District employees in campus forums have been limited to a closely monitored three minutes to address trustees.
Perhaps faculty and staff should be grateful. A year ago, the chancellor and board chairman tried telling them they were not eligible to speak under citizens-to-be-heard.
Faculty issues aren’t the board’s business, Denver McClendon said at the time. Nothing seems to have changed — with the exception of the mounting frustration of elected leaders ignoring employee complaints, concerns and cautions.
Everyone can understand the need to keep meetings from dragging on, but when these meetings are specifically to address problems in communication, everyone should have a chance to speak without the repeated interruptions of a timer.
This isn’t a game in which a timer increases the excitement among players; these are people’s lives and livelihoods.
If the board must stick to timed comments, let them live by their own rule. If the chairman has more than three minutes of information to share, one of the other trustees will have to yield time.
Let’s see how well you can express yourselves under such a constraint. Better yet, simply listen and respect employees’ thoughts based on their expertise and experience.
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