commentaries

Mr Kaler, I applaud your article. I hope that you will take real action to the misbehavior at the U in recent months. I work in the private sector and we are not nearly as tolerant of unethical behavior as you seem to be. These are grown up people who make a good living and if your current culture makes it OK to do these kinds of things you need to take action and change it with consequences. Until the public sees otherwise, we will see the U as it is today. An unethical, ineffectice and bloated dinasaur.

We aren't asking you to fix what has taken place. We need you to ensure the nonsense never happens again. That means some people need to fired. That means the cronyism stops now. And most of all, it means that you and the legislature need to perform a line by line audit of the U of MN budget and root out the waste, fraud, routing of funds to pet projects, etc. Please do not come asking for money until you get this university operating within a reasonable level of financial responsibility.

Good article but we prefer to base our judgments on the past and the present and not on politically-spun rhetoric, in other words, actions speak louder than words! If recent decisions/lack of action (Maturi, Beernicks and now Delaney)are indicative of how you will make decisions then your article is nothing but grandstanding. You have the ability to reverse the golden parachute of Beernicks and his cronies, you have the opportunity to do more than "reprimand" Delaney but you choose not to do so. Many posts about Delaney are from individuals who worked in her department and they all relate the same malfeasance and mismanagement, nepotism and ineptitude but her total punishment consisted of a verbal reprimand and the inability to hire a fulltime staff person for one year....that's hardly what I would call accountability and thus your words ring rather hollow to me.

This is a joke...RIGHT??? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice....

President Kaler - By taking responsibility for past indiscretions you put yourself into a mess that didn't happen on your watch. Uber foolhardy. We want you to do well. As Minnesotans we don't expect you to take responsibility for other's actions. But we do expect you to show leadership and change the culture. Along the way it would help if you showed the citizens of Minnesota-who pay the bills-some ethical butt-kicking out of those who created the mess and brought shame to the U/M.

Mr. Kaler. The world is different outside the UofM. Budgets are pinched and we do more with less. There is no reason for excesses in the academic world that we are seeing. The UofM is in business to educate, so please run it like a business to get the best value for the dollar spent. That's the way to serve the students first.

The article is right. Don't judge the U of Minn on the last forty years of missteps and questionable decisions. Instead plow more money into to the U to make it a world class institution once again.

"Don't look back"? Aren't we taxpayers at least able to look back a little? To the day that Dr. Kaler extended a platinum parachute to the retiring AD, Mr. Maturi, who can not possibly raise more than he willl cost in lost contributions from all sources. I hate to be so pessimistic, because I want to be very proud of or flagship university, but she is listing hard to port, and in danger of sinking.

I have an enormous amount of respect for President Kaler, but this article struck me as more defensive than it needed to be. The U always is going to be the target of a lot of criticism. It has a lot of ongoing work to do to continually improve. The President does not need to respond to media criticism whenever it comes up. The explanation several weeks ago about Maturi was enough -- no need to explain that again. President Kaler has clearly articulated his priorities for the U. Regularly reporting to its constituents is the best way of keeping people informed. Beware of becoming too defensive. It is going to take a long time and a lot of performance to win over the critics. Do the right things.

If you commit a crime and serve your time, people are still going to judge you on the past until you show a different behavior long term. But OK. Going forward: Did you write this article, Eric, or was it some hired gun? I'm betting hired gun, then it was vetted, reviewed by many others including attorneys, and sent in with your name on it. So we're not off to a good start here.