In Illinois, a Leadership Brouhaha Rocks a University System Laced With Divisions

[Update (6/7/2018, 10:05 p.m.): This article has been substantially updated to include details of a statement issued Thursday evening by a university trustee.]

In this corner, two trustees — a semiretired federal judge and a financial adviser — staging what appeared to be a surprise attempt to upend the leadership of a university system.

And in that corner, the Southern Illinois University system’s beleaguered president and its board chair, both of whom said they were shocked by the other pair’s seeming attempt at a power grab.

But only the first of those factions was to be at the table at a hurriedly called executive meeting on Friday to decide whether to put the president, Randy J. Dunn, on leave. The meeting would cap a dramatic three days in which the leadership of a divided system was suddenly thrown into question.

On Thursday evening the standoff took an unexpected turn when one of the renegade board members, Joel W. Sambursky, issued a statement calling for a postponement of Friday’s meeting so that the Board of Trustees could regroup.

The saga began on Wednesday, when the board published a notice of Friday’s special meeting with just two listed action items: “administrative leave of president” and “appointment of acting president.” At first glance, it looked as though the three-member executive committee had decided to fire Dunn. But then the chair, Amy Sholar, complicated the picture, saying the other two members — Sambursky and J. Phil Gilbert — were acting unilaterally and against the board’s wishes.

And Dunn told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday that he had been blindsided by the news. Contacted by The Chronicle on Thursday, he would only point to a statement by Sholar that is laced with criticisms of Sambursky and Gilbert. What’s more, Sholar couldn’t even attend Friday’s meeting; a criminal-defense lawyer, she will be in court.

It’s a mess. While Sambursky’s statement did little to clarify things, it illuminated a few points of disagreement between the two sides.

“The intention of [Friday’s] executive committee meeting was never to permanently replace President Dunn, as falsely expressed by Chair Sholar and others,” the statement says. Instead, Sambursky asserted, the meeting had been called “to consider placing Randy Dunn on administrative leave while a thorough investigation into his behavior is conducted by external legal counsel.” If the executive committee placed Dunn on leave, Sambursky wrote, then an acting president would need to be appointed.

Sambursky had said in a statement on Wednesday that the board had received “additional information” that required it to act in the interest of “the health of the SIU System.” His statement on Thursday accused Sholar of being the one who had acted unilaterally, canceling the board’s scheduled July meeting. That meant the first opportunity to act on the new information about Dunn would be in September — hence the call for a meeting on Friday.

What is certain is that fractures are everywhere at Southern Illinois: between the system’s two campuses, among faculty members, and — now, in dramatic fashion — among board members.

In an interview on Thursday, Sholar said that the meeting that Sambursky and Gilbert had called for Friday was tantamount to “circumventing the wishes” of the board.

The board has the power to fire or hire a system president with five or more votes from trustees, Sholar said. A leave of absence, however, can be ordered by a majority of the executive committee, Sholar said. To make it happen, the executive committee needs only two members present.

The university’s general counsel, Luke Crater, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But Sambursky said in his statement that the meeting had been called “according to board policy, with the guidance of the general council of the university” after Sholar — who had “the same concerning information that all trustees have” — canceled the July meeting.

Sholar told The Chronicle that she did not know what “additional information” Sambursky possessed that had prompted the special meeting. At last week’s Board of Trustees meeting the group did talk about “personnel issues,” but Sholar did not reveal the subject of those conversations.

Asked about the “additional information,” Shirley J. Portwood, another trustee, told The Chronicle that the board’s lawyer had passed along new documents from a public-records request the night before the trustees’ most recent meeting, which was held on May 30. A couple of more records arrived on May 31, she said. She did not disclose the content of the records.

Portwood added that she agreed with Sholar that Friday’s scheduled meeting would be unfair because it excluded most of the board.

A $5-Million Division?

What may be driving a wedge between university leaders is the controversy surrounding a proposal to move millions of dollars in state funds from the Carbondale campus to the Edwardsville campus.

Carbondale gets about two-thirds of state appropriations to the system, while Edwardsville gets the rest. But enrollment growth in Edwardsville and stagnation in Carbondale prompted the former campus to propose that $5.1 million be shifted from the flagship.

“To be fair to the Carbondale folks, I think that they thought that there would be more space, more time between the idea and an actual proposal,” said Randy Pembrook, chancellor of the Edwardsville campus, in an interview on Thursday. “I think we got to a proposal faster than they thought.”

Carlo D. Montemagno, chancellor of the Carbondale campus, was not available for comment on Thursday. A spokeswoman at the university wrote in an email that “he believes this is a matter between the board and the president.”

The board voted down the plan in April. But the debate, in which advocates for both campuses made charged arguments, exacerbated tensions between the two.

Kathleen Chwalisz, a psychology professor at Carbondale, said that no one on her campus saw the proposed reallocation coming until it was on a meeting agenda. When she filed public-records requests for more information on the proposal, Chwalisz found that Edwardsville administrators and President Dunn had exchanged emails planning for the potential changes.

One of the emails even quoted Dunn as referring to Carbondale advocates as “bitchers.”

The emails left Chwalisz and other faculty members feeling blindsided, she said. The revelation also spurred the feeling that Dunn could not be trusted.

“As the leader of the system, he should have been working on resolving those conflicts within the system,” Chwalisz said. “But apparently that wasn’t his goal because he was happier playing us against each other.”

It’s tough for Dunn, or anyone, to lead in such a fractured environment, said Grant R. Miller, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the Carbondale campus.

“The environment right here has already been fragile,” Miller said. “The context that we have right now has definitely made this a major concern, has definitely brought into question issues of trust and just issues of whose best interests are being sought after.”

Sambursky’s most recent statement urged Sholar to “call a special meeting of the full board to discuss and possibly take action” on the items that were to have been considered at Friday’s meeting. The trustees, Sambursky said, should be convened “as soon as possible.”

Stay tuned.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is breaking-news editor. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.