UMass-Boston Faculty Votes No Confidence in System’s Leaders Over Purchase of Small College

U. of Massachusetts

The University of Massachusetts at Boston’s Faculty Council voted no confidence in the system’s president and Board of Trustees on Monday, following the purchase of Mount Ida College by the flagship campus, in Amherst.

The Amherst campus announced plans last month to acquire the campus of the small, private college, which had shut down. Critics at Boston objected that the flagship was being given financial preference over the Boston campus, which is about 10 miles away from Mount Ida.

The council wrote in its declaration of no confidence that the university’s plan to use Mount Ida’s land as a satellite campus for UMass-Amherst would “complicate and weaken” the process of equal funding across the system.

The declaration called the planned acquisition “hastily proposed” and said the new campus would “inaugurate an intercampus model of competition, rather than collaboration, within and across the UMass system.”

The council also said that university leaders hadn’t communicated with students and faculty and staff members at Boston about the effort to “prioritize the interest of one campus over the well-being of another campus.”

It urged administrators to halt the proposed purchase of Mount Ida.

In a May 9 letter to the council, Martin T. Meehan, president of the state-university system, wrote that the council’s statement that administrators had not consulted with UMass-Boston about the Mount Ida purchase was “inaccurate.”

Like all other campuses in the UMass system, he wrote, the Boston campus had the chance to “participate” in the Mount Ida purchase but chose to focus its funds on construction projects elsewhere.

In a statement to the campus in April, Barry Mills, interim chancellor at Boston, said the campus should focus on its own needs. “We had the opportunity to be part of the Mount Ida venture and still do, but at this point, my view is that UMass Boston should concentrate its efforts here,” he wrote.

Meehan, in his letter, said the Amherst campus would purchase Mount Ida with its own funds.

“The board and I are committed to UMass-Boston’s progress,” he wrote, “but that does not mean that we would or could ever prevent another campus from achieving its strategic goals.”

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