Former Emporia State interim president and major donor H. Edward Flentje sent a letter on Oct. 3 to the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) and ESU President Ken Hush urging them to rethink the recent changes across campus. 

“The vision that the mass firing will lead to a prosperous future for Emporia State is complete fantasy,” Flentje said in the letter. 

On Sept. 14, KBOR passed a new framework that led to the layoffs of 33 faculty members the next day and the suspension of several university programs soon after. 

These decisions have caused many community members to voice their disappointment for the university and the recent, sudden changes. 

In his letter, Flentje asks KBOR to “reconsider” the recent changes to ESU and “rescind the mass firing” and recent program realignment announcements. 

Flentje urges KBOR to wait for the results of the rpk GROUP study and make educated decisions based on those results. The rpk GROUP was hired by the university as an outside resource to assess what is needed for the future of the university. 

“I think they ought to step back,” Flentje said in a phone interview with The Bulletin. “Take a look at the results of that study and then use established procedures if they want to eliminate programs and terminate tenured faculty. They started with terminations rather than taking advantage of this fairly expensive study.”

Also in the letter, Flentje mentions how students will be affected by the cuts in programs and how “student enrollment will drop further.”

“The idea that you can do something this drastic and not have enrollment effected seems to me to be impossible,” Flentje said. “Students in the areas that have been cut are going to be looking for alternative competition.”

Gwen Larson, ESU director of media relations, didn’t answer an email request for comment on this story.

Matt Keith, KBOR director of communications, said in an email that “the Board doesn’t have a comment on the letter.”

Flentje graduated from ESU in 1964 with a BSE in math and physical science, from KU in 1970 with a PhD in political science, and worked as ESU interim president in 2011. He is also an emeritus professor at Wichita State University, an honorary title.

He and his wife Marla have given upwards of $60,000 in scholarship funds to the university through their political science scholarship. Jenni Denton, vice president for alumni & stewardship of the ESU Foundation has confirmed that the Flentje Endowed Scholarship is in the top 25% of funds held by the foundation. 

Now, with the termination of the political science major, the future of their scholarship is undetermined as Flentje says “it’s wrong what (the administration is) doing” and that it is not good for the university.

The Flentje Endowed Scholarship was established in 2013 for undergraduate junior and senior political science majors, according to the ESU scholarship portal. One award is for $1,000 and the other for $900, according to the ESU website. 

“There was a dust up in 2012 with the university leadership at that time talking about ending the political science major,” said Michael Smith, chair of social sciences, sociology and criminology and close friend of Flentje. “Dr. Flentje had just recently left as the Interim President of ESU and he endowed the Flentje scholarship, he and Marla, in part to continue the political science major. And now that it’s no longer being continued, they are going a different direction.”

The scholarship is not the only good thing Flentje has done for the university, according to his friends and colleges. 

Smith said Flentje was an “excellent interim president,” citing Flentje’s efforts to enroll ESU graduates to Wichita State graduate programs and his extensive history serving ESU. 

“I thought he was really probably the role model for how to be a good interim university president,” Smith said. 

Mel Storm, professor of English, modern languages, and journalism and one of the 33 dismissed faculty members worked as interim department chair around the same time Flentje was interim president and said he had positive memories of Flentje. 

One memory that stood out to Storm was when two international students were killed in a house fire in 2011 and Flentje handled the situation “very graciously” and in a “very kind manner.”

“(He) knew somehow what to say, what to do,” Storm said. “That’s really the one instance in which I worked with him, and I thought he was a very good person to have in that office when a tragedy like that struck.”

Now, a decade later, Flentje is still speaking out to help the university and those negatively impacted by the recent changes. 

“I’m sure that all of us are grateful to anyone who fights for us,” Storm said. “And to have a person of his stature and caliber on our side? That’s very gratifying.”

Sarah Spicer advises The Bulletin on stories about Emporia State’s framework to dismiss employees.

Sam Bailey is writing stories from the faculty perspective. Advocacy journalism upholds all other ethics and standards of journalism, including accuracy, fairness and independence, while accommodating dissenting views and creating an inclusive platform for debate.