What was omitted from the laundry list of "accomplishments" that were cited at the Thursday night meeting at Warren Paving is academic quality and programs. A university is not a football stadium or a band. It is not new buildings. It is academic programs. The question is this: which programs have gotten better and which have gotten worse?
 
Has the student body improved in terms of high school class ranking and ACT scores over the past three years? No
 
Has there been a mass exodeus of many good faculty during the past two years? Yes. Over 200 faculty have left in the past two years, and many of those have been replaced by adjuncts, instructors, visiting professors and inexperienced assistant professors.
 
Has the academic reputation of the university improved? No. We have dropped to the bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings, and we are on SACS probation.
 
Have some programs been severly weakened by faculty attrition and the budget priorities of the administation" Yes. Programs in nursing, speech pathology, social work, criminal justice, forensics, English, history and others have been hurt. The library no longer buys books. Judging the university on what counts, academics, reveals that things have gone rapidly downhill.
 
Why didn't we hear that dog barking on Thursday night? A caring and concerned dog would have been howling loudly about these things - not about positive things that the faculty accomplished prior to 2002.