A Petition Declaring No Confidence in Ray Cross as President of the UW System

It is a long tradition in Wisconsin higher education that the faculty and staff speak up and express their concern when a university president or campus chancellor cannot lead the institution to meet the public’s expected standards of excellence in teaching, research, and service.  One way that faculty and staff speak up is by offering a statement of “No Confidence” in the university leadership, and further, to give reasons why that leadership has failed.     

President Ray Cross is the Chief Executive Officer of the 26-campus University of Wisconsin System.  As President, he holds the responsibility to advocate for excellence in teaching, research, and service to the people of Wisconsin. 

Over the past year, the Wisconsin legislature imposed a drastic $250 million budget cut, and other policies which undermined both academic freedom and student learning conditions.

In March 2015, President Cross pledged to resign if he failed to reduce substantially the legislature’s proposed budget cut and also if he failed to protect tenure, shared governance, and academic freedom for all UW universities and colleges.

One year later it is clear that he has failed, and the consequences have been dire.  Despite a reduction of budget cuts from $300 to $250 million, the cuts to a wide variety of academic and administrative programs that benefit students on campuses across the System have been severe.  President Cross has remained silent about the gravity of these cuts, and before the most recent Board of Regents meeting, ordered individual Chancellors to keep quiet about these consequences as well.

Moreover, he has also done nothing to prevent the Regents from passing new, deleterious tenure and shared governance policies that clearly violate the principles of the American Association of University Professors, upheld for nearly a century as necessary for rigorous academic freedom in the classroom. Indeed, recent actions by the UW System general counsel actively contributed to the erosion of academic due process and shared governance.

As a result of UW System President Ray Cross’s unwillingness to advocate on behalf of excellence in teaching, research and service in the UW system, we, the undersigned faculty, staff, students, and members of the public say that we have no confidence in him.

A Petition Declaring No Confidence in Ray Cross as President of the UW Sys