Dive Brief:
- Pensacola State College faculty have passed a vote of no confidence against the school’s president, Edward Meadows.
- The college’s board of trustees issued a statement declaring its “full confidence” in Meadows and the college’s administration.
- According to the faculty union, which has reached an impasse in contract negotiations with the administration, the no confidence vote was an attempt to bring its concerns to the board because faculty have been discouraged from communicating with the trustees, Inside Higher Ed reported.
Dive Insight:
Meadows says the faculty members have been cranking up their “propaganda machine” because they’re upset about him increasing the workload of instructors at an affiliated adult high school operated by the college. Among the faculty complaints are reprisals from the president, cronyism, disregard for their contract, a lack of funding, and attempts to block the student newspaper from covering the labor battle. Meadows says he didn’t tell the newspaper that it couldn’t write about the labor situation. But he did have a college attorney send a letter to the union declaring that faculty members would be breaking the law if they talked to the paper about contract negotiations, even though the law cited has been declared unconstitutional.