Emporia State no longer has to wait to meet our potential new president.
A press release from the Kansas Board of Regents sent out on Sept. 29 stated that two final candidates are coming to campus in early October to meet the student body. After months of waiting and the Presidential Search Committee doing everything in their power to keep the students out of the search, they are finally allowing us to see their results – when it’s down to two mystery finalists.
The search for the university’s 17th president has been cloaked in secrecy from the beginning, with KBOR refusing to give details on subjects like the size of the candidate pool and the diversity of the candidates. It’s not that we’re not excited to see who our finalists are, it’s that we should have known a bit more about them before this point, their names would be a good start. And only two? How big of a pool did we pull these two from? Were these the only two to begin with? We can only hope that they represent the entirety of the initial candidates and will represent our campus accurately.
Do the students actually get a say in the school’s final decision? The committee is bringing them to campus to meet ESU students, so maybe we can expect those who attend the student forum to give their opinions on the candidates.
As students, we should know a bit about who will be the face of our university. Yes, we are going to see and meet them the 6th through the 9th of October when they will be coming individually to campus to “tour the campus and interact with various Emporia State University constituent groups,” according to the press release. When Shonrock was brought to campus as our potential future president, there were four individuals brought to campus to get a feel for the school. Why only two now?
The press release didn’t give any more information about the candidates, other than there were two of them and that they would be giving names and biographies out the days before each of them come to campus. Two days for each candidate. Is it that they don’t want the students doing any background digging before the candidates are brought to campus?
KBOR needs to stop screwing around with information that is ours by right. We don’t need the names and addresses of the candidates who were being interviewed – we just wanted to know if they were considering any women or minorities for the position. KBOR has been spending too much time trying to remain secretive when the university’s future is in their hands. We, as the students, deserve to know more than the obligatory, ‘a search is in progress,’ bullshit.
