More News on Bob II

[So um, does anyone else have a good nickname for him, by the way...?]

Interesting news in the Daily Cal on our new chancellor. Lisa Humes-Schulz and Dev Chatterji have an article on the "secretive" process involved in selecting Birgeneau. The system in place to select a chancellor, as well as Dynes actions made this decision very much top down, annoying some members involved in the process. Here are the details:

*Although individual committee members were not permitted to share their recommendations with each other, Dynes was aware of and took the recommendations into consideration before forwarding his decision to the UC Board of Regents for approval."
*Dynes is accused by anonymous committee members of only giving the committee four names, instead of the minimum of five required of him by the UC “Policy on Appointment of Chancellors”
*"The full committee spent between 16 and 20 minutes to discuss each of the four candidates, Quindel said. "
*Quindel, a student representative of the advisory committee and former president of the Graduate Assembly, accused Dynes of giving the position to Birgeneau because they have known each other for 30 years growing up in Canada together as part "an old boys network."

I am a big supporter of transparency in situations such as this, so I find the secretive top-down approach to selecting a chancellor troubling. On the other hand, the selection was months behind schedule, and Dynes may have decided on his man, and did not feel like wasting a couple more months holding hearings and consulting with the advisory committee if he knew he had the votes for Birgeneau.

The student input in this decision seems like the absolute minimal level required. I do not necessarily see this as a problem, though. I am not at all sure that undergraduate students would do a good job of deciding who among the possible candidates would do a better job. Holding a forum where students can express their opinion about what qualities they would like to see in the next chancellor, and then limiting their say in the actual decision seems like a good process to use.

It will be interesting to see if the various accusations contained in the Daily Cal article see any more light, or if this is the end of the story. Below, are my long overdue comments on our new chancellor.