The Faculty Senate will hold an open forum on Emporia State’s plan to dismiss employees, including tenured professors, from 3-5 p.m. Friday. The location will be announced Friday morning.  

In an effort to aid public universities that financially struggled because of declining enrollments and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) is allowing public universities to submit justification to dismiss faculty members, including tenured professors. ESU President Ken Hush announced the administration’s plan to submit a justification to dismiss employees with KBOR in a campus-wide email on Wednesday. 

The senate will collect feedback from faculty on the justification during Friday’s meeting, according toShawn Keough, president of Faculty Senate.  

“This (meeting) is going to be hot-blooded,” Keough said,adding that while he understands people are passionate about ESU’s plan, they must behave respectfully and calmly. 

However, the emphasis on establishing rules of decorum for Friday’s meeting raised eyebrows during Thursday’s Faculty Senate executive committee meeting, when senate leadership cleared the agenda to talk about President Hush’s recent announcement and the framework.  

“This is the least civil thing I’ve seen during my time at ESU,” said Dan Colson, associate professor of English, modern languages and journalism, as he held up a copy of the proposed framework draft.  

Faculty members attending the meeting expressed frustration with the lack of communication about the framework and time to prepare feedback for the senate.  

“The most egregious thing about this is, number one, no transparency; no input from any constituents on campus,” said Brenda Koerner, associate professor of biological sciences and former faculty senate president. “Faculty have not been given significant time to provide feedback. They said they worked on it for eight months. We got two business days.” 

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