ORU faculty gives vote of no confidence

Correction
This story reported that Tulsa attorney Gary Richardson faxed a list of motions and a summary of a meeting at which a quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted ‘‘no confidence’’ in President Richard Roberts. Richardson said Wednesday that he doesn’t have a copy of the material and did not fax the material to the Tulsa World, although he obtained the World’s fax number and provided it to someone else.

A quorum of tenured Oral Roberts University faculty voted “no confidence” in President Richard Roberts and voted in favor of “greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances” in a 3-1/2-hour meeting Monday night.

Donald R. Vance, professor of biblical languages and literature and one of three authors of a summary of the meeting, said tenured professors want to help ORU’s board of regents do what is right. The professors’ motions let regents know the voice of the faculty, he said.

The vote of no confidence in Roberts as president and CEO of the university was made “without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university” and “is not to be construed as a judgment of guilt or innocence with regard to the present lawsuit against the president and the university,” according to the list of motions and summary of the meeting faxed to media by Gary Richardson, an attorney for the three former professors who are suing ORU, Roberts and other ORU leadership.

Vance said he did not give the report to Richardson.

The vote regarding Roberts did not address his leadership of Oral Roberts Ministries, and “most people personally like him,” Vance said.

The professors voted “confidence” in ORU Provost Mark Lewandowski’s “call for greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances,” the second motion said.

That motion should not be interpreted as the faculty suggesting Lewandowski be the next ORU president, Vance said.

The tenured faculty also approved a motion to be involved in “determining selection criteria for and the actual selection of university leadership.”

The list of motions is signed by the professors who Vance said wrote the summary: Vance, chemistry professor Kenneth Weed and English professor Linda Gray.

Vance said the vote was nearly unanimous. He declined to say how many pro fessors voted in favor of the motions.

ORU’s tenured professors usually only meet once at the beginning of the year, he said. This was a special meeting.

Tenured professors have a different role at ORU than at other universities, he said. They are given tenure because they have “demonstrated a loyalty to this university and its mission.”

“We are charged with preserving the vision of the university,” Vance said.

ORU officials declined to comment on the professors’ motions, said ORU spokesman Jeremy Burton.

Accreditation

Evaluators who visited ORU last week told administrative staff members that they will recommend the college keep its accreditation, according to the university.

The visitors spent four days on campus as part of a regular peer review to ensure the university meets minimum standards.

The accreditation team sent by the Higher Learning Commission also is recommending that commission representatives return to ORU in 2009 to review ORU’s leadership, governance and finances, according to ORU’s written statement e-mailed by Burton.

The university will undergo its next comprehensive evaluation in 2012-13, the statement said. The maximum amount of time between accreditation visits is 10 years.

The Higher Learning Commission’s staff liaison for ORU did not return phone calls Tuesday.

For reaccreditation, two panels review a college’s self-Balance = 20.0 pts study, the accreditation visitors’ report and other documents, and then the commission’s board of trustees makes the final decision whether to reaccredit a college, according to the commission’s Web site, www.tulsaworld.com/higher. The board’s next meeting is Feb. 25 and 26.

“The recommendation from the site visit team is a very important part of the review,” according to the statement from ORU.

Legal actions

On Tuesday, the former ORU professors suing the school, its board and administrators amended a court filing to include pages accidentally omitted from a filing on Friday. Attorneys clarified that, since filing the suit, the professors had not dropped any legal claims or deleted any examples of alleged negligence by governing boards.

Also, the professors notified the court on Friday that they had subpoenaed three people for records relating to allegations in a report. The professors claim that turning the report over to ORU regents cost them their jobs. The report alleges that Richard Roberts and his family spent ORU money and used ORU resources for themselves, among other claims.

The professors do not have to prove the report is true, Richardson said.

“But we are entitled to prove what is provable,” and if the report is found to be true, jurors in a trial would be more likely to agree the professors had lost their jobs because of the report, he said.

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