EMU is currently governed by a Junta consisting of Don Loppnow, Freeman Hendrix, Joseph Pollack and Janice Stroh.
Where was that leadership during the recent email crisis? While blame for the recent email crisis might be placed on John Fallon, Sam Kirkpatrick’s decision to acquire Banner, or the ghost of Mary Starkweather, responsibility for management of that crisis is firmly placed on the current Junta. How much communication emanated from that group? Were they even aware of the impact of the email outage on students, faculty, and (perhaps most importantly) prospective students? The silence emanating from the Junta is deafening.
Let’s hope for better performance in the event of a more serious crisis.
Frankly, I was glad to not be getting any emails, the silence was indeed deafening and much enjoyed!
A quick look at http://www.emich.edu/orgchart/ finds that there are over a dozen interim/vacant/”acting” positions. Perhaps the junta has its job cut out for itself just going from office to office, seeing if anyone is left in the lower echelons of administration.
Junta … that’s Spanish for “We don’t need no stinkin’ email!”
Honestly, I don’t think that the Executive Council could have sped the process along at all. It seems like certain people on this blog spend a good deal of time complaining about being micromanaged by University administration, but yet when there’s a problem, they are quick to point their fingers directly to the top.
Considering that the collapse of the email system for a week at the end of the summer term more or less stopped a ton of work from getting done at all levels, I think their involvement in this would not have been “micromanagement.”
I heard that the retreat held over last weekend or early in the week by the Fallon-renamed cabinet group, Stratetgic Operations Council effectively prevented top officials from hearing what was really going on with the IT crisis. A retreat of course is meant to remove participants from normal working conditions, and it did serve that purpose. Which is too bad, as the SOC and its guests are, by and large with some exceptions, a group of people already pretty well removed from the normal working conditions of the campus.
EMU is in a continuing crisis of maldadministration. We need leadership that has a grasp of what really matters to EMU students, staff & instructors, and has the power to pursue it. This “junta” as the Executive Council is now commonly called seems to lack both real power and effectiveness. I say this with much respect for some of the people on the junta, but aware of the vacum of vision in which the junta exists.