The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

Criticism of Wendler unwarranted

I was pleased to see Terry Clark's comments in Thursday's DE ["Wendler not offered A&M position," pg.1] pointing out that Chancellor Walter Wendler's having been sought out for the president's position at Texas A&M Corpus Christi should be understood as evidence of his high standing in the academic community. Most faculty members believe that having our faculty colleagues courted or hired by other institutions is a measure of the quality of our people. I'm surprised that we're not able to draw the obvious parallel when the same thing happens to our administrators.

Our great challenge is to hire as well as we can for all openings at SIUC - to hire people so good that others want them - and then to be so good ourselves that those good people want to stay.

Clark's brief comments came as a salutary corrective to the predictable sound bites issued by the Faculty Association (of which, for the record, I am a member). To suggest, as Marvin Zeman has in print and in a radio interview yesterday, that the chancellor's agreeing to be considered at Corpus Christi means that he has failed some sort of loyalty test is disingenuous at best. In one interview, Zeman claimed that Wendler had somehow promised to remain at SIUC for at least five years. Had the institution wished to ensure that, however, a five-year contract would have been the obvious mechanism. I'm not sure why we believe our administrators ought to make a longer commitment to us than we're willing to make to them.

Zeman went on, in Wednesday's WSIU radio interview, to intimate that the Faculty Association would no longer be able to trust the chancellor regarding his tenure and promotion decisions, in contract negotiations, and in other important decision-making functions of his job. This struck me as a transparent scare tactic. As best as I can tell, the Faculty Association has never trusted this or any other chancellor, and many faculty members find the Association's persistent "us vs. them" rhetoric increasingly alienating.

The Faculty Association has enough very real problems to tackle here on campus without creating new, imaginary ones.

Welcome home, Chancellor Wendler: We have a lot of work to do.

Kevin J. H. Dettmar
professor, English
chair, Graduate Council

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