UND Students Plan Vote Calling For Resignation Of President Robert Kelley

UND Student Body President Tanner Franklin has told me that the student government at his institution is planning a vote of no confidence in President Robert Kelley.

“It’s absolutely about transparency,” Franklin told me on the phone this morning. You can read the resolution the students will be voting on below.

After a long series of “whereas” statements, the resoltuion reads calls for the resignation of “University of North Dakota President Robert O. Kelley, Vice President for Student Affairs, Dr. Lori Reesor, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, and Vice President for Finance and Operations, Alice Brekke for the reasons of lack of trust, transparency, good communication, integrity, respect of student voice, and effective leadership.”

It’s been a rocky couple of months for relations between UND students and the administration. In February a couple of students were ejected from a UND hockey game for holding up a large “Fire Kelley” banner. More recently Franklin and the student government have accused the administration of being less than forthcoming about proposed tuition hikes, specifically claiming that the administration was delaying the release of tuition hikes until after the legislative session.

Update: Franklin has also started an online petition here which already has 524 signatures and it was started about two hours ago at the time of publication.

Multiple incidents of the UND administration failing to be transparent with it’s stakeholders have taken place time and time again in recent years. The latest example of UND leadership, including President Kelley, Vice President for Academic Affairs/Provost Tom DiLorenzo, Vice President for Student Affairs Lori Reesor, and Vice President for Finance & Operations Alice Brekke failing to be transparent is in regards to tuition model proposals that have surfaced in the past few weeks. UND leaders purposely withheld information from students and others which led to an open records request being filed with the Legislative Council. Documents received per the request prove that UND directly lied about records existing to UND students, faculty, and staff. Communication was shut down, student concerns were relinquished, and work continued behind closed doors.

Corruption continues with our current administration. It has now become necessary for a change to take place at the University of North Dakota. It has become necessary for new leadership to be brought into the institution. It is time to set a new path through a vote of NO CONFIDENCE of University of North Dakota leadership. Sign the petition now to show your support for that change.

Update: Kelley just sent out this email to the UND campus. He calls Franklin’s allegations “unfounded.”