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Letter from Department Chairs to President McShane

Friday afternoon May 19, nineteen chairs of Arts and Sciences departments sent the letter below to Fordham President Joseph McShane, S.J.

Rev. Joseph McShane, S.J.
President, Fordham University

Dear Father McShane:
The Office of Student Affairs recently carried out disciplinary procedures against student protestors in accordance with a set of policies and procedures we believe to be fundamentally unfair. The regulations on student speech, protests, and demonstrations are restrictive, and the disciplinary process with its closed door hearings in which one person serves as accuser, prosecutor, and judge is inquisitorial. This issue needs your immediate attention, but even though you spoke out this morning about the need for dialogue, on this particular matter all we have heard is your silence. We, a group of concerned department chairs, urge you to speak out publicly and to the entire community on behalf of fair and just procedures and governance in keeping with our statutes and established policies.
Secondly, we see in the response by Student Affairs to the student protests a symptom of a larger problem. Student Affairs has a tendency (as expressed in a self-study carried out for the recent Mission Priority Examen report), to "patronize and control" students.  This tendency is not harmless.  It does not merely work against (again from the self-study) “a culture of relationality and responsibility." Instead, it works against the aims of our University and its curriculum, as we aim to inspire critical thinking and shape ethically conscious students. In our experience, policies that "patronize and control" lead to developing students who are passive and/or angry and/or resentful. 
The recent incident, which has led members of the faculty (which oversees curriculum) into conflict with Student Affairs (which aims to create "a uniquely Ignatian co-curricular environment") is not singular. And it once again points to the problem: the question of the proper relationship between the curricular and the co-curricular. At Fordham, we would point out, Student Affairs is more separated from academic units like schools/colleges and departments than at many comparable universities where the head of Student Affairs is not equal in rank to the Provost.
A house divided hurts the University. In fact, the CUSP Strategic Planning Framework (in Priority I, goal C) encourages initiatives that  "promote the integrated, holistic wellness of students by designing and implementing a distinctive, integrated, and collaborative model for student growth and formation that reflects the deepest concerns of Jesuit education."  In that spirit, we urge you to work with leaders of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs to create a balanced task force that will be charged with putting forth concrete recommendations to bring these units into greater coordination.

Sincerely yours,  
Robert Beer, Associate Professor and Chair, Chemistry
Hugo Benavides, Professor and Chair, Anthropology and Sociology
Andrew Clark, Professor and Chair, Modern Languages and Literatures
John J. Drummond, Robert Southwell S.J. Distinguished Professor in Philosophy and the Humanities and Chair, Philosophy
Vassilios Fessatidis, Professor and Chair, Physics and Engineering Physics
Glenn Hendler, Professor and Chair, English
J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Associate Professor and Chair, Theology
Robert J. Hume, Ph.D., Professor and Chair Department of Political Science;
Amir H. Idris, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, African & African American Studies
J. D. Lewis, Professor and Chair, Biological Sciences
Chad McArver, Chair, Theatre and Visual Arts
Matthew McGowan, Associate Professor and Chair, Classics
Darryl McLeod, Associate Professor and Chair, Economics
Jason Morris, Associate Professor and Chair, Biology
W. David Myers, Professor and Chair, Department of History
Barbara E. Mundy, Professor and Chair, Art History and Music
Jacqueline Reich, Professor and Chair, Communication and Media Studies
Barry Rosenfeld, Professor and Chair, Psychology
Gary Weiss, Associate Professor and Chair, Computer and Information Sciences

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