“Good evening, I’m Glenn Hansen, President of the Faculty Senate and Association.

I seriously considered not speaking tonight, especially after I learned that a few of my colleagues have comments to share. I want to thank you for the extended conversations, considered debate, and presentations. I’d rather stay here late and learn something than to wait until action has already been taken.

This week many significant things happened to demonstrate an improvement internally at COD. One of which is that I participated in meetings with the Editorial Boards of the Daily Herald and Chicago Tribune (in alphabetical order) WITH the Board Chair and the Interim President. No scripting or editing what so ever. I’ve talked to Editorial Boards before but it was at a time of us vs. them at the College.

This is indicative of the New College of DuPage. We are working together to move this institution back to a focus on education.  Which brings me to why I’m speaking.

It is time to leave the partisan politics at the party committee meeting. I have participated in these board meetings longer than any of you.  The Board of Trustees has always been partisan, but it’s time for that to stop. While you have responsibilities to represent the taxpayers and supporters, your primary responsibility is to the students.

The previous college  president is gone and is waiting somewhere for his retirement bonus. Forget about him and fix the problems that were created in the last 7 years. It is time to lead and set an example. Debate the issues not each other.

As a model, Dr. Collins and Faculty Leaders have been able to sit together, discuss, and work to resolve issues. We have found that we can solve problems without verbal sparing, often by listening. We openly acknowledge we will disagree at some point, but then we will agree to disagree, not kick sand at each other.

You are disagreeing about even the littlest things. Such as conference travel. Here is a solution; it’s called Prior Approval. Every employee, except one, has needed to fill out a form for approval and another form for estimated expenses before doing anything. We negotiated part of our compensation into Professional Development Funds that require approval signatures before accessing.  I would need approval to renew a $20 professional magazine subscription. Oh, did I mention it requires a rationale too. I suggest you follow the same approval process, ask first and then learn the wonderful world of Concur to be reimbursed.

The message here is: get to work and consider the issues, not whether you like each other.  We have work to do together.

Thank you.”