Syracuse University faculty members and officials sparred over the proposed University Place promenade at an often-contentious feedback session on Monday evening.

About 50 faculty members — many of them S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications professors — filled room 250 in Newhouse III, where they raised several concerns about the potential promenade, for which construction is scheduled to begin on May 16.

The faculty members put particular emphasis on what they believe has been a lack of transparency from SU officials regarding the promenade, in addition to questioning how the promenade would fit into the Academic Strategic Plan, whether the cost of constructing it would be justified and whether a promenade would make campus safer and more accessible as SU officials have proposed it will.

The session came after a petition expressing many of those concerns, though with less detail, was circulated on Thursday and ultimately signed by 108 faculty members before being submitted to SU Chancellor Kent Syverud. The session lasted just under two hours, and another feedback session is scheduled for Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the same room.

The University Place promenade would run from South Crouse Avenue to College Place in front of Newhouse, Schine Student Center and E.S. Bird Library. It would be pedestrian-friendly, eliminating non-emergency vehicles from passing through that area. The promenade has been proposed as part of the Campus Framework plan, which is part of the Fast Forward initiative.

Monday’s session was led by Michael Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture, and Pete Sala, SU’s vice president and chief campus facilities officer. Early in the session, Speaks made the case that SU has been clear about the promenade. He said it has been an “organizing feature” of the Campus Framework since the initiative’s conception in 2014.

Speaks also pointed to an update session for the Campus Framework held on March 2, when images of the potential promenade were shown inside Schine’s Goldstein Auditorium. At that session, Speaks said the promenades were in a conceptual stage and that actual designs had not been proposed. It was one of several “outreach efforts” outlined in a timeline sent Thursday to faculty members in response to the promenade petition.

Susan Nash, Newhouse’s director of administration, said the March 2 meeting was lacking in detail and didn’t give students, faculty or staff the opportunity to respond.

Nash added that there has been no public documentation of a needs assessment for the promenade and that, until recently, there was no public documentation of a design objective — which she said Newhouse faculty could not give input for.

“I’m being defensive because I’m one of the building occupants that was referred to, and we did not participate in any design discussions,” Nash said, adding that faculty have been blindsided by the design plans.

Nash also called the timeline that was circulated Thursday “a red herring,” saying it’s purpose was to divert the discussion away from faculty concerns about how decisions for the promenade were made. That elicited a rousing applause from much of the room.

Faculty members contrasted the transparency and planning behind the Campus Framework with the 2003 Campus Master Plan and the construction of Newhouse III.

The 2003 Campus Master Plan, faculty members said, was the result of every academic unit and administrative unit on campus being asked for input and was shared with the campus community in a collaborative way. Additionally, before Newhouse III was constructed, officials in the school submitted a case statement which detailed all of its needs and identified the cost and where the money would come from, said David Rubin, a Newhouse professor who was the dean of the school at the time.

Speaks said a case statement and a needs assessment have been completed and submitted in the form of a roughly 250-page document. But he added that SU can’t release or discuss those until the Board of Trustees signs off on the document.

“I find it amazing,” Rubin said. “… That kind of data should be out there so that anybody can see it.”

Rubin and other faculty members also questioned how the promenade would fit into SU’s Academic Strategic Plan, which is another component of Fast Forward.

Speaks said the Academic Strategic Plan has not been approved, prompting several faculty members to ask how, given that, the university could start construction of the promenade.

“We have so many needs on this campus,” Rubin said. “Why do we need this? Where’s the data?”

One professor said the university “made the assumption that this was more important than academics, than fully staffing our academic department,” referencing the buyout program that 254 employees took part in.

“I would love to know who made that assumption,” the professor said. “Six million dollars is what I hear the price tag of this is. Is that correct? That could go a long way in hiring back all of those staff that were let go.”

Sala said SU is still waiting for the final cost of the promenade to come in, but he estimated that it would be less than $6 million. He added that the money would come from the Capital Projects Fund’s budget.

Some faculty members also expressed concerns that traffic on Waverly Avenue will increase as a result of the promenade’s construction and that the street will thus become unsafe for students. Chris Tuohey, chair of the broadcast and digital journalism department, said he’s never heard a case of a student having trouble walking on University Place, the area which SU officials say would become a more pedestrian-friendly zone with the promenade.

“But constantly, constantly, constantly, we have this (traffic jam) out on Waverly,” he said, adding that the street will “clearly” become more busy if the promenade is constructed. “… I’d feel more comfortable about this if we were doing anything to fix an actual, existing problem.”

Others in attendance expressed doubts that the promenade would increase accessibility for people with disabilities on campus. Harriet Brown, an associate professor of magazine journalism, said the university is already a difficult place for people in wheelchairs or on crutches to navigate. She questioned how “removing one of the few access points for buses to even get people close to this part of campus” would improve accessibility.

As faculty members continued to voice their concerns, Laura Heyman, an associate professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ transmedia department, pointed out that neither Syverud nor anybody from the Board of Trustees was at the session. Sala said he would relay the faculty’s concerns to Syverud.

Heyman said the session felt like it was designed simply to “tick off the box” so administrators could say there has been “some sort of discussion.”

“This is not what collaboration or transparency look like, and I hope you will go back and tell the chancellor,” Brown added.

Published on May 9, 2016 at 9:46 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu