Dear PSU-AAUP members,
Tomorrow at our Urban Plaza rally outside of the Board of Trustees meeting, PSU-AAUP will begin a vote of no confidence in President Cudd’s leadership.
PSU-AAUP’s Executive Council is taking this step because the administration has not shown the university community a credible plan for recovery. PSU faces financial pressure because of more than a decade of mismanaged divestment and failures of responsibility. No matter its cause, financial pressure does not excuse failed leadership. The missing component in our present crisis is a path forward based on honesty and transparently sound judgment.
What we have seen instead is a pattern of cuts, restructuring, and instability without a funded, accountable plan for growth. The administration has asked faculty, staff, and students to accept more contraction while offering broad promises about renewal. Those promises have not been matched by real investment or a persuasive strategy to rebuild enrollment and strengthen programs, changes required to restore confidence in the university’s future.
A vote of no confidence is a collective judgment that this course is not good enough for PSU. Portland State matters too much to this city and state to be managed through attrition and lowered expectations. Our students need a university that is expanding opportunity and building capacity through real investment in its academic mission. Our members need leadership that is equal to that responsibility. We call on the Board of Trustees and President Cudd to pause this march toward dismantling the faculty and decimating academic staff. We can work together through a One-Year Academic Stability and Enrollment Recovery Plan to accomplish the necessary political and enrollment change that would put PSU on the path to self-sustaining growth and success.
Tomorrow’s rally is our chance to make that judgment visible. Strong turnout can help drive national media coverage and offer a corrective to managed decline. Bring your colleagues, friends, and families, stay for the vote, and encourage others to join you. This moment concerns every part of the university. Even members whose units are not immediately targeted have a great deal at stake in the direction these decisions are setting for PSU as a whole.
We’re beginning this vote in person because of the powerful effect our collective presence will have, but it will extend to online voting via Electionbuddy ballot for two weeks. What is crucial now, however, is that you join us for the kick-off and the in-person vote and rally.
Attached, we’re including a one-page summary of the no-confidence motion, the product of the deep concerns so many members have expressed after President Cudd’s Senate remarks and recent town hall.
For now, the task is clear: show up tomorrow at 8:30a.m. in Urban Plaza, and as we cast our votes of no confidence, we can make plain, loud, and clear that PSU needs a different course and a different standard of leadership.
In solidarity,
Bill Knight
PSU-AAUP President