Monday, March 02, 2009

Students at U Toledo Strike Back: Call for President Jacobs to Resign

Since the Inside Higher Ed piece appeared last week, University of Toledo students have begun to organize the fight the selling off of the UT's College of Education to Randy Best's diploma mill, the American College of Education. See yesterday's blog post for context.

Here is part of the message from a flyer being circulated in Toledo and, well, everywhere. Looks like President Jacobs and CFO Scott Scarborough have stirred up a hornet's nest. Students are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore:
Keeping your head down and working towards graduation won’t protect you!

There are very few “conventional students” at UT, many of us are commuters, or part-timers, or returning after years in the workforce. You, whatever your situation, need to take part.

Lloyd Jacobs’ decisions are going to haunt you whether you ignore him or not. If you take action you’re taking your future into your own hands and you have the opportunity to change what is happening.

Jacobs is working to turn the University of Toledo into a diploma mill. This will devalue your degree and make it harder for you to be competitive in the job market or go on to a higher degree. You have worked too hard to have that happen to you without a fight.

Since he was handed the office of the president Lloyd Jacobs has disregarded the will of students, faculty, parents, alumni and even dissenters within his administration in his quest to dismantle the University of Toledo and reform it in a business model. If you try to fix want isn’t broken Lloyd, you break it.

We need an academic as president, someone who values higher education and academic pursuits. Someone who will work hard to raise money and find funding-not just make cuts to every degree but his pet departments. You can make this happen. You have to take action for your future.

. . . .

This University will respond to the students, but only if we refuse to be ignored. Only if we make enough noise that they cannot make a decision without our input.

This won’t be easy. The Board of Trustees loves Lloyd Jacobs, they’re the group that hired him without looking anywhere else and just gave him a raise. But they are the only ones that can remove him. And you as a student are in charge of the decisions of the Board.

Call the Board of Trustees office today and tell them Enough Bullshit, Jacobs Must Quit!

Office of the Board of Trustees
419.530.2814

Send an email to SaveAandS@gmail.com to help organize!

No comments:

Post a Comment