More on the Felner mess...

With each passing day, a new revelation on the Felner mess.

As we were made aware yesterday, UW Parkside search committee were well aware of the no-confidence vote against Felner long before they made a decision on whom to appoint as chancellor. They decided that the no-confidence vote was no big deal and did not vigorously pursue the investigation of the no-confidence vote.

As it turns out, UW Parkside officials were well aware of the problems surrounding Felner before last Sunday when he called them and told them.

University of Wisconsin-Parkside officials knew as early as last Friday that there was a federal investigation into Robert Felner when agents showed up at the chancellor's office to take away boxes of paperwork he already sent here.

The question I have is why in the world did the school not bother to contact Felner and immediately demand to know what was going on.

According to Giroux, federal agents showed up at Parkside at 3 p.m. Friday with a search warrant.

The moment the FBI walked into the offices at UW Parkside with a search warrant, they should have been on the phone with Felner and UW officials.

This process could not have been handled much worse.

I agree with one of the comments in this post(link)(Citizen79) . It appears that the UW Parkside search committee fell in love with Felner and his hard luck story and refused to see anything else. I know that Felner worked hard to get where he was. But that does not mean that he should have just blindly been handed the job at UW Parkside. I feel that the search committee got stuck on their favorite and chose to look no further.

UW Parkside knew about Felner's problems before he was approved

This ought to get people's blood boiling.

The search committee working to find a new chancellor for UW Parkside was aware of the "no confidence vote" against Dr. Felner. Still they chose him anyway.

When talking to people in Kenosha, the real problem they are having with this is "Was Felner's background checked?" and "If the Felner's background was checked, how is it possible that none of this stuff came up?"

Well, we learn today that a thorough background check was performed and the committee members were aware of the problems taking place with the other faculty members at the College of

Kenosha News (Congrats to K News reporter Matt Olson who stayed on this until he got some straight answers)

But the search committee was aware of a no-confidence vote against Felner at his current university.

Make no doubt about it, I do not believe that anyone knew about the federal investigation taking place. Still there were clearly problems.

Clearly there were so many complaints filed against Dr. Felner that a "no confidence" vote was brought to the floor during a regular meeting.

Look at this list of complaints:

Portes, a professor of education psychology who now works at another university, told the faculty he supported the motion because of "public humiliation of faculty; workplace harassment; retaliation for voicing opinions; little or no governance; decisions that hurt the college; unacceptable and unfair hiring practice(s); rude, offensive, unethical behavior by (college) representatives; denial of support for research to those who differ in opinion; and extreme inequity of pay."

Fellow staff member Namok Choi, associate professor of educational leadership, said she also supported the "no confidence" vote because she was bothered by the college's hiring practices. She said committee works have not been respected and that many times people were hired without being interviewed by the search committee.

The excuses being made by the committee are pathetic:

Evans said the committee became aware of that vote once the four finalists were announced. But Evans said that vote did not discourage support for Felner.

“We knew that there had been conflict, and it was only what you would expect from someone who was a determined change agent,” Evans said. “He never presented himself as uniformly popular. His references said that the faculty that objected to him were vocal, but they were definitely a minority. That didn’t cause us any alarm at all.

At a minimum, a little checking into the "no confidence" vote would have been appropriate by the search committee. They would have easily seen that a number of complaints had been filed. Ms. Evans and the rest of the committee would have also known that it not a small minority complaining but a majority of faculty members were have a problem.

Sorry to Ms. Evans and the rest of the search committee, but I have got to cast my own "no confidence" vote in the abilities of the search committee.

How is the community supposed to put it's faith and trust into a system that has already failed us once before?

We are packing up our children and placing their future's into the hands of a school chancellor and faculty. We must be able to have the utmost faith and trust in the men and women chosen by UW to lead them.

Who is watching out for our kids?

Another day, more bad press for Wisconsin’s educational system.

Between the two blaring headlines in today’s Kenosha News, I am not sure which is worse.

We discovered yesterday that our new elite chancellor, scheduled to start a week from today at the University of Wisconsin/Parkside, could very well be in trouble with the federal government.

We also found out that three more Kenosha schools have been added to the watch list and identified as not being up to the required “no child left behind standards”.

The question though our minds today is “Who is watching our for our kids?”

In this state we pay billions of dollars a year to provide a good quality education to our children. Yet, year after year we discover more and more questionable practices taking place.

Let’s start with- who vetted the candidates for chancellor at three state schools?

The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Parkside and Whitewater all spent the spring looking for new chancellors of our schools.

Clearly there were some problems. Former Dean of University of Louisville College of Education and Human Development, Robert Felner, has been hired as the new chancellor as the UW/Parkside chancellor. It was recently discovered and Mr. Felner has admitted that his College of Education and Human Development is currently under investigation by the federal government.

It is not like this investigation just started overnight. It appears that the University of Louisville was so concerned about what was happening at Mr. Felner’s College of Education and Human Development that they contacted the federal government themselves to have an investigation launch.

Surely someone knew something was fishy long before the UW Board of Regents hired Mr. Felner on June 5th.

Clearly the Regents for UW completely missed the boat to be so completely oblivious to what was happening here.

We, the people, after having put our trust in the Regents to pick the best person to educate our children, are currently trapped into not knowing what is happening.

So what has happened in our educational system that has brought us to this point?

We, the people paying the salaries, no longer have control of education in Wisconsin.

Sure, every once in a while, we get to vote on whether or not the school systems will be allowed to build a new school building or upgrade current systems. But this stuff is all bricks and mortar and have very little to do with education.

Those of us paying the bills have no control over hiring and firing. In fact, we are all pretty much oblivious to what is taking place in our schools.

We have no control over the curriculum, planning for the future and the priorities in our children’s education.

Basically we have no control over what our children are being taught and who is teaching them. We are stuck.

There is absolutely no accountability for the billions of dollars spent in this state.

After these little bombshells that were dropped on our heads, maybe it is time for us to wake up and hold these people accountable for the choices they made.

It is time to fight back and show the UW board of Regents, Wisconsin teachers, school administrators and even the students of this state that they will be held accountable for their actions.

Being totally oblivious to the problems facing Mr. Felner right now has jeopardized the education of our children at UW/Parkside.

There is absolutely no excuse for the Board of Regents to vote on this man, especially if they have not fully vetted his background.

We, the people that are paying the bills, deserved better from the UW Board of Regents.

Breaking News: Did we fully vet the new UW- Parkside Chancellor

I sure hope somebody did because these types of rumors are not good.

This Felner fellow is headed to our school here in Kenosha and based on rumors, he is bringing some baggage along-

Check out this - Page One- Kentucky

So. Dude is all packed up on his final day and the feds show up. How coincidental is that? Millions of dollars in grant money that can’t be accounted for– or it can be accounted for but was allegedly spent on something inappropriate. Rumors of sexual harassment. And officials at UofL literally freak out when we question them about what’s going on. You know there’s some crazy shiz going down.

Maybe- before we move this fellow into our school, someone should get a few questioned answered.

Update: The Kenosha News is now on the story also.

Taxpayers- Just hand over your money and no one gets hurt

We are once again subjected to another "not so veiled" threat from academic elitists out of Madison.

From the pages of the Wisconsin State Journal comes another threat against the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

Either we hand over every single penny that the academics believe they need or they will set about spending millions upon millions of dollars to destroy every single politician or person that dares challenge them on their wasteful spending habits.

Conservatives have long accused college professors of turning young minds into liberal mush.

But a much more real and direct threat to the right wing are the professors ' wallets.

University employees are giving far more money to political campaigns than a decade ago. They 're actually giving more than the oil industry and drugmakers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations.

How do like that?

The academic elitists are giving more money than the evil oil companies.

Now, we already know that these elitists are filling the pockets of the Democrats, and this article is certainly not denying it.

Let's stop here for a moment and study this. If a conservative politician accepts money from a person in the oil industry, that politician is accused of being corrupt and "on the take" from the oil companies. After all, the oil company execs are only trying to buy politicians for their own tax breaks.

However, when a liberal politician accepts money from the academic elitists, they are celebrated as being progressive.

Not only is it celebrated, but it is encouraged by the media. This opinion article written by Scott Milfred, an editor with the Wisconsin State Journal, is a perfect example of this celebration.

The question becomes- why is it okay for the liberals to be "on the take" from the academic elitists? Why is it the Democrats are not accused of being corrupt even though they are accepting millions of dollars in campaign donations in order to push more money into the hands of the academic elitists?

After all, these elitists are demanding more and more money from the taxpayers ever single year. They need the Democrats in power in order to get every single penny they can from the taxpayers.

A perfect example of this corruption is State Senator Bob Wirch. In 2004, Senator Wirch accepted $569,270 in WEAC support.

Clearly WEAC was buying themselves a politician. If Senator Wirch's opponent, Reince Priebus, had accepted $569,270 from oil company execs, can you imagine what would have been said about Priebus? Can you imagine the accusations of corruption that would have been heaped upon Priebus by the media?

As it was, during the campaign, WEAC candidate, Senator Wirch had the nerve to accuse Priebus of being in the "pockets of special interests"!

In fact, in 2004, WEAC bought themselves a ton of candidates. The WEAC PAC spent over $1,800,000 on state legislator's races.

Somehow, these politicians accepting this incredible amounts of money are not considered corrupt. Why is that? Talk about your special interests!

As we travel on through this article, there are a few other little tidbits of information.

Do not question embryonic stem cell research or global warming. The academic elitists will not tolerate this. If you question the science behind either of these issues they will set out to destroy you.

Right now, on the state level, the special interest group known as the "academic elitists" are having a hissy fit because they are not getting the incredible amount of tax dollars that they think they deserve in this year's budget.

Now, it is certainly okay for the schools to complain, and no one expects them not to.

Education is important. As a state, well over half of our budget goes to education and that is the way that it should be. There comes a point when taxpayers just cannot afford any more. When this happens, it is up to all of us to figure out new ways to stop wasting money and becoming more efficient.

What I do find to be amazing is that as smart as these academic elitists are, they have yet to figure out that it was Governor Jim Doyle, the Democrat, who proposed and implemented massive cuts to the UW system. Still somehow, it was the Republicans in the state legislature that incurred the academic elitist's wrath. Simply amazing that these intellectuals still forked over millions of dollars to Governor Doyle and the Democrats last year.

The author of this article goes on the issue a not so veiled threat to the Republicans-

If conservatives want to lead the Wisconsin of the future, they would be wise to stop belittling its brainpower today.

So taxpayers, you dare not question UW spending. You dare not question the academic elitists. You dare not question where the money is being spent. You dare not question their academic standards.

The author of this article is trying to teach us all a lesson-

Taxpayers, just hand over your money and no one gets hurt.

To any person who dares question the academic elitists, you will be destroyed and the elitists will just go out and buy themselves a puppet to do their bidding.


H/T Dan commenting at Badger Blogger