Editorial Reporting: Letter to the Board of Trustees
Image taken from the United North Park Instagram page.
This post was written by the Vista Senior Editorial Staff.
Today, as we welcomed our Board of Trustees to campus, many students were surprised to see paper copies of a letter addressed to the Board of Trustees pop up all over campus. The letter, which is posted below, contains demands as well as asks for public acknowledgment by President Surridge. We have yet to find out if the board will add this letter to their weekend agenda, but we will be following in our reporting as information becomes available. For now, we have identified two sources for information that appear to be connected: the Instagram page @unitednorthpark, and it was through their website that we gained access to republish the letters that were scattered around campus, as well as the hashtag #OurNorthPark or #OurNPU—they also appear to be using the slogan “Hold North Park Accountable.”
Have you seen the letters around campus? Let us know, and send your pictures our way if you have! Read the letter, verbatim, down below.
Letter to the Board of Trustees
1 November 2019
To the North Park University Board of Trustees:
We write as concerned North Park faculty, staff, and students, who love this institution, its mission and what it has stood for over the years. We believe that the following matters are deserving of the Board’s urgent attention both as they pertain to reaccreditation and as they speak to North Park’s fundamental character and trajectory. We are concerned both that reaffirmation of accreditation may be at risk, and that North Park’s core values are in jeopardy.
The university has failed to respond adequately to incidents of harassment, bullying, and abuse, creating a pervasive campus climate of fear, uncertainty, and distrust. A prominent example is the Chemistry Department, which has been subjected to a year’s long campaign of harassment by students. Although Chemistry Department faculty and staff have repeatedly reported that harassment to administrators and security personnel, the institutional response has been to blame rather than support the department members, and to attempt to cover up the situation, resulting in an unsafe workplace environment for the department’s faculty, staff, and student workers. Clearly these practices do not reflect the core values of North Park.
We ask the President to acknowledge the institutional mishandling of the situation in the Chemistry Department, and to work with faculty and staff toward a respectful resolution.
Many valued leaders have left North Park, often without explanation, sometimes under duress. Because many of these departing leaders are people of color, the University’s commitment to diversity is undermined. These leaders include our current Provost, the Vice President of Advancement, Assistant Vice President of Student Engagement, Director of Career Development and Internships, Campus Pastor, Director of Marketing, Diversity Director, numerous professors, and many other staff and administrators.
We recognize that this letter is an unusual format for addressing concerns at the University. We would prefer to communicate our concerns through the structures of shared governance. However, given the current state of uncertainty in the Provost’s Office and Office of Student Engagement, our opportunity for access to and collaboration with senior leadership has been unfortunately limited. Different campus constituencies attempting to meet with the President have been told that the President’s directives must come from the Board. We therefore take this unusual step in addressing the Board directly. In doing so, we reaffirm our investment in the future of North Park University, and our sincere desire to share our institutional memory, creativity and energy as we work together, with Christian faith as our common ground, to bring North Park forward with our values and our accreditation intact.
85 Concerned North Parkers, 35 faculty, 16 staff, 22 students, 12 alumni
We respectfully request a public response to this letter by November 8. We ask that communication about next steps go through the faculty and student representatives to the Board.
Note: this letter was delivered to the North Park Board of Trustees on Friday. We are awaiting a response. If you are interested in these concerns or others, please post with #ourNPU (we will find you) or email north.parker@concernednorthparkers.org.
