To the Editor:

What is going on under the table at SUNY Central?

As an employee (of SUNY Canton) I realize that I do not have to be privy to everything that management decides; although as a taxpayer in New York State I am also the boss of the people at SUNY Central.

The employees at SUNY Central including the Chancellor answer to me and to all of the other taxpayers in New York State.

Give us hard numbers how making Joe Kennedy resign as SUNY Canton’s president and going to Albany to advise the Chancellor is going to save anyone two cents?

The scheme that was attempted at SUNY Canton this summer has been put on the back burner for a little while, but it is still anticipated to occur next spring.

To come to Canton and give Dr. Kennedy an ultimatum to either resign or get fired so that the SUNY Potsdam President could take over our campus as was purported was wrong.

Our campus is vibrant and growing physically and academically with a new Athletic/Convocation Center and a new 305 bed dormitory.

We also have an on-line presence that is envied by many other campuses within the SUNY system.

All of these accomplishments are due to President Joseph Kennedy’s vision and persistence.

Now in one seemingly poorly thought out move, Chancellor Zimpher would like to remove him from his presidency and “promote” him to a consulting position in Albany.

A promotion like this is typically is given to someone who has done something wrong, not to someone who is doing everything right. Most of us have seen people promoted just to get them out of the way.

In the Aug. 10-16 edition of North Country This Week, SUNY Potsdam President John Schwaller is quoted as saying “First and foremost, I want you to know my number one priority is a steadfast commitment to the exceptional student experience offered at SUNY Potsdam.”

This does not sound like a comment from someone who is going to be fair in their dealings with two distinct campuses under his watch. It sounds more like what happens when someone with children marries someone else with children; I’ll take care of your children too, but mine come first.

The SUNY campuses need continued autonomy. In the past we have found that trying to make everyone play nice and work together does not work, and logically so.

The traditional Ag and Tech campuses were lumped together and told to get along and somehow share information and services.

We competed for the same students and had similar programs, how could that realistically happen? As the traditional two-year colleges developed four-year degrees, the traditional four-year colleges complained about mission creep and have been very vocal about it.

In the spring of 2010 Chancellor Nancy Zimpher visited all of the SUNY campuses. While here at Canton I asked her face-to-face how she could make it so that the SUNY campuses would let programs be developed at individual campuses without the other colleges complaining and interfering.

She was unable to give a direct answer then, but I now see that to stop our Potsdam-Canton bickering she decided to take away one of the major players in the equation and make SUNY Canton a stepchild to SUNY Potsdam. This is not fair.

In the same North Country This Week article Chancellor Zimpher is quoted as saying that any affected “campuses will be consulted before any decisions are made by SUNY System Administration in Albany.”

Here at SUNY Canton we found out about the possible merger of presidents from the newspaper! Our president has a gag order from SUNY Central. We hired our new Provost Carli Schiffner on July first.

Our College Council started hearing rumors that Dr. Kennedy was being forced to resign or get fired about a week later.

Do you think she would have left her position in Washington State to come here if she knew that a possible forced merging of administrations might be taking place?

She was blind-sided just like the rest of us.

Zimpher’s transparent statement appears to have been formulated only after the tremendous uproar from the North Country.

While SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Canton are both SUNY schools, they function in very different ways.

Potsdam is a liberal arts teaching and research institution which in many cases prepares students for further education while Canton is more of a career focused school that prepares many students to graduate and be prepared to enter the workforce with job-ready skills.

If SUNY needs to save money it needs to be through calculated on-campus measures such as where we would order supplies and equipment together to get cost savings and to possibly have joint faculty appointments.

SUNY should drastically shrink the number of people in Albany that are far removed from the educational process who are not in touch with what is happening on each of our very distinct campuses.

Getting rid of a few presidents in the SUNY system is not the answer to the budget woes.

We need to get rid of the top heavy administration in Albany.

How many hundreds of people sit in the ivory tower in Albany?

SUNY Central is like every other government entity; they want to cut at the local level but leave the high paid Central administration alone.

I do not know him, but I suspect President Schwaller does not know what would be involved with having many health-related, nationally accredited programs such as the veterinary technology or the physical therapy assistant programs under his purview any more than President Kennedy would be familiar with how to oversee the Crane School of Music.

If a legitimate, detailed study of the sharing of presidents is completed and found that it could reasonably happen, I think we should look at having a new college president with no biased, local college affiliation come in to manage both campuses.

We don’t need someone who has already stated that his allegiance is to SUNY Potsdam first and foremost.

Each SUNY campus needs its own president whose mission is to promote his or her campus above all others and to strive to make that institution the best of the best.

Let’s not dampen SUNY Canton’s unique character through a poorly thought out move by SUNY Central, which takes the air out of our sails.

We need the New York State Senate to look into what is happening behind the scenes and let President Kennedy continue to promote SUNY Canton as he has done for almost 20 years.

The North Country owes him a great deal for saving SUNY Canton in the 90’s; it is up to us to save our SUNY Canton and President Joe Kennedy now.

Tony Beane, DVM

Professor of Veterinary Science Technology

SUNY Canton