By Brad Butterfield
A letter sent to Chancellor Mildred Garcia, Governor Gavin Newsom, and the CSU Board of Trustees on April 29 urgently demands the “immediate removal and termination” of President Tom Jackson, and his recently hired Chief of Staff, Mark Johnson. Signed by 320 faculty and staff, the letter details how Cal Poly Humboldt’s most senior leadership duo not only mishandled the response to the pro-Palestine protest, which began on April 22, but also endangered the campus community, inflamed the situation, and did not act upon the principles of shared governance core to campus culture. At the time of publishing this article, no response had been received from any of the three parties who received the urgent plea.
The letter highlighted three keynote actions (and non-actions) related to the week-long protest, which the demand for both terminations hinged upon. (1) The leadership’s decision to bring in police on April 22 and the evening of April 29 and early morning of April 30, (2) a failure to communicate, collaborate with the campus community during the decision making process, and (3) the initial closure, and following ‘hard’ closure of campus.
While some members of administration were present on the quad on Monday April 22, neither Jackson nor Johnson were. This detachment from the evolving protest, as well as a years-long absence from conversation, collaboration, and communication with the campus community led to the ill-informed decision to deploy police onto protesting students on that Monday, according to the letter.
“The President’s decisions to bring in law enforcement, before even attempting to communicate with student protestors, followed by the “hard campus closure” on April 27, 2024 has intensified rather than de-escalated the situation,” reads the letter.
The presidents’ complete absence of leadership during the protest, which ended after hundreds of riot police descended onto campus, has resulted in a complete loss of trust between the president and the campus community, according to the letter.
“Decisions affecting the entire university have been made without any input from shared governance bodies. This unilateral approach renders meaningful dialogue and problem-solving impossible,” reads the letter.
The letter closes by calling for the immediate termination of both Jackson and Johnson.
“We have lost faith in President Jackson and Chief of Staff Johnson’s ability to lead Cal Poly Humboldt with integrity, foresight, or concern for the well-being of our learning community,” reads the letter.
Neither Jackson nor Johnson were available for an interview. Jackson has been contacted for an interview over 60 times by The Lumberjack since Aug. 2023. He has never responded.
The letter follows an April 25 general faculty vote of ‘no-confidence’ in Jackson and Johnson. The vote passed 197 affirmative, 3, negative, and 7 abstained.
Read the full senate resolution here.
The leadership’s closure of campus significantly impacted the ability for university faculty and staff to fulfill their roles effectively. Among those 320 signatories was Dan Barton, wildlife department chair, who held office hours adjacent to the cement blockades and police on LK Wood Boulevard near the library circle in the days during the campus closure.
“I sat out there in a lawn chair and I met with students and I talked to them about how they were doing,” Barton said.
After several days at his new crosswalk office, Barton was threatened with arrest by a Humboldt County Sheriff Department deputy. According to Barton, the deputy stated that the university’s property line extended to the freeway, and therefore, Barton was violating the campus closure by conducting office hours on the crosswalk, next to the cement blockades. Additionally, Barton said, the deputy told him that he was violating a city ordinance which prohibits blocking a crosswalk.
“I have been threatened with termination by my employer and suspension by my employer and legal action for setting foot on the very campus that I, along with all my colleagues have helped to build and maintain into what it is now,” Barton said. “I have never been more deeply insulted than that.”
Barton said that the two previous weeks have been two of the “most stressful” weeks of his career.
First on the list of faculty and staff signatures is James Woglom, chair of the university senate, who was in communication with both protest leaders as well as top university administrators throughout the week-long protest. On Friday, April 26, Woglom called a representative with “access to or relationship with the Chancellor’s office” who told him that forced entry into the protester-occupied Siemens Hall by Friday’s end had been discouraged, but not yet agreed upon. After this call, Woglom relayed the potentially imminent threat to students.
“I began to tell everyone I saw, including students, faculty, and community members, that ‘The threat of force was real, the threat of force was imminent, and folks should either run away from armed people or submit to peaceful arrest,’” Woglom wrote in his Senate Chair Report.
Read Woglom’s full Senate Chair Report here.
Woglom said he now sees how his actions on the 26th were “probably fairly irrational.” As the clarity of hindsight begins to shine upon the chaos of late April on campus, what remains most prominent among those involved, -on all sides of the situation- is the great personal toll this has taken.
“I’ve been about as sad and scared and angry as I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Woglom said.
A large part of Woglom’s frustration stemmed from Jackson and Johnson’s complete failure to engage with the campus community during the weeks-long crisis.
“There has been a backslide in good faith engagement with shared governance – with the idea that we all need to be making decisions,” Woglom said. “We’re not even that big of a school, you know. We’re a few 1000 people. And if we can’t engage in democracy on this scale, if we’re just gonna give up on it because it’s difficult, because it’s a slog, because it’s too nuanced and complex…I’m getting heated because I’m talking about it now.”
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