By Emily Bruzzo, Staff Writer

These days it seems quite a few meetings at UNC-Greensboro open up with the words, “The last few months here at UNCG have been difficult.”

Said by faculty, staff, administrators and students alike, the words carry with them countless semesters’ worth of contentious initiatives, disputable budgetary decisions, financial woes and feelings of mistrust and betrayal.

Recently, however, the words seem to come before discussions about the university’s search for a new chancellor.

At last Wednesday’s special faculty senate forum in the Virginia Dare Room, an audience composed of faculty senators, professors, staffers, administrators, students and even media members weren’t surprised when Spoma Jovanovic, UNCG’s faculty senate chair, commenced the meeting with the words they have become so accustomed to hearing.

“As you all know,” she said, “the last few months here at UNCG have been difficult.”

UNC President Tom Ross must not have been surprised to hear those words either.

Over the last few months alone, UNCG community members have bombarded his office with an array of emails lodging complaints against an administration they claim has turned a deaf ear to their frustrations and concerns.

Now, they’re turning up the volume with a demand for an open chancellor search.

Ross— a Greensboro native and UNC president since 2011— attended the forum in order to explain the chancellor search to the campus community and open up a dialogue about the process.

He also briefed UNCG’s board of trustees on the search after the forum.

Ross explained that ultimately the UNC board of governors will elect the chancellor— based on a recommendation from him.

His recommendation will come from the list of three final candidates the university’s search committee sends him.

The search committee— appointed by the board of trustees and made up of faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and students—will act as a special committee of UNCG’s board of trustees.

The search committee alone will decide if the search will be open or closed.

Ross says he will be back on campus Dec. 2 to speak to the newly formed search committee, which the board of trustees is still in the beginning phases of appointing.

Faculty senators, who passed a resolution the night before the forum, demand a search somewhat akin to the provost search last spring. Such a search would keep the candidates confidential in the initial phases of the process; however, the finalists would be introduced to the community and expected to engage in open forums.

Ross voiced his concerns about the demand, saying, “I think the dilemma that anyone who’s interested in finding the best candidate and the best chancellor faces, is sort of where on that continuum is the mix of involvement, inclusion, contribution of ideas and thinking versus protecting the names of the individuals to ensure that you get the best candidates in the pool.”

“That’s the balance that has to be struck,” Ross argued.

“The more open the search,” Ross later said, “the more opinions there are. And the more divisions sometimes there can be. And that can be just as problematic as what everybody assumes will happen, which is there’ll be some “Kumbaya,” full agreement on who the exact perfect person is.”

“You know that doesn’t happen,” he concluded.

Faculty members still think the best search type for UNCG is an open one.

Later, in the forum’s question and answer period, faculty senators and professors didn’t try to hide their frustrations.

Several faculty senators brought up questions concerning administrators being disconnected from faculty.

Some professors critiqued Ross on his remarks about open searches, saying a closed search could be detrimental to UNCG’s campus community.

One professor said, “We had a closed search for the chancellor last time and here we are. So, whatever that means to everybody, that’s just something to consider.”

“I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for people who are afraid that they might loose their highly paid job in the search for a new one,” she concluded.

Ross advised faculty members to remember that potential chancellor candidates will be watching the campus community carefully and they will be more than aware of the unrest the university has experienced.

“If I were you,” Ross said, “I’d be looking for ways to accentuate the positives and the nature of the strength of this community, so that, that’s what somebody hears.”

Ross continued, saying, “If I were coming in here as chancellor, I would want to know: ‘Is the faculty going to be nipping at my heels the moment I walk in here? Or are they going to start out with an assumption that I’m here because I care about higher education, and I’m here because I care about students and faculty…”

For all of Ross’ comments about the prudence of a closed search, he made several arguments in favor of a hybrid model.

He later said at the board of trustees meeting in response to a trustee’s demand for a closed search, “You do need to balance the search in a way that the person has a chance for success.”

Ross told the board a hybrid model would allow more people to get involved in the process and that such a search type would create a broader pool of candidates.

He also argued that a hybrid search would make it more likely that the community would support the new chancellor, as community members would actually feel engaged in the search process.

Ross— who has become an expert on chancellor searches, as the UNC system has witnessed five within the last eight months— declared during the forum that he will be looking for courage in the candidates the search committee sends to him.

And this quality of courage is exactly why many faculty members say candidates should have to face the community.

Robert Anemone, the anthropology department head, said after the forum, “There’s always this focus on protecting the candidate for president, which I think is really misplaced.”

“There’s a lot of us here who have a big stake in this thing,” Anemone continued, “and having a closed search just cuts us out of the entire process, and I think with bad repercussions down the line.”