Referendum for a dean: The unusual case of fairhaven college

S H O R T C O M M U N I C A T I O N S

REFERENDUM FOR A DEAN: THE UNUSUAL CASE OF FAIRHAVEN COLLEGE

When it comes to choosing a chief administrator, Fairhaven College does not do it quite like anyone else. The school's experience last year in selecting a new dean provides an unusual example of direct democracy at work on a college campus. We believe this experience to be relevant to other institutions.

Fairhaven is a small cluster college of 450 students. It was established by the state of Washington in response to the student demands of the 1960s for greater relevance and involvement in higher education. The 1967 charter charged Fair- haven, a semiautonomous division of Western Washington State College in Bellingham, with seeking innovative perspectives. Allegiance to this charge and to the principles of student responsibility and participation manifested itself in the recent selection of a new dean for the college.

In October of 1974 Ken Freeman announced his intention to retire as dean of t Fairhaven no later than June of that academic year. His four years as dean had been marked by growing controversy linked in part to his well-considered and frequently articulated philosophy of education, which could be characterized as classical laissez-faire liberalism. Freeman believed that the student pays tuition and should have the right to define his or her own education. The college assists the learner primarily by removing encumbrances and by creating maximum opportunity for an individually self-regulated learning process. Crudely put, the college that interferes least educates best.

Freeman's interest in affective learning and in integration of aspects of the human potential movement into a liberal arts curriculum further accentuated the controversy over his deanship. Some faculty and a few students felt that Freeman had exacerbated what they perceived as mindless drift, lack of standards, and general intellectual softness at Fairhaven. Others viewed him as an exceptionally adept, humane, and open administrator primarily responsible for keeping the college vital and nimble through difficult transitions; he had been, they thought, very much the right dean at the right time. Perhaps a fair assessment would be that Freeman did an excellent job of helping to create an

Al te rna t ive H ighe r Educa t ion , VoL 2(1) , 1977 6 3

64 ALTERNATIVE HIGHER EDUCATION

atmosphere of freedom that nourished educational risk taking and experimenta- tion. Trusting individuals to define their own educational paths, he enhanced and emphasized the centrality of students in the educational process.

Without rejecting these crucial factors, a substantial part of the Fairhaven community came to believe that it was time for the college to turn its energies to other needs--to the definition of goals, structuring of curriculum, and articula- tion of academic standards. Against this background a search for the new dean began.

The faculty and the Policy Board (Fairhaven's central policy-making body is composed of five students and five teachers or staff) spent the remainder of the fall considering alternatives to a conventional deanship: rotating the dean position among the faculty members, a committee as dean, co-deans (complete with the slogan "Codeines for a better Fairhaven"), husband-wife teams. Many persons felt that a diffusion of power as represented by these models was more in keeping with Fairhaven's style than a conventional deanship. Nevertheless, consideration of the external responsibilities of the dean for negotiating with Western Washington State College's administration and board of trustees led Fairhaven to decide in favor of a stable, continuous, single dean.

The next choice confronting the college was whether to select the new dean from members of the Fairhaven faculty or conduct a nationwide search. The advocates of an internally selected dean argued that Fairhaven should look to its own talent for someone already familiar with the school's problems and dedicated to their solution. Those favoring an external dean search contended that a need for new blood and a near messiah, as the job description would seemingly describe an ideal dean, demanded someone not rutted in the polities, per- sonalities, and perspectives of the college. Seeking to clarify alternatives during a frustrating faculty meeting, someone asked point blank, "Who among us wants to be dean?" No one answered, but everyone assumed that several faculty members (and several students, as it later appeared when a student group proposed creation of a faculty-student dean team) were interested in being drafted. By an 8-7 vote the faculty recommended that the :Policy Board open the job to anyone wishing to apply. Most students opposed limiting selection to the faculty, and the Policy Board reflected this in unanimously voting to search outside. The board then established a search committee composed of five students, five faculty (one of whom would be from the main campus at Western Washington State College), and one staff member. Self-nomination and election to the search committee was completed by the end of January.

A fair and routine election produced results that threatened to skew the selection process. This incongruity is explained in part by the fact that although Fairhaven had been founded with the expectation of extensive student participation in college governance, these concerns had never engaged more than a quarter of the student body. Even this limited involvement had dwindled since 1968. Many Fairhaven students eared little for campus politics and seemed willing to trust the judgment of fellow students and the faculty, or they believed that such decisions made no important difference to them personally. As a result, politically aware and articulate social scientists predominated on the

SHORT COMMUNICATIONS 65

search committee. Far out of propor t ion to the total populat ion of Falrhaven, these students and faculty identified with the radical left and had been most critical of the Freeman administration. Among the virtually unrepresented groups was a s tudent-founded alternative life-style, self-sufficiency, alternative energy, organic gardening program called The Outback, which involved approxi- mately 10 percent of the student body. Also underrepresented were the student- init iated cooperative dorms, a craft worksh~ ps program, persons interested in affective education, persons strongly supportive of the Freeman deanship, and 60 members of the Fairhaven Center for Urban Studies, which was a local community program in Seattle 's black ghetto. The committee recognized the representation problem from the outset, but seeing no feasible alternative, it embarked on its task affirming commitment to be especially sensitive to those groups not having a clear voice among its membership.

After the typical commit tee skirmishes, a job description was prepared that listed Fairhaven's strong and weak points and that called for a combined Jesus, Einstein, Marx, Whitehead, and Roosevelt to become the new dean. Published in late February, the description proclaimed:

We will look for someone who: possesses a view of society, the human condit ion, and higher education which

enables us to assist s tudents to integrate thought and action and prepare themselves and society for an uncertain future.

has a phi losophy of learning and administrat ion which informs daily judgments and guides a decision-making process.

will find imaginative ways of helping formulate and implement the goals of the college. Our charge as an innovative college implies a willingness to take risks which must be carefully weighed against the limits of college education . . . .

is willing and capable of assuming some teaching and advising responsibilities in addit ion to administrative tasks.

will encourage and assist in implementing an effective democrat ic policy- making process . . . .

will take responsibil i ty for focusing a t tent ion on long-range plans and problems of the college, and for sharing in the evaluation of faculty and staff . . . .

Despite provisions that the posit ion would no t necessarily carry faculty rank and tit le or tenure, over 350 inquiries and 225 completed applications reached Falrhaven by the beginning of April. As the committee tediously sifted through stacks of applications, it made its files available for inspection by anyone in the Falrhaven communi ty . All meetings were advertised and open. Soon the committee found itself ignoring the good and searching for the exceptional.

By mid-May the commit tee had finally selected three candidates to interview: an astrophysicist from New York, a theologian from Nebraska, both males, and a


woman philosopher from California. Interviews quickly established a (male) theologian, who we will refer to as "A," and a (female) philosopher, "B" as the most viable candidates.

Candidate "A" brought strong recommendations, impressive academic cre- dentials, and substantial experience. His appearance on the campus produced almost instant polarization. Some saw him as a natural helmsman for the transition to Fairhaven's next stage, a person humane and sensitive, yet shrewd, hard-driving, and efficient. To others "A" appeared a likely perpetuator of the casual laissez-faire Freeman administration. By an odd concidence "A" in a strange way dressed like Freeman, talked like Freeman, and, to some, even looked like Freeman. For persons hoping for substantial change in the tenor of the college, this coincidence heightened distrust. Candidate "A" was extremely well received by such groups as The Outback that were underrepresented on the committee.

The other final candidate, "B" also created sharp divisions during her several clays on the campus. Like "A" she was very well qualified, bright, articulate, dynamic, efficient. Fairhaven had few women on its faculty, and many people openly hoped to hire a woman dean. She presented a sterling opportunity to do this without compromising quality. Many reacted to her as a blunt, no-nonsense educator who would coolly and efficiently move Fairhaven toward greater clarity of purpose and definition of standards. Others viewed her with alarm as insensitive to and distrustful of students, as unsupportive of a number of Fairhaven programs, and as unconcerned about the style and atmosphere nourished by Freeman. "B", it seemed, had little feeling for Fairhaven as a distinctive institution. Someone observed, "She'd be a good dean, but not here!"

On the evening of June 2 the committee met to make final decisions for its recommendations to the president of Western, who had requested three ranked choices. After gathering oral and written comments from the community, the committee found the Fairhaven faculty and student body each split over "A" and "B"; the administrative staff unanimously preferred "A". The long selection process had generated substantial tension, a condition that became evident when the committee gathered for its final meetings. The problem of significant interest groups in the community without adherants on the committee accentuated the classical dilemma of whether an elected member should vote his or her own choice or should attempt to fathom and reflect the wishes of the electorate. Pressed for time, divided by charges of ideological bias, and troubled by the constantly emerging preference of some members for an internal dean from the faculty, the frazzled committee now moved to a series of votes that night and the next morning.

By a vote of 6-4 "B" became the committee's first choice for dean. Under a previous agreement that required a majority for any decision, a 5-5 vote eliminated "A" altogether. Finally, the committee voted 6-3 with one absten- tion that it preferred "B" over an internal selection from the faculty. Generally, those persons least impressed with the Freeman deanship voted for "B" and against "A". A single name would be submitted to Western's president.

With students already leaving for summer vacation, the committee at least in


part had acted out of a sense of urgency in order to insure the availability of Fairhaven's unorthodox recall procedure. That procedure had been placed in the college's first constitution (1969). It provided that a petition by 30 percent of the community could refer any committee decision to a college-wide election in which a two-third's vote would override the committee decision. At the sug- gestion of Freeman this provision was modified in 1974 to increase the community's ability to recall committee decisions:

Decisions of committees will be posted and if within three days 18 members of the community come to the office to register their protest, then the matter is automatically postponed until the next meeting of the committee when it is reviewed. If fifty (50) members of the community register their protest, then the matter automatically goes to a community-wide decision. In this case there must be at least one community discussion and then a general referendum, with 50 percent of those voting deciding the issue.

Prior to June 1975 no serious attempt had been made to utilize this mechanism. Within three hours after the final committee decision, this no longer remained the case.

The dean selection committee voted to eliminate "A" at 11 A.M. Tuesday and by 2 P.M. that day 80 persons had come to the office to sign a recall petition. Some saw "B" as a threat to Fairhaven. Others simply preferred "A". Some saw the committee decision to eliminate "A" totally as an arrogant disregard for a substantial portion of students who had made their views known to the dean selection committee (exactly how substantial a number was not clear at this point). A community meeting was set for Thursday evening, two days after the committee decision.

On Wednesday afternoon the faculty met to consider the situation. In a weighted preference vote they decided that they preferred one of themselves to either "B" or "A", though they also narrowly preferred "B" before "A". Then the faculty proposed that the three choices ("A", "B", and a faculty dean) be presented at the election. A student designed a complex four-stage ballot that would allow choice among all options and insure a majority statement of preference for one of them.

During the two days between the committee decision and the community meeting, more debate, reviewing, and caucasing ensued. By the evening of Thursday, June 5, group opinion began to congeal. The meeting itself, very much in the fashion of a New England town meeting, was well organized and well attended. The chairman of the dean selection committee reported the actions of the committee. Next, minority committee members argued their positions. Interest groups that were inadequately represented on the committee had learned their political lesson and came well prepared to speak for "A". They were buttressed when the administrative staff of eight persons polled itself and announced its position. Ken Freeman, for the first time since his resignation, entered the controversy to support "A". None of the majority members of the committee spoke out in favor of "B", though a number of them urged either


continuing the search or selecting someone from the faculty. In a reasoned, rational way the spoken sent iment was incontestably in favor of "A" . The final repudiation of the commit tee decision was announced on Sunday at Fairhaven's graduation ceremony. The communi ty had voted in favor of " A " over "B" by a margin of 148 to 15. Selecting a dean from the faculty was rejected 152 to 38. Other choices included a 142 to 4 preference for "A" instead of a faculty dean, and a 138 to 19 vote for a faculty member instead of "B". " A " was Fairhaven's overwhelming choice.

But when the decision and news of the process reached Western, consterna- tion was bold and immediate. Fairhaven College, though cautious in pushing its au tonomy as a cluster college, had always had an uneasy relationship with certain elements in the more conventional parent institution. Some legitimate affirmative action questions were immediately raised and adequately explained. The greater skepticism of most critics outside of Fairhaven went to the heart of the decision-making referendum process and to the assumptions that underlay it. "What have those nuts done at Fairhaven now'?. Everyone knows that ' s not how to choose a dean."

The traditional way to select a dean involves appointing or electing a committee that will make the decision. Fairhaven did this. Its committee deliberated and engaged in sustained debate for more than four months, thereby creating an expert group that knew more about the deanship and the candidates than anyone else in the communi ty . Members of this group then exercised their collective judgment by selecting a woman whom they considered the best potential dean. They were overruled by a large mass of persons possessing in many instances only cursory knowledge learned through a community meeting, through rumor, through three days of unsystematic discussion and debate, and perhaps through a short encounter with "A" or "B". Committee members had spent up to 20 hours with each candidate; many in the communi ty at large had not even met either candidate.

In an institution dedicated to the importance of study, those who were less informed could and did outvote those who were best informed. In doing this, Fairhaven had acted out its assumption about who should control a college-- namely, that direct democracy provides a preferable way to resolve questions that affect all members of the institution. With much at stake, the college trusted students and staff as responsible people who had an equal right to participate in the school 's most fundamental political decisions. Except on the question of an internal dean, no clear split developed between students and faculty, thus allaying fears that democratic college governance invited faction- alism and could set s tudent against teacher.

Democracy always courts the danger of uninformed rule by emotions. Fair- haven relied on openness of information and discussion, on a trust in rat ional i ty and mutual respect, and on fidelity to a few basic guidelines, to minimize the dangers of deciding by popular vote. The community had elected a committee. The committee functioned to narrow several hundred choices down to two or three. Then the commit tee made its final decision contrary to the considered judgment of its electorate. In a responsible manner and in adherance to accepted


written rules, the students and faculty recalled the committee decision to bring it into accord with their wishes. Democracy became a working procedure, not a catchword.

We realize that intellectual issues should not be resolved by voting, but if one believes that, on balance, democratic processes are the most reasonable way to make governmental decisions, why not let them become a part of the important political judgments made in educational institutions? Certainly the process contains risks, yet one of the prime purposes of a college like Fairhaven is to take risks that offer a reasonable hope of enhancing constructive change and human dignity.

Of course, the question of whether the process produced a dean who actually would modify the leadership of the college is only now being answered. If it did not, if the community acted only to sustain its existing character rather than to change it, then the question of whether Fairhaven remained the same through a committee or directly through the electorate becomes irrelevant.

Robert Keller Rand Jack

BLACK HAWK COLLEGE'S LIBRARY-BASED PROGRAM

As postsecondary education attempts to implement the recommendations of the Commission on Non-Traditional Study and to meet new challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a potpourri of exciting and innovative programs are developing. A number of these programs utilize the educational goals and facilities of the public library, a potentially powerful resource for open learning. Although the Commission on Non-Traditional Study noted the passive role that public libraries have tended to assume in the educational process in the past, it should be emphasized that they have those resources that are the essential elements for offering educational services: huge quantities of information; widely distributed and numerous locations, often far closer to students' homes than college campuses; facilities often including meeting rooms, viewing and listening areas and equipment for media, and sometimes even classrooms; and welt-educated staff members trained to assist patrons in locating information and in learning. Thus, probably one of the most natural and potentially profitable results of the commission's recommendations has been the cooperative effort of public library and postsecondary education to offer educational services to previously unserved populations. The forms that such efforts have taken vary from adult independent learner programs assisting those preparing for CLEP to the offering of formal college courses in public library locations. Black Hawk College's cooperative program with the River Bend Library District belongs in the latter category.

Black Hawk College's library-based program, known as Study Unlimited, which is modeled on the Study Unlimited program operating in Chicago as a joint project of the Chicago Public Library and the City Colleges of Chicago,

Referendum for a dean: The unusual case of fairhaven college

Documents

Transcript of Referendum for a dean: The unusual case of fairhaven college