STARE meeting: Behind the closed door

On Thursday at the end of the march and rally protesting the firing of Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity Cordell Black, I joined four other students to meet with Provost Nariman Farvardin. I'm uncomfortable with closed-door meetings because I think if the administration has something to say to students, they should say it to all of us. These meetings create information asymmetries between students that end up dividing us. I can't think of a better way to break those walls down than publicly recounting what went down in that meeting.

I went to the meeting as one of Community Roots Co-President Jazz Lewis's preconditions for meeting with Farvardin. I'm relatively sure I would not have been invited otherwise.

Once inside, we met this university’s NAACP chapter President Mark Conway and Student Government Association President Steve Glickman, who were already talking with Farvardin in his office. I felt a certain amount of freedom because I was the only person in the meeting not officially representing any particular organization. Farvardin had been presented with the Students Taking Action to Reclaim our Education (S.T.A.R.E.) list of demands, and said he'd be happy to work with us on full budget transparency and a stronger student role in budget decisions. I'm not really into tact, so I asked the provost right off,.“How much money is Dr. Black's removal saving the university?” He had originally said it was a budget decision, but I had run the numbers, and it didn't seem right to me.

“I can't give out that kind of salary information,” he said. This seemed odd because I published the budget online in September, and he had just promised to release all budget documents.

I told him I knew Black makes about $160,000 annually. He nodded. I told him I knew he would still have to pay him $110,000 if he moved back to the French department. He nodded again.

Then I asked him how much the university would have to pay his replacement. “Probably around $40,000  to $50,000,” he said pointedly.

“So that's a grand total of savings of maybe $10,000 for the university?” I asked, wanting him to say it.

“The departments where administrators are tenured keep their budget lines in case they come back, so we'll be saving $110,000,” he said.

“So you're telling me the French department has set aside $110,000 every year for the past 18 years in case Dr. Black wanted a demotion?” I asked, trying to calculate how close to $2 million that added up to.

Farvardin smiled, threw up his hands and said, “I'm just the provost — I don't know everything!”

For the record, Dr. Black's name appears once in the budget on page 241 under his current title. The French department's budget is fully accounted for. When Conway pressed him, Farvardin explained Dr. Black's removal was a “personnel decision” and that he had the right to create his own team.

There was plenty more said in the meeting, but I think this was the most important part. The provost used a budget situation to disguise a personnel decision, and we need an explanation. Is this the only “budget decision” that isn't really one?  The students, faculty and staff of this university deserve answers.

Malcolm Harris is a junior government and politics major. He can be reached at harris at umdbk dot com.