NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9302

Text File | 1992-12-14 | 6.0 KB | 109 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Stephen Jascourt)
Subject: Re: CLINTON: Appointments: Shalala to lead HHS
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Some of the claims in Shalala's biography are stretching the truth beyond
credibility, though they have been made often by various people in power.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Clinton/Gore '92) writes:
>The following appointments were released today.  A statement,
>description the agency and biographies are attached.
>DEPARTMENT TITLE:                  Health and Human Services
>SECRETARY-DESIGNEE:                Donna Shalala
>
>Dr. Donna E. Shalala is professor of Political Science and Chancellor
>of the University of Wisconsin- Madison.  The first woman to lead a
>Big Ten university, she came to the campus in January 1988.
>
>She leads the nation's sixth largest university and the largest public
>research university.  During the past five years, she has launched
>efforts:  to strengthen undergraduate education; to become more
>competitive in recruiting and retaining top faculty, staff and
>students; to upgrade research facilities; to promote diversity and
>increase opportunities for women and minorities on campus; to increase
>private support for the institution; and to strengthen the university's
>research programs.

Let's examine these in light of her positions and what has happened on campus:

strengthen undergraduate education:
   Shalala has given this much lip service but no action. An archaic
   registration system was replaced with a modern computerized system, but that
   would have happened anyway. She added an ethnic studies requirement basically
   requiring all undergrads to take at least one course out of some large pool
   of already existing courses deemed satisfactory for that purpose. That is
   all. She stands by the philosophy that cutting edge research somehow
   necessarily and automatically makes for superior undergraduate education.
   This is the dominant philosophy among the faculty here and results in some
   really tragic lecturers being considered good teachers by their faculty
   peers.
   In addition, the state took a position against unionization of grad
   students (we now have a TA union) and tried to remove the TA and RA health
   benefits (which are given to all state employees, which TA's and RA's are).
   Shalala took the state's side of the bargaining table and at least publicly,
   was uncompromising. Those issues have since been resolved (TA's and RA's
   retained their benefits).

become competitive in recruiting and retaining top faculty:
   This is beyond her control-- the state legislature controls budgets and
   salaries so she can't be faulted for the top names that have gotten away
   and the others that Wisconsin failed to win over.

promote diversity and increase opportunities for women and minorities:
   Students: She refused to accept a plan drafted by a minority coalition
   pertaining to recruitment and retention of minorities, and instead adopted
   a weaker plan, whose goals were still not met. She did higher an excellent
   Dean of Students who has been proactive on issues of racism and sexism.
   Faculty: During her tenure as chancellor, several cases of tenure denial
   on the basis of race, national origin, and gender occurred. I believe all
   were settled in a hush-hush manner out of court (to avoid publicity).
   Shalala refused to take a strong stand and for the most part backed the
   faculty's right to determine in the usual manner (i.e. discriminate). In
   one case, a candidate for tenure was someone who had come from Sri Lanka,
   and when this person submitted journal articles for peer review, a professor
   here was one of the reviewers and rejected the article, then ran the same
   experiment and published essentially the same article. This same professor
   then denied the person from Sri Lanka tenure at Wisconsin, and Shalala
   refused to act on any aspect on this case. The fact is that her actions
   have never measured up to her words.

increase private support for the institution:
   fund raising has been a priority, but this probably would have happened
   the same with any other person acting as chancellor.

Her style of administration is to be totally non-commital and set up faculty
committees to deal with everything. It leads to a lack of strong leadership
but generally few major blunders and not a heavy ruling hand, but it also
leads to an incredible amount of inertia. Certainly, some people could have
done worse, I don't think she was bad for the university, but she could have
been much better by putting her actions where her mouth was (she spoke out
on a lot of the issues she didn't do much of anything for).

>After restructuring the UW- Madison Athletic Department, she became a
>leading proponent of the reform of intercollegiate athletics through
>her activities as a member of the Knight Commission.

Bringing in a new athletic director was one of her "big" achievements. Well,
the new athletic director was a former executive in Philip Morris company and
the athletic department and chancellor have refused to ban smoking in the
football stadium (for comparison, many other big ten and pac ten conference
schools have smoking bans in their stadium). She has implemented a no-smoking
policy in most campus buildings, but she refuses to implement any means of
enforcement and some faculty members refuse to stop smoking in their offices
(the smoke diffuses into entire corridors; it can be quite bad in some places).

Stephen Jascourt   [e-mail]