INC NEWS - Column: Integrating the Allen Building (Duke Chronicle)

[John Schelp]

Column: Integrating the Allen Building
By Kristin Butler, Duke Chronicle, 24 May 2007

For the third time in just over a year, President
Richard Brodhead is orchestrating a major shake-up in
the Allen Building. Two weeks ago, Brodhead announced
that he is spinning off a large chunk of Vice
President for Public Affairs and Government Relations
John Burness' job into a new position, which will be
called the vice president for Durham and regional
affairs. By focusing exclusively on Duke's community
outreach programs and regional collaborations, the new
VP will be tasked with rehabilitating our deeply
dysfunctional relationship with the Bull City.

That won't be easy. But Brodhead has found the right
man for the job in Phail Wynn, outgoing president of
Durham Technical Community College. Wynn used his 30
years at Durham Tech to build the institution into a
regional and national standout, and it is now one of
the best community colleges in the state. Between his
proven administrative skills, local contacts and
community-wide respect, if anyone can save Duke's
relationship with Durham, it's Phail Wynn.

Unfortunately, his appointment has already been marred
by an above-average level of incompetence from the
Allen Building. Consider administrators' decision to
release this story to The Raleigh News & Observer and
The Durham Herald-Sun for publication on May 2.
Because May 2 fell in the middle of undergraduates'
exam week, the announcement could not immediately be
printed in The Chronicle, which had suspended
publication just two days earlier.

Given that less than 20 percent of the Duke community
subscribes to either The N&O or The Herald-Sun, the
timing of this announcement virtually ensures that
only a small fraction of our campus will know we have
a new vice president when classes resume next fall.

Equally bizarre is administrators' perplexing (some
would call it maddening) reluctance to be honest about
how, when and why this position was created. When
speaking to The N&O, Burness noted that Wynn's
position was "established as part of a five-year plan
Duke officials put into place last year to look at
growth in Durham and the region." Burness later
clarified to me that this "five-year plan" is actually
the University's strategic plan, "Making a
Difference."

But I've read "Making a Difference" front to back, and
I can assure you that nowhere does the report call for
the appointment of a new vice president. The closest
the report comes is where it acknowledges a generic
need to "reconceptualize our approach and organize
ourselves administratively... to take best advantages
of opportunities in a deliberate and effective
manner." This is a far cry from endorsing a vice
presidential appointment.

Why is this important? For one thing, citing phantom
rationales like this one has become a nasty habit for
too many Duke administrators. We saw this same
subterfuge in March, when officials insinuated the new
dean for undergraduate education position "flowed
from" the Campus Culture Initiative. Similarly,
Provost Peter Lange mistakenly ascribed Duke's
admissions quota for students from North and South
Carolina to James B. Duke's original Indenture of
Trust last fall.

Of course, the CCI never endorsed a new dean and the
Indenture doesn't even come close to requiring that 15
percent of Dukies hail from the Carolinas. But
claiming otherwise saves administrators from having to
share the real justifications for their decisions,
which often aren't as compelling.

In Wynn's case, I suspect that the less glamorous
truth may be this: President Brodhead has been looking
to increase diversity among senior administrators
since last May's Bowen-Chambers Report, which studied
the administration's response to the lacrosse case.
That report noted that early meetings of Brodhead's
lacrosse crisis group included just five white males.

With the need for what Bowen and Chambers called a
"wider array of life histories and perspectives" in
mind, administrators must have jumped at the
opportunity to hire Wynn, a black man who adds welcome
diversity along with his urgently needed expertise. In
fact, Wynn's appointment was so spur of the moment
that Burness said the University invoked special
"provisions for making appointments without a search
if a qualified person exists"-another reason to doubt
this appointment dates back to "Making a Difference."

These twin gaffes are forgivable, and they'll probably
be forgotten before long. What is entirely
unacceptable, though, is officials' third sin: the
decision to withhold Wynn's salary information. As
administrators are well aware, tax laws dictate that
this information eventually be made public in 2009.
But they also know that important questions have been
raised about the compensation of Vice President for
Institutional Equity Benjamin Reese, who is paid
$35,000 less than any other vice president and makes
just 72 percent of what Larry Moneta (tied for the
third lowest-paid VP) does.

Given those questions, Wynn's compensation should not
remain "private" for another year and a half. Public
universities routinely release this information
without injury, and it would be really nice to know
(sooner rather than later) whether Brodhead
shortchanges all of his senior black administrators,
or just some of them.

And whatever Duke is paying Wynn, I sure hope it's a
lot. We've set some miserable precedents to overcome.
Recall that just within the last 12 months, Duke paid
(read: bribed) Durham officials $2 million for
municipal considerations that should have been free.
Administrators then sold out future students' needs by
agreeing to unreasonable limits on retail space for
the new Central Campus.

More spectacularly, Duke officials openly tolerated
the Durham Police Department's stated policy of
encouraging officers to "arrest students and take them
to jail, rather than issue warnings and tickets,
because experience showed lesser measures lacked
deterrent value." That's unconstitutional.

Now I could probably go on and on (we haven't even
gotten to the lacrosse case yet), but the point is
this: If in the past some Durhamites have had
unrealistic expectations about how they can treat Duke
University and its students, it is now up to Wynn to
end that. Some have worried that Wynn may spend his
time glad-handing at the Rotary Club, ignoring the
real issues.

But I have faith that someone, somewhere in the
Brodhead Administration will someday care about
students' needs and rights. Let's all hope that Phail
Wynn is our man.


Kristin Butler is a Trinity senior. Her column runs
every other Thursday during the summer.