St Ed’s president gets vote of no confidence due to shared governance, transparency concerns

St. Edward’s University faculty members have passed a vote of no confidence against President Montserrat Fuentes due to “grave” concerns about shared governance and administrative transparency, according to documents obtained by the American-Statesman.

The vote, which was conducted anonymously April 9-19 and whose results were shared with faculty members Sunday night in an email obtained by the Statesman, is the faculty's first formally documented disapproval in Fuentes, who became president in July 2021. Eighty-three faculty members said they do not have confidence in the university president, 37 said they did, and 15 abstained from voting.

The power to remove the president rests exclusively with the board of trustees, led by Martin Rose, who sent faculty members a three-sentence email Sunday night, about an hour after the vote results were announced, saying that the vote was “disappointing” and that Fuentes had the board's full support.

"As the governing body of St. Edward's University, we have every confidence in our President, Dr. Fuentes, and her administration will continue to work with Faculty to address the issues which apparently led to this vote," the board's email read.

More: St. Edward's University faculty expected to hold confidence vote on president. Here's why.

Why did the vote happen?

Students initially implored faculty members in February to initiate a vote of no confidence, which is open to tenured and tenure-track employees, after Fuentes did not reinstate a pride flag in a campus coffeehouse after it had been renovated last summer despite students requests and protests.

After the Faculty Senate on March 1 moved to initiate the vote, the university's board the next day communicated via email its disapproval of the decision and stated its full support for Fuentes.

Fuentes later apologized to the campus for any hurt feelings over the pride flag's removal and she had the LGBTQ+ symbol reinstalled in the coffeehouse March 4.

Despite the board's push to stop the vote of no confidence, faculty members held it this month on 12 articles of concern, which were obtained by the Statesman.

More: 'We are here': St. Edward's University students call for pride flag to be reinstated

The pride flag removal was but one of the concerns listed against Fuentes. Others included holding a commencement ceremony outdoors last May despite protests from students and pushback from faculty members over heat-related concerns; Fuentes' decision to bar student journalists from covering a student government meeting in which the pride flag situation was going to be discussed; transitioning language in the university's strategic plan from “Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & Justice” to “Living the Holy Cross Mission;" halting the accreditation process of the Forensic Science Program; declining employee member numbers; shifting school financial priorities; and changing pay adjustments.

Many of the concerns reflected a perceived disregard of faculty and staff members' opinion and shared governance, despite Fuentes and St. Edward's commitment to the principle.

The shared governance principle allows faculty members to have input in matters that affect university curriculum, budget priorities and student life, said Jeff Blodgett, the president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors from June 2020 to June 2023.

He said votes of no confidence are nonbinding and are often a last resort after other modes of conflict resolution in shared governance structures have been exhausted.

Fuentes met with representatives of the Faculty Senate and responded to each article raised against her before faculty members held the vote, according to documents the Statesman obtained. Hilltop Views, St. Edward’s student newspaper, also reported that “an unprecedented meeting” occurred between members of the Faculty Senate and the board of trustees on March 22.

“It should be incumbent upon the board to take their time again to understand the concerns that are being expressed and why they're being expressed in this manner,” Blodgett said.

What were the reactions?

After the vote, Fuentes emailed faculty members Sunday evening to say that “despite the recent vote led by some of our faculty, I am pleased to have the ongoing support of the Board of Trustees.”

“Unfortunately, the articles of concern presented to faculty were not factual, and the Faculty Senate’s recent process for the vote accusing me of not following shared governance lacked the very hallmarks of shared governance procedures, providing no opportunity for engagement,” Fuentes wrote in the email obtained by the Statesman.

Fuentes did not respond to the Statesman's questions about what specific inaccuracies, as she claimed in her email, were presented to faculty members.

"That's a slippery slope to say the Senate was lying and by extension the faculty was lying," said Alex Barron, a St. Edward's associate professor in literature who serves in the Faculty Senate.

More: 'I feel erased from campus': Why students are urging St. Edwards to bring back pride flag

Barron said she was disappointed by Fuentes' and the board's quick responses to the vote, which she said failed to take the faculty members' concerns seriously.

Rose, who chairs the board, did not respond to requests for comment.

"If I found out 61% of my faculty disagreed and didn't have confidence in me, I would sit down and do some serious thinking with them and be transparent and take accountability," Barron said. "I would apologize."

After the vote, Fuentes invited faculty members to a "community-building lunch" in place of a collegium meeting, according to an email the Statesman obtained. At the university's collegium meeting in December, Fuentes was present, faculty members could anonymously ask questions and meeting notes were taken, as reported by the Statesman.

Most recently, Barron said she has had good experiences working with Fuentes as co-chair of a task force that was created to repair harm caused on campus by the pride flag's removal, but Barron said she still has concerns about why the flag was removed in the first place. She said she's also uneasy about how Fuentes is taking the faculty's vote.

“We took it very seriously,” Barron said of the vote. “For me, the main concern that I've had is I feel like there's been a lack of transparency from the president and a lack of willingness to take accountability.”

In a statement Tuesday to the Statesman, Fuentes said she is honored to be the university's first Hispanic female president and that the faculty's vote won’t take away from recent accomplishments, such as recovering from pandemic-era challenges and increasing student enrollment.

“Being the first in this role is never easy—but I am committed to opening doors for others, challenging stereotypes of what leadership looks like, and ensuring that while I am the first, I will not be the last Hispanic female in leadership at St. Edward’s University,” she said.

Moving forward?

Louie Moore, president of SEU Pride and a first-year student at the university, said that Fuentes is listening to queer students in the task force, but he doesn’t think that it's enough to rebuild trust, adding that Fuentes isn't fit to run the school.

“I feel like the pride flag situation, the progress flag situation, was more of a wake-up call,” Moore said. “As a president of the university, you need to listen to your community.”

Mackenna Bierschenk, a St. Edward's junior who runs the @wheredidtheprideflaggo Instagram account, said she doesn’t anticipate trust will be repaired between the president and the campus community. She said she is motivated to help and support faculty members because of her love for St. Edward’s and the connections she has made with those employees.

“Having the vote in the first place, organizing it, was such an unprecedented thing for our university,” Bierschenk said. “And it really goes to show just how unacceptable (Fuentes') behavior was.”

Pat Heintzelman, president of the Texas Faculty Association, said votes of no confidence are a “nuclear option" and that concerns raised by faculty members statewide have been rising.

Heintzelman said it’s common for a university's board to not take action immediately after a vote of no confidence against a president, but the hope is for it to open discussion about the faculty members' concerns and to take them seriously.

“In many instances, shared governance is just in name only,” she said. “If we just let them take all of the shared governance that we have away from us, we're not going to be able to recruit good candidates to Texas. That's the bottom line.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: St. Edward’s faculty pass vote of no confidence against president