Boost for Hood as Congregation passes without fireworks
Vice Chancellor John Hood arrives for the meeting of Congregation on Tuesday
Vice Chancellor John Hood received a well-timed boost on Tuesday, after a Congregation meeting called to discuss reforms passed without incident. Members of Congregation, the 3,500-strong body with ultimate power in Oxford, met to discuss proposals to reform the governance structures of the university. As part of the consultation on the latest governance Green Paper, approximately 350 dons and college heads gathered with Dr Hood in the Sheldonian Theatre to discuss a range of key issues.
During a three hour meeting, Dr Hood had to repeatedly call on members to keep their speeches to five minutes. The speakers were almost exactly split for and against the proposals. At the end of the afternoon the Vice-Chancellor told The Oxford Student he needed “time to reflect” on everything that had been said. The propsals under discussion will put much of the control of Oxford under a reformed Council, with a majority of members drawn from outside the University.
Critics of the plans claim this will damage academic democracy and end the principle of self-governance Oxford has always relied on. An alternative paper calls instead for the formation of an independent Board of Scrutiny, composed of members of the University, to review decisions. David Womersley, a member of the Working Party, said this would only “maximise the opportunity for rancour while reducing institutional effectiveness”.
But Gavin Williams, from St Peter’s, questioned the “astonishing faith in experts and their claims to expertise” and compared the 19 references to ‘expertise’ in the Green Paper with the apparent “distrust of elected representatives’” Prof Don Fraser said the reforms will result in the “worst sort of cronyism and highly paid cronyism at that”.
Under the proposals, members of the new Council will be voted on by Congregation, but only after being passed on from a separate nominations committee. Nicholas Bamforth, a law tutor at Queen’s, told the assembly the latest Green Paper, drawn up by the Working Party on University governance, contained “no proper appreciation of the importance of checks and balances”.
He said the “cursory” rejection of a Board of Scrutiny was “deeply odd” given the “highly successful” history of a similar kind of body at Cambridge. Professor Susan Cooper called for greater openness, telling Congregation: “the climate of secrecy must be broken.” At present papers relating to Council meetings are never made public and can only be classed as either ‘confidential’ or ‘strictly confidential’.
Advocates of the Green Paper re-affirmed the need for wideranging reforms to improve the university’s financial standing. They argue that a more modern, corporate structure is vital in the drive to increase alumni donations, raise more money from research and encourage the government to raise the limit on student tuition fees.
Derek Wood QC said the Green Paper represented “reasonable reforms put forward by reasonable people” and attacked the “complacency” of rejecting the involvement of outsiders, needed to “stop the slide to a loss-making enterprise”. But Bernard Sufrin, from Worcester, blamed new management procedures for recent IT disasters.
He told Congregation that “cock-ups turn to cover-ups when ranks close against scrutiny” and there was a danger governance would become “a small closed circle proected by a iron wall of patronage”. He ended his speech by ridiculing the senior management’s attitude to Congregation and suggesting “perhaps they should elect themselves a new Congregation”.
Though speakers praised the good-tempered tone of the debate, it was impossible to disguise the extent of the split and the real distance between the sides over the role of external members and the need for a Board of Scrutiny. Speakers were split over the involvement of people from outside the university in terms of their capacity and methods of appointment.
Dr Elizabeth Frazer claimed the fear was of a “particular kind of bloke in a particular kind of suit,” a suspicion she claimed to be unfounded. There was also criticism during the discussion of Lord Patten’s intervention last week, when he told a lunch audience of alumni and selected journalists that Cambridge should follow Oxford’s planned reforms. There is a November 18 deadline for written submissions on the current proposals.
The Working Party will then decide how to proceed, and whether firm reforms can be put to Congregation for vote. Speaking after the discussion one ‘rebel’ don said: “I hope common ground will be found on as many areas as possible. But it might become simply a matter of bringing rival proposals back to Congregation.”
3rd Nov 2005