Fire Silber

THE CURRENT controversy over whether John R. Silber, president of Boston University, should remain in office despite a faculty resolution calling for his resignation has brought out a number of issues confronting unendowed private colleges. Students who in the past might have chosen to go to private schools like B.U. are now more likely to go to state schools, where they find lower tuitions and equivalent education. B.U. faces a rapidly declining income from tuition, and since it has no funds on which to fall back, Silber--like many other college presidents during the last year--has been forced to make serious budget cuts.

While the B.U. faculty seems, on the whole, to accept the need for substantial reductions in the university's expenses, the body feels Silber's methods have been arbitrary and abrasive. Silber has consistently refused to consult with the faculty representatives in devising the budget for next year, claiming that deans and department chairmen cannot be objective when they are fighting for scarce resources.

Silber has presented B.U. with two alternatives: either it will be run as a corporation, with little job security and a strong central administration, or it will fold. He refuses to honor tenure in making staff reductions, emphasizing quality rather than seniority. It is true that tenure has been used frequently to keep radicals out of the academic community; but eliminating tenure completely would further increase the power of the central administration. Given Silber's history of conflict with radical professors--he has fought long and hard against the formation of an academic union there--allowing him to remove tenure would destroy job security at B.U.

But it is not clear whether these are in fact the only routes B.U. could take. Silber refuses to release the university's budget, which precludes the possibility of determining whether in fact there may be other options. Perhaps it would be feasible to cut down Silber's massive public relations bureau; perhaps some of the large real estate purchases he has made in the last five years should be reconsidered. So far, it is virtually impossible to tell whether his fiscal analysis is indeed sound; and it is also impossible to say whether B.U. has to be reshaped in the form Silber proposes.

Certainly Boston University faces economic difficulties, and must cut back its expenses if it is to survive. But it is not clear that Silber--despite his innovative policies and new ideas--will be able to do it and still retain the essential characteristics of a university. He has created such division in the faculty, and alienated so many faculty members by his arbitrary decisions, that it is not surprising that the faculty has little confidence in his leadership. Silber should step down, in order to let someone who can work more closely with faculty and students take over. If he continues to refuse to resign, the board of trustees should take it upon themselves to remove him from office. The university cannot continue to function normally, much less to go through a severe economic crisis, in the pervasive atmosphere of distrust that now exists at Boston University.