7) A faculty member wrote that I was being a cheerleader for
the development office and that I should be focusing more effort on
supporting academic freedom, and perhaps starting a union and lobbying
for a tenure system.  In his words,

"The Senate's first goal, in my opinion, should be to promote academic
freedom.  Given the firing and impending firing of Business faculty for
speaking their minds about the BISK deal, the faculty essentially has no
academic freedom.  The Senate has been notoriously weak in the 25 years
that I've been here on such issues.  Things are getting progressively
worse on campus.  Perhaps the Senate needs to address the issues of tenure
and unionization.

My response:

Academic freedom is certainly something that is addressed
in the administrator evaluation forms.  Promotion of
academic freedom certainly is and should be on the agenda.
The firing of College of Business faculty over the BISK deal
was certainly messy.  I was a friend with the ex-dean of business,
but he did the one no-no, which was to talk to the Board of
Trustees despite the explicit order of the President.
Deans and department heads are restricted in what they can say.
I disagreed with the BISK deal, too.  This is something that,
had I known about, I would have carefully laid out the reasons
why we shouldn't do it to the administration in a way that did
not seem like insubordination.  I wouldn't offer a course via BISK at
the rate of compensation that I would get.  On the
other hand, the advantage of BISK is that we can let students
take a course or two at another institution instead of having
to offer "trailer sections" over the summer for less than or
equal to three students.

I will agree that promotion of academic freedom here on campus
is something that needs to be improved within the Senate.

Regarding academic freedom,
I am quite sure that I have more freedom here to express
my beliefs than I would at other institutions.
Open proselytizing is completely inappropriate.
However, when students come to me in
desperate need of help, I am not afraid to ask them
what their support structure, faith-based or otherwise, is,
and let them take it from there.  This is "the human
touch" part of "High Tech with a Human Touch".