In Fall 2013, the San Jose State Faculty Senate voted to ask Chancellor Tim White to intervene on campus to help repair fractured relationships between faculty and administration.
| L.A. Times photo/(Karl Mondon AP) |
As reported in the San Jose Mercury News, President Mo Qayoumi has now acknowledged in a campus-wide letter that:
By way of context, The Mercury News reported:"he had moved too rapidly in his excitement to improve the campus and 'stepped on' and 'harmed' a tradition of cooperation among staff, students and faculty."
"Qayoumi came to San Jose State in late 2011 and has drawn intense criticism for his experiments with online education, his budget cutting directives, and decisions to replace existing campus diversity initiatives with his own. A crisis over a dorm-room bullying incident that resulted in criminal hate-crime charges against four students ignited a campus protest and raised more questions about his leadership."
The L.A. Times reported that:
"The mea culpa came in a joint letter to the campus community on May 8 from Qayoumi and Cal State Chancellor Timothy White acknowledging problems of governance at the 30,000-student campus and outlining a series of policy changes."
"Many faculty complained they had little input before the university -- with much fanfare -- entered into an ultimately problematic collaboration with the for-profit online education provider Udacity. Protests erupted over plans to reduce the size of the African American studies department and last minute-program cuts ordered by Qayoumi (which were subsequently canceled)."
