University of Arizona faculty leaders are seeking a viable path forward with UA President Robert Robbins after issuing a vote of no confidence in response to the handling of the on-campus killing of a beloved professor.
Representatives of the UA Faculty Senate community say they still see an opportunity to work with Robbins to implement structural and cultural campus changes days after taking the 29-13 non-binding vote.
“(W)e think he should consider this a wake-up call, not a call for his resignation,” Leila Hudson, chair of the faculty, told the Arizona Daily Star Thursday.
Hudson, who has at times been an outspoken critic of Robbins’ leadership, said that she and two other faculty officers met with Robbins for two hours on Tuesday.
That private meeting happened the day after Robbins publicly apologized for previously dismissing the findings of a faculty-led investigation.
In February, the now-disbanded General Faculty Committee on University Safety for All released an interim report concluding that Tom Meixner — the professor who was allegedly murdered by expelled former student Murad Dervish (Dervish has been charged and is in custody) — and his colleagues received threatening communication from Dervish for nearly a year and repeatedly asked the UA for help, but that “broken trust” and a breakdown in campus communication hindered those efforts.
Although the UA undermined those findings at the time, telling the public to wait for a report from PAX Group, LLC, an outside consulting firm run by an ex-FBI agent, it released the PAX report Monday. The report, which the UA shelled out approximately $250,000 for, made similar conclusions to the faculty report — that systemic failures were at play in the months leading up to the Oct. 5 shooting of Meixner.
“I regret that we sent out that statement criticizing the faculty. All they were trying to do was bring awareness of needing a safer campus,” Robbins said at Monday’s news conference. “Moving forward, it’s a good day to start these discussions about how we can unite and move forward to make the campus safer.”
In the days that followed that apology, the president has seemingly launched a good-faith effort to do just that.
After the meeting with Robbins Tuesday, Hudson, the faculty chair, said she walked away with the impression that they “are almost entirely in agreement of the kind of things we want to see moving forward” and are “talking about an active partnership between the president and faculty.”
Hudson said she also understands why the UA hired PAX to do an independent report — which offered 33 concrete recommendations to improve campus safety — and is hopeful that both that report and the faculty report will inform any changes the UA makes.
Robbins also met with members of the Arizona Students of the University of Arizona Tuesday evening.
“Although we’ve been critical, what I reassured President Robbins is that the student government is willing to work with him and be partners in the effort to make sure compassionate action is being taken,” Patrick Robles, outgoing president of ASUA, told the Star.
Robles said one of PAX’s 33 recommendations — to establish centralized communication that doesn’t silence anyone, but rather “allows the community to align on messaging in moments of threat and crisis” — stood out as something students, whom Robles said felt “disconnected” in the days after the shooting, want to see come to fruition.
It’s a broad directive from PAX, but Robles said it leaves room for input from the people who study and work on the campus every day.
“It’s important that students have a key voice and we’re not going to shut out any opportunity to work with administration on this,” Robles said. But, he added, “we need to make sure none of this is performative.” From his view, that means allowing all students — not just elected members of student government — exposure to and communication with administration.
University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins gave a campus safety update on March 27, following the release of a report prepared by the independent PAX Group. Video by Pascal Albright, Arizona Daily Star
Faculty: Campus culture is key
Although both the PAX report and the faculty report made similar conclusions about the systemic gaps in the UA’s campus safety protocols, Jenny Lee, an education professor who led the creation of the faculty report, said the UA needs to consider the difference in the two report’s approaches if it wants to effect lasting change.
“Our emphasis was on organizational culture, building trust and building a community where people feel safe to report. If one doesn’t feel safe to report, it doesn’t matter if we have the most secured campus on the planet,” said Lee, who noted that the PAX report focused more on security mechanisms and barely mentioned campus climate.
Further, Lee said, the PAX report didn’t adequately address the fact that the UA serves a diverse community and different groups may have different reactions and comfort levels with campus police.
“It’s a missed opportunity that assumes everyone in the community has the same set of issues and will go about engaging with the university in the same way,” Lee said. “That’s simply not true.”
Lee, who said she’s “cautiously optimistic” about moving forward, wants to see the UA engage in open, thoughtful dialogue with a wide representation of the campus community as it works to reform its approach to safety.
While the PAX report’s 33 recommendations, which include creating a strategic post-crisis plan, adopting a formalized charter for the UA’s Threat Assessment Management Team and creating crisis response plans for every department, provide a “helpful checklist,” Lee said, the UA shouldn’t stop there.
“Once we check all the boxes, does that mean we have a safer campus?,” she said. “I think we’ll have a clearer safety apparatus but that doesn’t mean individuals feel safer.”
Building back that trust — especially after Robbins’ regretful dismissal of the faculty safety report — may be a more nebulous but no less attainable task.
“The trust is not going to suddenly come because he gave an apology,” Lee said. “We’re waiting for the action.”
Tim Steller's column: U of A community fractures persist after reports on professor's killing
