Professors to Vote on Baylor President's Future
The regents, which have the authority to fire Sloan, voted 18-17 to retain him a much closer margin than the 31-4 vote a year ago.
Faculty members of the Baylor University, the largest faith-based university in the country, will vote today on the future of their beleaguered president, although regents are the only group with power to fire him.
Robert Sloan, the president who is famous for proposing the 10-year reform plan that calls for moving the 14,000-student school into the top tier of American universities while strengthening its Christian mission, has received harsh criticisms from the moderate conservatives.
Some faculty members criticized the way Sloan hired faculty members saying that qualifications to become a professor is threatening the university's academic reputation as he has stressed religious beliefs over qualifications, whereas Sloan denies imposing any creeds or religious oaths. But currently less than half of Baylor's 800 faculty members are Baptist.
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The former president of SBC, Jack Graham said, "he is viewed as someone who is theologically conservative, and I believe Robert Sloan is the best thing to happen to Baylor University in the last 30 years. I believe he is an outstanding man, a man of conviction. ... The spiritual condition and the Baptist future of Baylor is at stake with Robert Sloan."
Beyond the policy-related disagreements among the University administration, the past rifts between the Southern Baptist Convention and other Baptist alliance groups have ignited the on-going conversations to conduct the referendum on the Baylor president.
Faculty members are voting through today at the McLennan County Elections Administration Office, which has contracted with the faculty senate to conduct the referendum on Baylor President Robert Sloan. He has been blamed for rising tuition costs and rifts among professors.
More than 200 of the 850 professors eligible to vote have done so since the referendum began Tuesday, officials said.
Jim Patton, faculty senate chairman, said he might consult attorneys on how to block County Elections Administrator Kathy Van Wolfe from releasing voting results before the panel is ready. Patton said he wants to first share results with Sloan and the regents' chairman.
However, Van Wolfe has said that her office is a public entity, and the results of elections it conducts are subject to public inspection.
The faculty group had two no-confidence votes on Sloan in the last school year.
But the regents, which have the authority to fire Sloan, did not vote on the matter in meetings this fall. In May, the board voted 18-17 to retain him a much closer margin than the 31-4 vote a year ago.
