What? A Board of Trustees Is Supposed to Make Decisions?

National coverage of FSU's chiropractic flap continues -- most recently with a story this morning on the Inside Higher Education website.  As that story states:

As has become the norm in Florida in recent years, this flap includes long-running tensions between lawmakers and college leaders, charges of patronage, and concerns over the faculty role (or lack of it) in decision making.

The story also refers to this blog for a more informal take on the flap.

This morning, an editorial in the Tallahassee Democrat, which is known to reprint in whole press releases from FSU (typos included), praises the FSU Board of Trustees for showing respect for faculty in its decision last week.  Actually, it is news that faculty at FSU are jumping in joy that their trustees have now brought their politics onto campus.  What a delightful addition to the intellectual climate on campus. 

Perhaps a little distance from the state capitol clears the mind.  The St. Petersburg Times also has an editorial this morning, in which it correctly observes:

But the beleaguered Florida State University Board of Trustees can't hold meddling lawmakers entirely responsible for this mess. The board and FSU president T.K. Wetherell brought some of this on themselves.

Among the more specious arguments the board offered Friday as it ducked a decision on the chiropractic school was that the state Board of Governors and the Legislature had tied the university into a knot. Indeed, the Legislature, following the lead of then-Senate Majority Leader and chiropractor Dennis Jones, did appropriate $9-million last year to create the school. Indeed, the Board of Governors, created to insulate universities from political interference, did then tell FSU that legislative approval would not suffice.

But no one ordered FSU to ignore its own faculty, disregard the implications with national accrediting bodies and proceed to hire a chiropractic school dean without first asking either the state governing board or the people who have invested their educational careers there. For Wetherell to chide faculty opponents for failing to be "open-minded" took some cheek.

The Board of Trustees has failed at its task of making judgments about programs and priorities at FSU.  The result is to potentially pass the buck to faculty.  But why would it be desirable for a university President to bring its faculty into such a divisive mess at this late hour?  Shouldn't the President and trustees who supported this have vetted it with faculty earlier, rather than attempt to pass it to faculty or the Board of Governors now?  The Board of Governors can reject the proposal based on the merits, but it also needs to do the job that FSU's Board of Trustees failed to -- exercise some judgment and reject the proposal in order to insulate FSU's faculty from the politics of this. 

Another editorial against the program appears in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.   

And a chiropractor (and past chair of the Florida Board of Chiropractic Medicine) tries to set the record straight in the Orlando Sentinel.  As he states:

One of the more egregious claims is that prominent members of the Florida Legislature circumvented the Board of Governors -- the new governing body for the State University System -- and ramrodded the chiropractic school through the political process during the 2004 legislative session. This is sadly distorted.

Final plans and funding for the school were approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor in March 2004. Planning and work on the school dates back nearly 10 years, starting with successful efforts to establish an endowed research chair in biomechanics and chiropractic at FSU in 1995. In 1999, the Legislature directed the Board of Regents to study the chiropractic-school issue, and a report was published in February 2000, with subsequent appropriations made to FSU in both 2000 and 2001.

Recently approved medical schools at both FSU and the University of South Florida were created in a similar fashion.

The impetus for a chiropractic school at FSU was the result of a specific request by the university.

And sublaxation is support by scientific evidence too. 

Comments

From page 34 of the Governor's budget presented today:

"150 AID TO LOCAL GOVERNMENTS GRANTS AND AIDS - FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY CHIROPRACTIC SCHOOL FROM GENERAL REVENUE FUND . . . . . . . . 1,500,000

The funds in Specific Appropriation 150 are contingent upon approval of the Florida State University Chiropractic Medicine Degree Program by the Florida State University Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors."

http://www.ebudget.state.fl.us/

[FSUblius]

The Govenor is speaking sense -- even if FSU does decide it wants this, and the BOG concurs, it will not receive the $9 million annual windfall. Perhaps FSU needs to come up with a vision and and plan to do a liottle better in state appropriations next year, but last year's strategy seems to have failed.