Wisconsin GUAA meeting with L. Richard Kinney

This is a summary of the Wisconsin GUAA meeting with L. Richard Kinney on Wednesday, Oct. 11. This has been written, reviewed, revised, expanded, reduced, vetted and finally approved by the GUAA members in attendance.

Brief summary of the meeting:

On Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 4-6:15pm, there was a gathering of about 20 GUAA members and a Gallaudet Board of Trustee member, Mr. L. Richard Kinney at the Southern Lakes Association of the Deaf clubhouse in Delavan, WI. An interpreter was present to assist L. Richard Kinney with the proceedings. Videotaping and photographing of L. Richard Kinney was not allowed as per the Gallaudet University's rules regarding his employ as a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT). The meeting started off with an introduction of L. Richard (Dick) Kinney by Steven Fuerst to the assembled GUAA members. Chris Woodfill came up to the podium and gave a 5-10 minutes presentation summarizing the events since the end of the first Tent City back in May and some of the reasons behind the re-awakening of the protests. Dick Kinney came up and sat down in the front of the group with an interpreter and a hearing GUAA member assisting the interpreter with the interpreting process. He clarified that he is here as a private citizen, not as a member of BoT. He talked for about 45 minutes non-stop without any interruptions/ questions until Steve Fuerst asked him to wrap up his comments soon. We planned on giving him 10-15 minutes to comment before starting question and answer session. At that point he made it clear that he was still on second of his four points that he wanted to share/discuss. The questions started to come at him after this request to wrap things up. The questions continued until the end of the meeting at 6:15pm. The participants started to leave the meeting at 5:50pm for prior commitments and plans. The last participants left at 6:15pm. No resolutions or discussion occurred at that point. It was agreed that another get-together to discuss things and to develop resolutions will happen at 3:30pm on Oct. 13 on Friday.

Details:

Chris Woodfill gave a 5-10 minutes presentation. The presentation started with a brief summary of reasons behind the protests in May and FSSA's demands. After that, he detailed all events since May. Infamous "There is no crisis" comment by I. King Jordan at the National Association of the Deaf and the June 28 memo sent out by I. King Jordan suppressing the freedom of speech were explained. The reappearance of the tent cities on Monday, Oct. 2 in Bay Area and at Gallaudet University and the "Earth Juice" fertilizer incident on the first day of tent city at Gallaudet University was covered. The movement of Tent City to the mall and eventually to HMB was described. Stalemate statement by Tom Humphries and the protests against the naming ceremony at WAB and SAC on Thursday were discussed also. HMB and eventually campus-wide lockdown were detailed. Negotiation failures were covered. The Gallaudet University Alumni Association and Gallaudet University Alumni Relations office situation were the closing part of the presentation.

Dick Kinney: Excerpts.

-Personal: He is the only person on BOT who cannot sign. Also, he is the only white hearing male. He is the only financial person on BOT. He has a deaf daughter who graduated from Gallaudet last spring. He works as a financial advisor/consultant to large non-profit organizations. He currently serves on two company boards including Midwest Airlines.

-Gallaudet Finances: It costs $150,000,000 to operate Gallaudet per year of which $110,000,000 comes from the federal government. The endowment currently stands at $180,000,000. Endowment increased by $45,000,000 in only two years. Dick's goal is to grow the endowment to a size that Gallaudet will only need help from federal government to cover a third of its annual budget, down from two-thirds in the next six years. His goal is to earn 15-18% a year on the endowment funds through various investment strategies. One of the investment strategies is to set up a venture capital fund worth $1,000,000 to help Deaf people start their businesses.

-Board of Trustees (BoT): It has only two duties. They are to run the university and to hire/fire a president. The board of trustees spend about two weeks of their times per year in form of meetings and retreats to run the university. BOT get a five-inches pile of paper on many different topics about two weeks before each board meeting. It took Dick several hours each night for two weeks before meeting to read through everything. Stuff he read includes tenure requests (about 10-12 per year), financial reports and approvals (even little expenditures such as fertilizers must go through BoT, more on that later), review rules/procedures, review of personnel decisions, naming of the buildings and many other such stuffs. The president is accountable to BoT. Also, BoT did do an in-depth research on the campus climate back in 2004 by hiring outside company to do a survey on this. The survey found that there were three key issues that affected the campus climate: Audism, Racism and Management By Intimidation (MBI) BoT have directed the administration to resolve all of those issues. Dick claimed that 11 out of 18 BoT are Gallaudet alumnus. After the meeting ended, Steve Fuerst asked Dick about this. Dick clarified that actually only 6 are Gallaudet alumnus and 5 has other connections to Gallaudet such as being a parent of a student and that he really meant that 11 people on BoT has connections with Gallaudet University. Steve also suggested that 51% of BoT should be consisted of Gallaudet Alumni. Dick did not agree with this. Dick said that the BoT is a group of very sophisticated, respected, intelligent and clear-thinking people. BOT are a high-status group of people.

-Presidential Selection process-The PSC process was not discussed directly but Dick felt that the last part of the BoT presidential search process was very honest and fair. There is no favoritism or anything like that in the process as they relate to the final three candidates. A company was hired at the cost of $200,000 to conduct the presidential search process. Dick cannot mention the names of any candidates other than the three named finalists. He was not able to confirm whether a certain person or the other was a candidate or not. He did mention Dr. Glenn Anderson but would not confirm whether he was a candidate or not. He feels that the process was transparent and fair. The process need not to be re-done or re-opened. Dick said that he was limited to only three choices and that he had to choose the best out of three. Among the three, Jane Fernandes was clearly the best according to the presidential search criteria. The criteria are PhD degree, administrative experience at university level and Deaf. Jane meets all three and is the most qualified of the three.

-Jane Fernandes-She has only one year contract as President of Gallaudet University. If she is unable to deal with and resolve issues related to Audism, Racism and Management By Intimidation (MBI) within one year, she is out. Dick was asked about the 2-3 million dollars buy out package by a participant who attended the NAD convention and heard about it there. Dick said that the buyout clause is not worth 2-3 million dollars as reported but is actually worth less than $1,000,000. Jane has been mandated to resolve the issues affecting the campus climates as her priority as the president of Gallaudet University. If she is unable to accomplish this in one year, she is out. Her new contract as the president of Gallaudet University supersedes her tenure. After being questioned by Chris Woodfill on whether Jane Fernandes is actually the best person to be the president of Gallaudet University, Dick admitted that he is of the opinion that Jane is not the best candidate that applied or are available out there. However, he insists that she is the best of the final three. Jane is just not the best out there. Some declined to apply (he did not say who) that he felt could have been a better president. However, Dick did defend Jane claiming that with her qualifications, hearing universities would clamor to have her as their president.

-Faculty-Dick was very unhappy with a cabal of six faculty members who he claimed forced the students in their classes to participate in protests or risk getting their grades lowered. When challenged on this by Chris Woodfill, he strongly insisted that he with his own eyes saw this happen three times during the two days that the BOT met at Gallaudet University. When questioned about this by Chris Woodfill, he declined to name six faculties who have been doing this. He said that they are the main instigators of the protests and it was they who fanned the flames at Gallaudet University. They are reprehensible people, so he says. He argued that it was not really the majority of the faculty who were against Fernandes. It was a tiny minority. He said that there are 225 faculties at Gallaudet. About 65 showed up at that meeting where Faculty voted no-confidence at Fernandes. He said that the majority of that group of 65 out of 225 faculty voted no-confidence at Fernandes. Not representative of all Gallaudet campus. A participant asked about the students' participation, Dick said that only 250 out of 1800 students participated. The number is very small. Not a large part of the campus as it was made out to be.

-GUAA vs. GUAR- Under questioning/discussion with Karla Gunn and a few others, it was clear that Dick has no knowledge or understanding of what was happening with this. He seemed to be surprised and confused by this issue. It was all new to him. He was not aware that GUAA was not allowed to use the database. He said he is going to investigate this issue. He felt this was wrong, shameful and a sign of MBI. This must be resolved. He said that GUAA should be allowed to return to Ole Jim since GUAA gave 1.5 million dollars for renovation. GUAA should be allowed to use it. He will try his best to take care of this somehow.

-Fertilizer incident-Dick said he personally read and approved the report for fertilizers on campus back in August. He said that fertilizer is 100% organic and is very expensive. It came from Milwaukee. The name of the product and company escaped the reporter, sorry. He reviewed the report when he heard about the fertilizer incident. He confirms that fertilizer treatment was indeed planned in the specific area where tent city was on that very day.

-I. King Jordan- After hearing a story about a husband and wife's first encounter with I. King Jordan at a mutual friend's wedding which went badly, Dick replied saying that I. King Jordan for all practical purposes is gone. There is no point in worrying about him. He is a goner. However, he felt that I. King Jordan was an amazing person and an amazing president over the last 18 years.

-NAD resolutions- A GUAA and NAD member asked about resolutions submitted by the NAD. Dick said that the resolutions submitted by the NAD concerns and bothers him. He was not sure what to do about that.

-DPS attack-Dick Kinney heard about the DPS attack against students in Hall Memorial Building. He wanted to see evidence of it. Karla Gunn provided pictorial evidence printed out from various blog sites.

-Building naming changes-Dick said that he never heard about the Gallaudet naming committee after a brief discussion about this with Chris Woodfill. Dick said that he is the chair of the committee that names the buildings. He never heard of such a committee not within BoT. He thought his committee is solely responsible for naming of the buildings and whatnots on campus. Dick did have major concerns about naming a gallery after Linda Jordan in Washburn Arts Building. He felt okay after asking many questions to somebody (not sure who) and after rationalizing that the gallery is small. He was uncomfortable with Linda Jordan Gallery but went ahead with it anyways. We never got to the Student Academic Center so that was not discussed.

-FSSA and other student organizations-Dick said that FSSA is not a recognized, sanctioned group at Gallaudet University. FSSA has no official standing at Gallaudet University since it never went through formal process of being a recognized, sanctioned group at Gallaudet. Student Body Government, Graduate Student Association, and various other ethnic-based groups at Gallaudet University are not recognized, sanctioned groups either. Dick said he cannot in good conscience fire Jane Fernandes over the demands of the non-sanctioned groups. How could he sleep well knowing that he fired Jane over the demands of the non-recognized, sanctioned groups? He cannot do so.

This report is written, read, revised, reviewed and approved by the GUAA members in attendance of the Wednesday Oct. 11, 2006 meeting with L. Richard Kinney at the Southern Lakes Association of the Deaf clubhouse from 4-6:15pm.