This commentary is by Angeline Chiu, a classics instructor at the University of Vermont.
In a comment to NBC5 on April 13, UVM Provost Patricia Prelock said, “I wish our faculty would focus on doing what they do really well — teaching and supporting our students, and engaging in research and finding solutions.”
This saddens me greatly. I am one of those faculty. Believe me when I say that I wish I could simply ignore all campus governance issues and focus on teaching and research. There is nothing I would rather do than invest in UVM students as together we examine and discuss some of the great languages, texts, events and ideas of the past that help shape our present world and that have inspired and challenged people for centuries and still do.
Teaching is why I became a professor in the first place. I am a UVM alumna, and my commitment to the quality of education here is more than a matter of mere employment. It is deeply personal.
One of the highwater marks of my career was to graduate, study for my doctorate, and return to UVM to join its long, proud tradition of liberal arts education, contribute to the next generation of Catamounts, and help give them the same opportunities that I had so enjoyed as a student.
I would absolutely prefer to focus all my energies on teaching and research. But believe me also when I say that the current administration of my beloved alma mater has made that impossible.
By pursuing a reckless and shortsighted course of action that harms students, faculty and staff and abandons UVM’s essential educational mission as a land-grant, state flagship university, it has forced me to voice my misgivings.
The months of opacity, of stonewalling, of precipitously issuing and sometimes un-issuing draconian measures, of refusing to discuss pressing issues openly in good faith, of aiming to gut numerous programs and departments, of letting go three stalwart lecturers (who are well known for teaching and research!), and of creating the very atmosphere of which it now complains, the administration has given me, and many other concerned instructors, staff, students, alumni and community members no choice but to speak. Thousands of individuals have already signed petitions, written letters and emails, and expressed their objections,
Return to UVM’s long-held ideals of shared governance, transparency, community and cooperation, and we will be more than happy to focus on the educational mission that inspired and drew us here. Until then, we would be poor teachers and researchers indeed if we fail to stand in vociferous defense of those ideals.
