By Jeffrey Waitkevich
Toting a resolution for revolution, a group of the university’s retired faculty and staff is standing up against the big shots.
The Retired Faculty and Staff Association unanimously adopted a resolution opposing consolidated accreditation Tuesday to let legislators and USF System President Judy Genshaft know that they will not sit back quietly and let USF St. Petersburg return to its roots as a neglected regional campus.
The organization has about a hundred members, some of whom have been with the university since its earliest years.
“I think we all have horror stories of what it used to be like,” said longtime librarian Jackie Shewmaker, one of 18 members on the group’s board of directors.
Those horror stories have lead to widespread distrust of administrators on the Tampa campus.
Herman Brames, who spent many years as the director of finance and administration, said that distrust has forced current employees to remain silent for fear of repercussions.
“Everybody is familiar with the guillotine that is in Tampa,” said Brames.
The scorching comments and resolution from the retiree group came as the proposal to end separate accreditation for the St. Petersburg campus appeared to gather steam in Tampa and Tallahassee while picking up more opposition in Pinellas County.
In Tampa, Genshaft departed from her position of strict neutrality on the legislative proposal to send an email to USF leaders touting the proposal’s “potential for significant benefits to our students.”
In Tallahassee, the Florida Board of Governors – the governing body for the state university system – unanimously endorsed the proposal.
But in Pinellas, the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce and the County Commission urged the Legislature to go slow on a proposal that suddenly emerged – without advance notice or local debate – earlier this month.
County Commissioner Ken Welch called on lawmakers to shelve the bill for this year, to allow fuller discussion.
On Friday, state Rep. Ben Diamond, D-St. Petersburg, met with five students on the St. Petersburg campus to get their opinions.
“I feel like what I need to do is gather feedback and listen to students and faculty and the business community and use that time to formulate ideas about what we might do about [the bill],” said Diamond.
Founding dean Lester Tuttle pointed out that this war is not being fought on USF St. Petersburg’s homefront: “The train is leaving the station and it’s leaving the station in Tallahassee.”
Before voting on their sternly worded resolution opposing the plan, the Retired Faculty and Staff Association said the St. Petersburg campus is hampered because so many of its top administrators are newcomers.
“We have so many new people that they have no historical perspective,” said J.M. “Sudsy” Tschiderer, who attended the university back in 1969 and still works on campus. “Every dean is new. The chancellor is new … While they’re trying to move forward, they don’t understand the impact of what’s happened before.”
Tschiderer said that the lack of a plan to implement the bill is the cause for greatest concern, which led to Brames expressing his discontent with how the plan will be brokered: “Did you ever negotiate with someone who has all the power and you have none?”
In an attachment to the resolution titled “Reasons to Oppose Unifying USF Campuses for Accreditation,” the board called the bill a “power play” and “‘out of touch’ with the founding and continuing mission of USF St. Petersburg.”
It also said that it is naïve to believe that the newly pre-eminent USF will share its additional funds with St. Petersburg.
The resolution in its entirety is as follows:
RESOLUTION OPPOSING UNIFYING USF CAMPUSES FOR ACCREDITATION
WHEREAS the USF St. Petersburg Retired Faculty/Staff Association (RFSA) was founded and exists today to provide for the shared and mutual interests of retired faculty, administrators and support staff across all academic Colleges, Support Divisions and Departments and,
WHEREAS members represent the founding faculty and staff, including the founding campus Dean, and scores of dedicated faculty and staff since then who all share in the aspirations of initial and successor faculty and staff that USF St. Petersburg seek and achieve the highest academic recognition possible within Florida and U.S. colleges and universities and,
WHEREAS USF St. Petersburg has through the years grown stronger each year and in recent years achieved major acclaim for excellence as demonstrated by SACS accreditation for the campus as well as accreditation for its separate Colleges of Education, Business and several departments including the Department of Digital Journalism and Media Studies, an accreditation achieved even prior to its sister department on the Tampa Campus and,
WHEREAS the student body served by the campus has continued to evolve from a majority part time enrollment to the current student cohort of many more students comprised of full-time age typical college students, many of whom live in recently constructed residence halls on the campus, with additional residence hall construction on the horizon, and contributing to the resurgence and vibrancy of the downtown St. Petersburg community and,
WHEREAS faculty have been recruited to USF St. Petersburg whose interests include both teaching and research, and new faculty may in the future be reluctant to risk their career at USF St. Petersburg if decisions such as promotion and tenure as vested in distant administration office on the Tampa Campus where academic performance is significantly less visible and priorities for teaching and research may vary and,
2
WHEREAS USF St. Petersburg Campus has flourished and presents a bright future under current separate accreditation and administrative and budget independence, the future of that
prospect will be threatened with the proposed single accreditation under the Tampa Campus with resultant administrative control over decisions such as duplicate admissions criteria, campus hiring, promotion, tenure and budgetary control residing with Tampa Campus personnel.
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
- The USF St. Petersburg Retired Faculty/Staff adamantly opposes the proposed unification of USF St. Petersburg under a singular Tampa One-Campus Accreditation.
- It is the strong belief of the RFSA that the best interests of USF St. Petersburg, its faculty, staff and students and the St. Petersburg and Pinellas County communities that the current separate accreditation with all the associated benefits is the best path forward. We also believe that additional independence in other aspects of the continuing relationship should be explored such as for example, appointment of a local independent USFSP Board.
- If the composition and degree time requirements and other aspects of the USFSP Student Body present an issue for USF Tampa, the answer would suggest that the criteria of the state governance body setting the parameters for Tampa achieving the desired outcome is where efforts should be directed.
Many of our group feel that with the proposed accreditation unification legislative proposal, stagnation or benign neglect will again prevail for USF St. Petersburg as we feel happened from the Campus founding in 1965 until Pinellas Senator Don Sullivan proposed legislation in 2001 to separate USFSP from USF and the associated requirement for a separate USFSP budget and accreditation. These actions caused USFSP to dramatically increase its potential in faculty recruitment, student enrollment and facility expansion and budget freedom. We feel that is almost certain that the proposed action, if it becomes law, will derail the continued flourishing of USFSP.
Header photo courtesy of USF St. Petersburg Digital Archives
