MTSU students plan TBR protest
Students at Middle Tennessee State University are planning to protest the Tennessee Board of Regents proposed "new business model." The students organizing the December 13 graduation protest started a FaceBook group yesterday, and as of this posting the group already has 498 members.
The group began circulating this flyer on campus today.
I spoke with protest organizer Alexander Smith, a sophomore International Relations major, who said students and faculty are upset at TBR Chancellor Charles Manning's proposal for a new business model in the face of deep budget cuts.
"I and other students found the proposed new business model alarming," Smith told NIT. "After starting the FaceBook account, it was suggested we hold a silent protest prior to Manning speaking at the 1 p.m. graduation on December 13th."
Some of Chancellor Manning's proposals outlined in a Nov. 20 memo include:
- Closing campuses of 4 year institutions 3 days a week
- Requiring students take a defined number of online courses in order to graduate
- Using less full time faculty and more adjuncts to teach students
- Making it a part of curriculum to pay advanced students to help beginning students
- Eliminating the instate-out of state distinction in tuition and fees for online degrees
- Reconsidering the existing athletic policy for four-year institutions and whether community colleges should even have intercollegiate athletic programs
- Regionalizing general administration of campus support services
- Reducing academic work scholarship amounts
The Nov. 20 memo said the TBR would create a subgroup to implement the proposals. The TBR met today in East Tennessee where MTSU faculty hand delivered a lengthy letter of protest. Here is a brief excerpt:
This is not the time to sugarcoat our response. If implemented, the changes outlined in the documents under review would end higher education as we know - and value? - it in this state. They would lead to a substantial deterioration in the quality of education offered at TBR institutions, they would greatly lessen the value of the degrees these institutions grant, and they would compromise the academic lives of both faculty members and students. Please consider the following as an initial response to your initiative, one that will surely be superseded by a more detailed response once faculty members at TBR institutions have had time to think through all of the issues these documents raise.
Smith told me the students who plan to protest do not want to disrupt the graduation ceremony, but also said there is another group of students who are also planning to protest during Chancellor Manning's graduation speech.
UPDATE 5:09pm: Here's an update from Grammar Nazi:
According to board spokeswoman Mary Morgan: "They decided the academic affairs committee would oversee the board's discussions of those ideas. The process is not worked out yet but certainly it will involve presidents and campus representatives so there will be a lot of discussion of those ideas. They were not addressed at this meeting."
