Release: AFT-Wisconsin delegates demand UW System President Ray Cross resign

For immediate release: October 30, 2015

 

Contact: Aaron Bibb, Communications Director

AFT-Wisconsin

 

 

Madison, WI: Delegates to AFT-Wisconsin’s recent state convention voted to demand UW System President Ray Cross resign, AFT-Wisconsin President Kim Kohlhaas announced today. “Faculty, staff, and graduate employee members of AFT-Wisconsin have been fighting tirelessly to protect the quality of education and research in the UW System in the face of the Republican assault on higher education,” said Kohlhaas, a teacher in the Superior School District. “But when it comes to crucial issues like academic freedom, due process, shared governance, and state funding, President Cross hasn’t been the advocate that the UW System’s students need. The Wisconsin Idea is under attack, and the head of the UW System is standing by and letting it happen. That’s why our members are calling on President Cross to step down.”

 

The resolution, included below, was passed by a unanimous voice vote of delegates to AFT-Wisconsin’s convention, held October 23-25 in Madison, WI. Convention delegates represented a wide range of Wisconsin public employees, including faculty, staff, and graduate employee union members from across the UW System.

 

 

Whereas, Ray Cross has demonstrated weak and incompetent leadership with regard to the protection of academic freedom, just cause, due process, protections for shared governance, and public higher education, and,

 

Whereas, Ray Cross ostensibly claimed to be a dedicated defender of the principles listed above, and,

 

Whereas, he even committed to resign should he fail to protect the principles stated above, and,

 

Whereas, knowing that without such protections of these principles, academic rigor, scholarship, research, and quality instruction will suffer, therefore be it

 

RESOLVED, that AFT-Wisconsin goes on record in demanding his resignation since we no longer have confidence in his leadership.