After slapping the president with a stern warning last year, the faculty of Southwestern College has overwhelmingly voted No Confidence in Superintendent Dr. Raj K. Chopra after he allegedly left them out of the loop on a plan that reorganized the college.
SWC's Academic Senate, which represents all SWC faculty, voted 26-1 for a resolution of No Confidence in Chopra at its April 28 meeting.
While the vote does not directly impact the president's standing at the college, it sends a clear message to the community and stands at the forefront of a campus-wide uprising after Chopra laid off five staff members April 15 and reorganized some of the college's schools. Senate leaders said Chopra broke a promise to allow faculty meaningful feedback.
Moments after the No Confidence vote took place, Academic Senators unanimously passed a resolution accusing Chopra of disregarding a California state law that requires community college administration to work "collegially" with faculty in decision making.
These two votes represent the third and fourth statements critical of the president by the Academic Senate since Chopra's start at the college in August 2007, "a feat unprecedented," according to one Senate member.
The question of what "shared governance" means has been a long-running debate between administrators and faculty at SWC and other colleges since Assembly Bill 1725 passed in 1988. The bill states that college administrators and faculty will "consult collegially" and gave rise to what is now commonly called "shared governance."
According to SWC Governing Board Policy 2510, "the goal of shared governance is to include, within the decision-making process, representatives of all college constituencies affected by these decisions."
Patricia Flores-Charter, a member of the Senate executive board, said Chopra and his cabinet had come to them for input and agreed to allow the Senate to give additional feedback once the first draft of the reorganization was complete. This never happened, she said, and the next time the Academic Senate executives saw the reorganization plan, it was on the agenda for the board's April meeting.
Valerie Goodwin-Colbert, president of the Academic Senate, addressed the board before its vote.
"Because our new cabinet members are new and learning our campus culture," she said, "I am considering that the reorganization plan is a really rough draft that is being presented to you tonight as a work in progress. Now that a plan has emerged, step two in a healthy shared governance process is input by the stakeholders on potential impact. We as faculty welcome the opportunity to be part of the solution."
During that board meeting, faculty, staff and students spoke to the board about their concerns with the reorganization plan. Even Associated Student Organization President Leticia Diaz, who is usually very quiet at board meetings, questioned the board about whether staff input had been taken.
SWC Trustee Yolanda Salcido pointed to two past consultants who had been hired to gather information from all areas of campus and the surrounding community during previous reorganizations.
Chopra did not answer many of the questions raised by the public during the meeting and has refused repeated interview requests from The Sun. His office staff directed questions concerning the reorganization to Vice President for Human Resources Michael Kerns.
Kerns said valuable input was collected from campus stakeholders during meetings with each group. He said the input was valuable and important to the cabinet's five-month long discussion of reorganization. But, he said, there was no agreement to allow the Academic Senate to give feedback on the cabinet's first draft of the reorganization plan.
"That was never promised," he said. "Never insinuated by any means. But we definitely went and asked for their input. They did a great job providing it. It was never implied … the intent was never that we would bring (it) back to them for their approval, to any group … all groups were treated the same."
Caree Lesh, secretary for the Senate, said she had taken notes when Chopra and his cabinet visited the Senate's executive board Feb. 26. She said, that according to her notes, a continuing dialogue was expected.
"We were fully expecting that Chopra and his cabinet were coming back to discuss their plan," Lesh said.
Flores-Charter, was also at the meeting.
"We heard we would have input (to the reorganization draft)," she said. "That is what I heard. That is what others on the executive board heard."
Flores-Charter said dialogue between the district and faculty has been slowly deteriorating for about a year when governing board members began not responding to faculty concerns. Lines of communications continued to deteriorate when Chopra cancelled a standing meeting between himself and the Senate's president during the fall, Flores-Charter said. The Academic Senate now reports to the VP for Academic Affairs instead of directly to the superintendent.
"The bottom line is, there's been no opportunity for meaningful dialogue," said Flores-Charter.
The purpose of the Senate resolution is to re-open lines of communication, Flores-Charter said. It asks for the governing board to intervene and re-open dialogue on campus by June 15. She said the goal is to restore shared governance at SWC.
Chopra's prior reorganization of the college was met with a similar fury after he met with leaders from each constituency on a Friday for what many said was "15 minutes," then presented the plan to the governing board at a special meeting the next Monday.
Shortly thereafter, the Academic Senate voted for a resolution that urged the district to comply with AB 1725. The Senate voted to send the resolution along with a six-year history of various SWC "governance problems" to the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
Former Vice President for Academic Affairs Ron Dyste defended Chopra's leadership style in 2008 and asked for the resolution to be rescinded. He pointed to a 1997 legal opinion of a former general counsel for California community colleges, Ralph Black, who answered a list of questions concerning AB 1725.
These answers are considered guidelines for how the state will apply AB 1725, according to Dyste. Black said administrators did not have to consult collegially while reorganizing the college's administrative chart.
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