Citing fiscal and academic incompetence, Howard University’s Faculty Senate voted last week to send a letter to the University’s Board of Trustees calling on President H. Patrick Swygert to resign.
The letter, which was written by Theodore Bremner, chair of the Faculty Senate, and obtained by the Washington Post, said that Swygert has failed to contain financial problems at the University’s hospital, which have spilled over into academic budgets and resulted in substandard equipment and facilities. The letter also accused Swygert of failing to implement funded programs, administer research grants effectively, and look for alternative funding sources to compensate for the downturn in federal grants over the past few years.
“At the March 6, 2007 Council meeting, 16 of 19 faculty eligible to vote supported the letter to the Board of Trustees. This represents 84% of those eligible to vote; an overwhelming landslide by any standard,” wrote Shirley Jackson, secretary of the Faculty Senate, in a memorandum sent to all faculty.
Although the letter calls on the Board of Trustees to immediately open a search for a new president, Swygert said that he has no intentions of resigning, but he did praise the faculty’s ability to express their opinions.
“I think it clearly demonstrates how democratic and how open the University is and how free the faculty is to express opinions,” Swygert said, according to the Post.
Swygert, Bremner, and spokespeople for the University did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Octavio Sandobal (Howard ’10) said that Swygert, who has been president of the University since 1995, has many accomplishments to his name, but there is still much to be done to improve the University.
“He is doing good things, but it’s not good enough,” he said.
Sandobal acknowledged that Swygert had succeeded in a $250 million dollar fundraising campaign which he launched in 2002, saying that Swygert announced the campaign’s success 10 months ahead of schedule at a convocation last Saturday that opened the University’s 140th anniversary celebrations.
Despite this success, Sandobal was not surprised by the Senate’s call for Swygert’s resignation.
“Howard needs improvement,” Sandobal said. “We are not surprised that he was asked to resign.”
Howard, a historically black university with about 7,000 undergraduate students located in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Northwest D.C., is not the first local university to suffer from presidential woes. In May 2006, the board of trustees at Gallaudet University, the nation’s only institute of higher learning for the deaf, chose Jane Fernandes to succeed outgoing president I. King Jordan. Their choice was met with passionate student protests, and her nomination was withdrawn. In 2005, American University President Benjamin Ladner was forced to resign for inappropriately spending $500,000 of university money.
Howard’s Board of Trustees has not yet made a decision on Swygert’s future, saying that more information will be needed before any action can be taken.
