Greiner urges better communication

By MARA McGINNIS
Reporter Assistant Editor

In a report to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee on Oct. 27, President William R. Greiner expressed concern about the manner in which the decision was made to put a hold on library purchases and called for more effective internal communication within the university.

As the institution faces severe budget constraints, "one of the things that we are going to have to work on harder than ever before is understanding that what one unit decides will impact and have ramifications for other units and taking that into account in the decision-making process," Greiner said.

"What we have to avoid is the so-called 'stove-pipe thinking,'" he added. "Information goes up and down the pipe, but doesn't go sideways. And I think (the libraries situation) is an example of 'stove-pipe thinking.' Obviously, the ramifications of the decision to put a hold on book purchases is extraordinary.

"I am concerned that we had this matter floating around campus for more than a week, and as far as I can tell, it had never risen to a level of discussion with the so-called budget committee of the university, which is me, the senior vice president and the provost."

Greiner distributed to senators a memo dated Oct. 14 announcing the libraries' hold on purchases from Barbara von Wahlde, director of University Libraries, and a letter dated Oct. 27 from Voldemar Innus, senior associate vice president for university services and chief information officer, announcing that the hold had been lifted.

"I know a great deal about this and there are some pertinent and important facts that I found missing from (the memo dated Oct. 14 from von Wahlde)," said Greiner, a correspondence, he noted, he had not seen until nearly two weeks after it had been written.

He referred to the hold on library purchases as "a kind of internal action of the libraries trying to deal with the fact that, in mid-October, there is no official budget, no official state university financial plan for this campus.

"Internal decision-making of this kind"has consequences on others that perhaps ought to be considered before you go too far down the track," Greiner emphasized. "I don't think a carbon copy of a memo is really the best way to deal with a matter of this magnitude"I think that maybe we ought to have talked about it before we wrote a memorandum.

"The notion that we are somehow out of the business of buying books has an extraordinary impact on the campus."

Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, agreed, saying that an issue that limits the purchase of books is an "emotional issue" to many people. "I would like to see that in the future when decisions like this are made, there is documentation of some kind of interaction with the users so that the decision is not made purely in the libraries."

Louis Swartz, associate professor of law, asked for clarification of the situation, noting that the memo from Innus was "not of vintage clarity" and that the meaning got "pretty murky" after the first sentence.

What it basically says, Greiner explained, is that while the libraries had a base acquisitions budget of about $5.2 million, they already have spent $4.2 million, leaving $1 million available for the remainder of the year.

"We're not going to impinge further on the libraries' portion of the budget," Greiner explained.

"This doesn't mean that this makes the year any easier," he added. "I think we're going to have to do an awful lot of very difficult decision-making over the balance of the year to get through a situation in which we have a $4 million tax-support hit," he said. "That's what we are expecting, but we can't say for certain that it will be $4 million," he added, noting that UB "is still working with SUNY Central" to determine the amount of UB's shortfall.

Judith Adams-Volpe, director of Lockwood Library, raised a concern about where the savings/reduction factor assigned to the libraries would come from this year since in past years, it had no impact on the acquisitions budget because it was taken out of the libraries' personnel budget. But the personnel budget this year is "in the red" and therefore is not an option, she noted.

Greiner said that "the decision-making on that (issue) will not be made in the 'stove-pipe.'"

These and other budgetary problems, according to Greiner, are the product of 13-straight years of budget reductions in one form or another. "What we're not going to do is make decisions on these types of things in that 'stove-pipe' fashion. We're going to develop a sort of internal communication process much more refined and better than in the past."

In response to a concern raised by Lockwood librarian Dorothy Woodson about where the libraries-as a chief academic unit of the university-should report, Greiner said announcements will be made in the near future by Senior Vice President Robert Wagner and Provost David Triggle regarding that issue. The libraries now report to Innus, who also oversees Computing and Information Technology.

In his report to the FSEC, Greiner also announced that he is working on an "interpretive essay" that will look at the course of funding for higher education in New York State over at least the past decade and shared some of his findings thus far from the data with which he is working.

In other business, Greiner introduced the final draft of the university-wide policy on sexual harassment.

Lewis Rosenthal, associate counsel in the SUNY Office of The University Counsel and the attorney assigned to represent UB, told senators that in his experience of defending SUNY campuses for 20 years, "having a viable, well-understood, well-disseminated policy is of critical importance to the institution to basically avoid going through the rigors of a full-blown sexual harassment trial (since) you can show that you have a policy and the individual did not take care to use that policy."

For the most part, senators agreed that the document was clear and well-thought-out and voiced only a few minor concerns.

Senate Chair Peter Nickerson said the final draft of the sexual-harassment policy will be considered at the next meeting of the full Faculty Senate on Nov. 16.