University Response to Complaint to SACS

["President's Office" <auemail@groupwise1.duc.auburn.edu>]

July 20, 2001

Dear Members of the Auburn Community,

As you are aware, in late April the Joint Assessment Committee of the
University Senate sent a complaint to our accrediting body, SACS. The
complaint alleged that our governance procedures do not meet their
standards for accreditation. The purpose of this message is to provide a
status report on what we are doing with respect to the complaint itself
and with respect to engaging the principles of governance and how we
apply them.

The University's response to the complaint was sent to SACS in a timely
manner, and today I have made the response public. The background on the
preparation of the response and next steps is as follows.

Given the importance of having an independent review, I retained an
outside consultant to assist in preparing the university's response to
the complaint. The person I selected is Mr. Peter Degnan, an attorney in
Atlanta who has experience with SACS' accreditation standards.

My goal was to get the most objective assessment possible of the facts.
The response we have sent forward is the result of this process. It
consists of a 45-page text followed by several hundred pages of
appendices.

The 45-page text may be accessed by going to the university's web site
at: www.auburn.edu. The main page has a link that will take you to the
text of the response. A copy of the report with appendices will be
placed on reserve at Draughon Library.

The response addresses not only the ten specific allegations made in
the original complaint, but also a set of broader issues related to
governance. I urge you to take the time to visit our web site and read
the response, and to consider the issues raised therein. As you will
see, the response places the matters of concern to the complainants
squarely within an ongoing national debate over the governance of public
universities in the 21st century.

In terms of next steps, SACS will send a visitation team to the Auburn
campus in early October. The university's response to the complaint,
along with the campus interviews conducted as part of the visit, will
provide a basis for SACS' evaluation of the complaint. I welcome the
planned visit, and will keep you abreast of further developments.

It is my intention that we not wait until the campus visit to continue
exploring best practices in governance. In this regard, I  am very
pleased that we have been able to bring Dr. Bill Weary here to conduct a
workshop with our Board of Trustees this coming Monday, July 23. Dr.
Weary has very broad experience in the field of university governance,
and is nationally prominent in this area.

We need to have the best information and advice available on how our
processes compare with national standards of practice. We can learn a
lot from Bill Weary in this regard. If we have made mistakes in what we
are doing, we need to know what they are so that we can correct them and
prevent them from recurring.

Again, I urge you to examine the response that we have sent to SACS,
and to consider the particulars and the broader arguments which the
response presents. It is my hope that this response will help to raise
the level of debate on the governance issues that have been brought
forward. I am optimistic that the debate can serve this university
well.

Sincerely,

William F. Walker
Interim President