Editorials, Opinions

Our View: CSULB presidential finalists should be made public

As each day passes, it seems that more people are upset with the way the Cal State University is handling the Cal State Long Beach presidential search process.

Earlier this month, a group of CSULB faculty members — including film and electronic arts professors Brian Lane and Micheal Pounds — held a forum to draw attention to the presidential search process.

At the forum, the faculty discussed a petition that would ask figures like CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White and Gov. Jerry Brown to make the search process a “public search in which faculty and students and taxpayers participate.”

A second forum, which was held last week, saw more faculty members who were interested in the presidential search process.

As the CSU begins to look for CSULB’s next president, we believe members of the university should be more involved in the process.

According to the CSU website, the search process includes an Advisory Committee to the Trustees Committee for the Selection of the President (ACTCSP).

Some members of the ACTCSP for CSULB include the Chair of the Academic Senate, two faculty members and one student, according to the CSU website.

Therefore, members of the university are represented on the ACTCSP. Still, even with this representation, we believe faculty and students don’t have as much say in selecting the university’s next president as they should.

On Sept. 30, the CSU Trustees’ Search Committee will hold an open forum on campus about the presidential search process.

Although the forum may help the process become more clear, we still need more transparency.

In order to make the search process more transparent, the names of the top candidates for the position, perhaps the top five, should be made public.

We would like to meet and get to know the final presidential candidates once the Trustees Committee for the Selection of the President (TCSP) selects them.

As investors in the CSU system, students and faculty should be allowed to see who might succeed CSULB Interim President Donald Para before that person is chosen.

Getting to know some of the presidential finalists would benefit members of the university as well as the finalists themselves.

If the finalists get to know the campus, and campus members get to know the finalists, CSULB would have an easier transition when the president is finally chosen and takes his or her seat in Brotman Hall. At least, it would be easier this way than if a stranger dropped in.

Making the decision behind closed doors is unfair to many.

We just hope the CSU will keep the students and faculty in the loop as much as possible.

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