UW chancellor says she won't meddle in Athletic Board despite allegations
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Carolyn "Biddy" Martin said she has no immediate plans to address allegations by Jeremi Suri that the UW Athletic Board has become nothing more than a rubber stamp of sorts for the desires of the athletic department.
"I'm going to let the Athletic Board report its findings from its self study and let the process play out as opposed to stepping in," Martin said Monday after the UW Faculty Senate's monthly meeting in Bascom Hall.
Suri, a history professor, gave a letter to Martin on Sept. 17 requesting to resign his position on the Athletic Board because it wasn't fulfilling its duties of checking and balancing the operations of the athletic department. He then made the highly critical letter public late last week.
"In 2005 Chancellor John Wiley appointed me
to serve as a faculty representative on the University of Wisconsin
Athletic Board," Suri wrote. "I began this service with great
enthusiasm for our university's sports and great pride in the
standards of excellence and integrity that I believed our athletic
program represented. I deeply regret that after more than three
years of frustrating service on the Athletic Board, I have come to
the conclusion that this committee is undermining the very
standards of excellence and integrity it should be
protecting.
"After many failed efforts to initiate constructive dialogue with the leadership of the athletic department and the Athletic Board, I am now convinced that the Athletic Board is only promoting the agenda of a small group of stakeholders and actively undermining the value of our institution. I am, quite frankly, ashamed of this committee and ashamed of my own participation in it over the last three years."
The UW Athletic Board currently has an "Ad Hoc Self Study Committee" which is looking at "The Role of the Athletic Board and How it Operates." But that study -- which is not related to Suri's charges -- isn't expected to be finalized for at least another month or two.
"I think it's important that the process play itself out," Martin said. "There is a governance process for the handling of the whole question of how the Athletics Board operates. And they need to get through their part of the process and bring it to me and to the Senate or the University Committee, which is the executive group of the Senate, before I get involved."
At Monday's meeting, two UW Faculty Senate members brought up the topic of Suri's charges.
Michael Olneck, an educational policy studies professor, tried to emphasize to Martin and the Senate that due to these allegations, there needs to be some sort of independent inquiry -- and not simply an internal one by the Athletic Board.
"I think at some point there has to be," Olneck said after the meeting. "I don't know that it has to be immediate. I'm really not familiar enough with the Athletic Board and how it's functioning now, and I was not trying to push the perspective that Jeremi is right, but only that given these attributions this situation warrants a close look by somebody that is independent of the Athletic Board."
In addition, UW Faculty Senator Mary Anderson, a professor of geology and geophysics, said during Monday's meeting that at the last Faculty Senate gathering way back in May, similar questions were being raised about whether or not the Athletic Board was an advisory board or a governance board.
Anderson said she wrote a letter to the University Committee asking it to "investigate and see what's going on."
"They're the guardians of faculty policies and procedures, and if in fact the Athletic Board had lost its ability to serve as a governance committee, then the University Committee either has to make sure it does have that capability, or it needs to change the faculty policies and procedures to make the Athletic Board nothing more than an advisory board."
Anderson was upset no one from the University Committee responded to her letter.
Ann Hoyt of the University Committee apologized to Anderson during the meeting for not getting back, noting the University Committee wasn't in the habit of ignoring correspondence from its faculty.
"Right or wrong, I admire Professor Suri because he had the courage to speak out for what he perceives to be wrong, and that is so rare in the university," Anderson said after Monday's meeting. "There is this committee culture that everything has to be done in a consensus and we all have to be good buddies and nobody rocks the boat ...
"I've had experience myself in the past on the University Committee where I was trying to make changes and I was just stomped on. This committee culture is that you can't do the kind of things that Jeremi did. To go outside to the press, most think that's just terrible."
This perception that the Athletic Department is operating outside the mission of the university as a whole irritates Dale Bjorling, who not only is chair of the department of surgical sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, but also is a member of the UW Athletic Board -- which is charged with oversight of the athletic department.
"There is a sense often on the part of faculty and other individuals that there are problems within the Athletic Department," Bjorling said last week, when Suri's letter first became public. "If people think those issues are real, it should be taken seriously -- you have the wrong people in the job and they should be replaced.
"But I'll tell you, I've served on a number of committees and a number of boards over the years and, overall, people within the Athletic Department, I think, are very good at their jobs and take things very seriously."
Athletic Board chairman Walter Dickey was especially critical of Suri's letter.
"I disagree with everything he says," said Dickey, an associate dean of the Law School. "I've been on the Board for six years, chair for four, and as a group it's an extremely conscientious and hard-working group of people. By and large it's people who are very attentive to their fiduciary responsibility to the university."
Athletic Board member Barb Smith noted: "I really vehemently disagree with Jeremi's assessment. I've got no problem with the function of the board and I'm extremely happy with looking at how it works."
