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For Immediate Release: February 23, 2015 CALLING FOR AN EXPRESSION OF NO CONFIDENCE IN UW SYSTEM AND INSTITUTIONAL ADMINISTRATORS Milwaukee, WI: In the ongoing discussion regarding the cuts to the University of Wisconsin (UW) System and its proposed change to a “public authority”, much of the focus has been strictly on the financial aspects, namely the approximately $300 budget cut called for by Governor Scott Walker. Dwarfed by this discussion is the larger, and arguably more important, issue of the repeal and end of statutory shared governance. Uniquely in the UW-System, under section 36.09 of the statutes, groups such as students, faculty, academic and classi-fied staff have the primary responsibility for their respective spheres of influence, making them integral in the immediate governance and decision making of their respective campus or institution. For example: faculty, through their representatives, have the right to formulate policies regarding academics, such as ones that out-line procedures for students to appeal grades, while students, through a student government or association, have the right to formulate policies regarding student life, services and interests, including setting and allocat-ing student segregated university fees (SUF) that fund student services. Any impasse between shared govern-ance bodies regarding campus-wide policy is negotiated. The changes proposed by the current bill would move these rights from being statutorily protected, to being administrative rules subject to the whim of the UW System Board of Regents. Instead of standing up to the cuts and proposed changes, most institutional Administrators, save few, are leading a charge that sees the cuts and the change to a “public authority” as a foregone conclusion. Chan-cellors across the UW System are charging ad-hoc committees to plan for these cuts and changes they have accepted as coming, while many of the onlookers largely ignore the fact that the Chancellors and other admin-istrators have a vested interest and much to gain in the “flexibility” and “efficiency” of a “public authority”, namely the effective end of what the administrators seem to view as the ‘pesky’ concept of statutory shared governance. It serves these administrators well to not have to statutorily answer to the other stakeholders in the immediate governance of their university. Indeed, effective unilateral decision-making is more “efficient” for them. But, on the contrary, if we embrace a system that celebrates a diversity of ideas, a system outlined in law in Wis. Stat. Ch. 36.09, we sacrifice some speed for initiatives and undertakings that are more representa-tive of the whole University community. It gives the shared governance groups, as a community, things they can be proud of, initiatives and projects that all groups have a stake in. Trusting the UW System Central Administration, the mostly, gubernatorially-appointed Board of Regents, and their institutional counterparts in university administration to respect shared governance is a misguided endeavor at best, with many administrators for some time now already acting unilaterally against the best interests of other university stakeholders. Reasonable voices have called for the statutory protections for shared governance in Chapter 36 to be moved to a “Chapter 37”, governing the new “public authority”. But we cannot allow ourselves to compromise on statutory shared governance. The “public authority” needs to be resisted, with standing up for statutory shared governance at the forefront of the conversation. To ensure shared governance groups and university stakeholders in the UW System retain the ability and foundation from which to protest and stand against these and future budgetary cuts, the unique and venerated concept of statutory shared governance needs to be protected and saved. To achieve this and to start to redirect the conversation to the threat to statutory shared governance, we unequivocally call