On October 3, the UI Presidential Search Committee met and endured an outburst by Regent Gartner that search committee members at the time described as intimidating.  Regent Gartner was one of the committee members included by telephone.  Regent Wahlert arrived at the meeting having decided, without consulting the committee, to hold off-campus interviews at Des Moines, but committee members began to express a preferance for Chicago, the UI’s usual venue for practical reasons.  Regent Gartner, who was officially only a “member” of the committee like any other, grew angry as staff, faculty, and students persisted in trying to discuss democratically whether this was a better option;  when the committee insisted upon voting, he berated the entire group by speakerphone, saying that the committee members were “inane and insane” to proceed with a vote over his objections.  As people silently wrote their choices on slips of paper, his temper-tantrum continued by speakerphone.  The tirade ceased only when a member of the committee asked him whether this meant he was abstaining.  Those are facts to which both witnesses and documents can attest.

       And it is a fact that this turned out not to be the end of the matter.  Two days later on October 5, the entire committee received an e-mail from regent Gartner.  Particularly in light of his recent denials of any intent to intimidate in his public and private remarks regarding teaching loads and salaries, readers may find regent Gartner’s wording “interesting,” to use a term he prefers:

Like it or not …  many legislators are antagonistic to the Regents universities, believing there is much waste, believing workloads are light and salaries are high ...  That is the perception, and that is what we fight each year. … This coming year, Teresa Wahlert and Gary Steinke and I will be back again, arguing for the cause because we believe in education. … But this year, those who oppose increased funding will, I guarantee you, ask this question: Is it true that the University paid for upwards of forty people² to go to Chicago on a weekend to interview candidates? … They will ask for everyone’s expense accounts (those are public documents), and they will use this as a symbol of what they believe is waste and excess at the University of Iowa.  They will talk about misuse of taxpayers’ money – and it is an argument that Teresa and Gary and I will not be able to effectively rebut.  I guarantee you this will happen, and it will happen at the most inopportune time for the university. It could be quite costly to the entire Regents system. [emphases mine]

       Both Regent Gartner and his Executive Director, Gary Steinke, have stated that this urgent request for information concerning workload and salaries – a request made on the day before the most decisive midterm elections in many years – was at an unnamed legislator’s request.³  Yet the timing and context, not to mention the inaccuracy involved in treating the number of courses taught in one semester as constituting the entire workload of an academic year for a person also paid to do research and service, are also facts to be considered when evaluating the request for this specific information about these specific individuals.

       Like the burglar who, having insisted on his innocence, indignantly denies to the police that he burgled the house at noon, because he had already done so hours earlier, Regent Gartner denied to the press that he had seen the exact salary figures⁴ or spoken to student government [officers] before (correctly) naming Peter [McElligott] as the person to whom he had said: “I'd like a job like that – big pay for teaching one course.”⁵  That Gartner did indeed say this to the president of the University of Iowa Student Government and provide him with the approximate salary is yet another fact.

       Legislators may find it “interesting” that, with this remark, regent Gartner reveals that he shares the view that, in his October 5 memo to the search committee, he attributes to “antagonistic” legislators and claims to fight against – one can only imagine how effectively.  Is it only an “interesting” happenstance that Regent Wahlert, too, in her interview with Brian Morelli on December 8, offers as examples of expenditures taxpayers deserve to know only “workload and salaries” after an expensive presidential search that she chaired?

       These circumstances all raise the question:  in Regent Gartner’s remarks to several people over the course of the week of November 9 that alluded to the information gleaned by the Board Office on Monday morning, and in his repetition of the information to the press a month later, has regent Gartner  simply  been carrying through at a “most inopportune time” on a threat that he had made memo of October 5, to the entire committee?  That is a question for journalists, legislators, and governors to answer.

1. Erin Jordan, “U of I leaders: Vilsack stepping back,” Des Moines Register, Dec. 10, 2006; Michael Gartner, e-mail to Brian Morelli, 12/8/2006 8:44 p.m.: “Their comments are fact-free.”

2. It is difficult to know how Regent Gartner derived this number.  There were a total of nineteen search committee members, ten advisory committee members, two UI staff assistants to the committees, and Mr. Steinke, for a total of 32 people.  At a subsequent meeting, on Oct. 25, Regent Wahlert announced to the search committee that she had “invited” the entire Board of Regents to attend the off-campus interviews, which would add 5 more people to the total.  Perhaps this number is merely an exaggeration; perhaps it indicates that by Oct. 5, regents Gartner and Wahlert had already decided to hold the rolling Board meeting that allowed all nine members to be present at off-campus interviews.

3. Erin Jordan, “U of I leaders: Vilsack stepping back;” see also Michael Gartner, e-mail to Brian Morelli, 12/8/2006 8:44 p.m.: “Well, it's my understanding that Gary asked for some salaries in response to a legislative request. I was not a party to that.”

4. Michael Gartner, e-mail to Brian Morelli, 12/9/2006, 5:39 p.m., in answer to Morelli’s question, “Did you view the contents that were collected? If so, when? And why?,” Gartner writes: “NO.”
 
5. Michael Gartner, e-mail to Brian Morelli, 12/9/2006, 5:39 p.m.