Letter to the Editor: USU can’t catch a break, is leadership the answer?

By Ben Shaw

Dear Editor,

USU can’t catch a break. There’s the Title IX investigation, lawsuits by former employees, the recent “transgender roommate issue,” and then, come to find out, our most recent President spent as much on a golf cart as I make in a year to support my family of five. Then there’s the time the President before made the “but he’s Mormon” comment. And even before she was President, her predecessor raised $0.5 *billion* dollars in a capital gains campaign while increasing tuition and fees by more than ever before. This is not a comprehensive list.

My point isn’t to gripe about USU. I’m happy for the (long) time I’ve spent here and with the education I’ve received. But with all the ways USU makes bad headlines, it just begs the question: why can’t USU catch a break?

I don’t think certain challenges at USU are unique. Unfortunately, it seems that we live in an increasingly risky political environment. We see this everywhere, including in the case of a restaurant being forced to change their logo back for being “too woke.” Universities are finding themselves in a lot of hot water nowadays. But it seems to me that USU has problems other universities don’t, and that many of these problems stem back to before the world got hyper-polarized.

How can USU keep from making bad headlines? I’m certainly not an expert in public policy, communications, or really anything except machine learning. But I think a lot of our problems could be addressed through proactive leadership.

I’m not criticizing our current leadership. I think our current leadership has inherited a set of circumstances largely out of their control, and I think things have been navigated about as best as they could be. But for our next president, I think we need to think critically about what proactive leadership can do for us.

With the challenging recent roommate situation, should we have folded to the “changing political climate” and state officials, should we have pointed to the fact that this issue was addressed 10 years ago, or should we have done something else? Then-leadership seemed completely blind-sided by this issue, but a proactive leader could and should have seen this coming and prepared accordingly. Honestly, I don’t think it’s so much about which decisions get made as much as it is about being a proactive, inspirational, confident, diplomatic, intelligent, and personable leader.

We don’t need a manager to put out our fires. We don’t need a reactive and unprepared leader always on the defense. We don’t even need someone who tries to “support everyone.” We need proactive leadership: someone with a plan before others fully realize what the catastrophe is. I believe this is possible (perhaps with the help of a team of supporting analysts), and that this would help relieve USU’s publicity woes. But we need someone with the courage and vision. I hope the Presidential search committee members and the future Presidential candidates think about this.

— ben.shaw@usu.edu