of the UofL Foundation that was passed when all the press had been excluded from the meeting room.  An update on the litigation with Norton Healthcare was given in executive session, but the resulting resolution informs us of another round of court-ordered mediation in October with a rigorous imposed format.

A “non-disruptive” protest.
To follow up on a series of earlier articles, I want to report here on a protest held during the trustee meeting by several clergy and community activists standing with of the Justice Resource Center of Louisville.  These advocates for the African-American community continued to draw attention to the fact that the Board as it was seated was the first not to contain a single African-American trustee appointed by a Governor since 1970.  The 7 or 8 individuals sat quietly in the meeting room until the first executive session when most folks were sent from the room.  At the press conference in the rotunda of Grawemeyer Hall that followed, the protest was anything but reserved. Continue reading “Protest at UofL Board of Trustee Meeting Over Its Racial Composition.”

Over the past few years there has been a plethora of events, reports, investigations, prosecutions and miscellaneous scandals involving the University of Louisville that should have made the Louisville and Frankfort communities sit up and take notice that all may not be well or even legal within the Cardinal Citadel.  However, a recent series of investigative and other reports about the amount and mechanisms of executive compensation have proven to be the tipping point for public outrage. The income disparity between a select few in leadership and the not-keeping-up-with-inflation salaries of faculty and staff– supported as they are by soaring student tuitions– became too great for University of Louisville spin-meisters to stonewall, to facilely explain away, or to blame on the Commonwealth’s lack of funding.  Prominent among the recent reports are those of Chris Otts of WDRB, Andrew Wolfson  of the Courier Journal, and Stephen George of Insider Louisville. The faculty and staff of the University are also understandably outraged.  I put my two cents in also.

I don’t have the patience or space to detail how the story unfolded. The journalists above have published detailed analyses of “how much, how come, and who knew?”  The story has gone nationwide.  Troubling is the observation that numbers and other details from different sources do not always agree.   Official UofL and UofL Foundation documentation is shockingly sparse, inconsistent, and embarrassingly incomplete. The recollections of present and former Trustees of what actually transpired vary, in my opinion, proportionally to obvious personal loyalty to President Ramsey and to the detriment of University credibility.

In its typical effort to deflect the widespread criticism, the University hired an outside consultant to prepare a comparison, or more correctly a justification for the Board of Trustees of how President Ramsey’s compensation compares to that of presidents of other selected universities.  However, at the very session at which the consultant presented its report to a formal meeting of the Trustees, it was revealed that the necessary supporting information given to the consultant by the University was incomplete and grossly understated Ramsey’s compensation!  [Incomplete disclosure? Has that ever happened before?] Additionally and following subsequent full disclosure, the consultant expressed concern about some elements of Ramsey’s compensation that were atypical at other universities.  Despite this revelatory debacle, a majority of the full Board voted to give Ramsey a (reduced) raise and a bonus! It is apparent to me that UofL Board members, both old and new, have no idea how much money Ramsey has been getting nor how he came to receive it!  Shame on them! Ramsey recently forcefully complained that his credibility was being challenged by those asking for accurate information.  It is clear that somebody’s credibility is in tatters.  It is now the responsibility of President Ramsey to tell us whose. Continue reading “Executive Compensation at UofL— A Tipping Point?”