Cal Lutheran Faculty in Revolt

While the brouhaha at Harvard has garnered international headlines, a smaller scale skirmish is happening closer to home at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Earlier this week, the faculty assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution of “no confidence” in President Lori Varlotta, asking the Board of Regents to replace her.  

The Tuesday vote was 122 to 3, with the resolution reading, in part:

WHEREAS the faculty have no confidence in President Varlotta’s ability to be an effective

steward of the University budget and her ability to maintain the financial health of the institution;

WHEREAS it is the opinion of the faculty that President Varlotta’s interpersonal style and

decisions have caused reputational harm to the institution by needlessly escalating conflict and

distracting from the many positive activities happening at the University;

WHEREAS the faculty have no confidence in President Varlotta’s ability to maintain and

cultivate important community and business partnerships;

WHEREAS it is the opinion of the faculty that President Varlotta has not only failed to build

relationships with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other institutional stakeholders but has

eroded and divided an historically close community;

After the vote was taken, the three leading officers of the school’s Board of Regents issued a statement in support of Varlotta:

The Board of Regents has worked closely with President Varlotta and fully partnered with her on the actions she has taken to navigate the university through truly unprecedented challenges. She continues to thoughtfully address the many challenges facing the university, she demonstrates an unwavering commitment to the success of our students now and in the future, and she has our full support. We know that the steps we must take together to reach financial sustainability can be challenging but we are confident that the institution will succeed under her leadership.

The Regents admitted the school is facing financial issues, but blames that on the lingering effects of the pandemic.

According to the Ventura County Star, the school has seen its enrollment drop by about 25% since the fall of 2018.

Varlotta told the Star that the school is not yet in “dire financial straits,” though it has offered some faculty early retirement buyout packages and scaled back certain offices.

The student newspaper, The Echo, noted growing faculty frustration:

“The no confidence vote option has been considered for a couple of years, but faculty leadership wanted to try other less public options first,” former Faculty Assembly Chair and professor of psychology Julie Kuehnel said. “However, these other efforts were not successful, and therefore we moved to a vote of no confidence by the full faculty.”

While Varlotta is not under fire for offering disastrous testimony to Congress like Claudine Gay did, one political issue has been roiling the campus for some time, shortly after she became president in 2020:  the matter of her alleged gross mishandling of the Elton and Janice Gallegly Center for Public Service and Civic Engagement, founded about a decade ago when the former congressman came to an agreement with CLU to store his political archives at the school.

Elton Gallegly represented the Thousand Oaks area in Congress for 26 years and was approached by CLU with the idea for it to host the center, which would store his records and offer various programs in 2013.

Saying Varlotta has left the Center to wither and die for purely political reasons as Gallegly is a Republican, Gallegly sued over the matter. Last September, a number of Center donors sent a letter to the Regents demanding they be given their money back and/or to at least told how it was spent as the Center itself is a shadow of what it was meant to be.

The demand is not directly part of Gallegly’s lawsuit, but can be said to be a parallel effort to force CLU to at the very least explain their actions and to account for the donated funds – the archiving has, reportedly, yet to be completed, the office was removed, the speakers series has hosted one person, and the Reagan library pulled its cooperation with the Center.

Lending credence to the allegations that politics has played a role in the waning of the Center, the donors pointed to a “Race and Equity” workshop Zoom meeting in 2020, a few months before Varlotta – who has her doctorate’s in “educational leadership and feminist philosophy” –   formally took over as president.

On the call, a number of participants specifically skewered the Center in very direct, very woke language:  “Burn it down to the ground and start over,” “Occupy Gallegly,” “the Gallegly Center needs to be repurposed,” and “Renaming and repurposing that space to be a true center for diversity and inclusion would send a clear message” were amongst the comments.

In a follow-up letter to the administration – which the “next president better be reading” – the Center was described as a “racist space” and that Gallegly himself was anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQIA+.

“The donors, community leaders and many former Regents and CLU officials are left deeply concerned by the university’s recent actions,” said donors attorney Barry Groveman last September. “We believe that CLU’s reversal and hindrance of the Gallegly Center’s intended operations are the result of  bowing to a misguided and unrestrained political cancel culture generated by a few CLU employees and in breach of contractual obligations.”

A university spokesperson did not respond to request for comment, but downplayed the issue to the Star.

“Votes such as these are permissible in an academic environment like ours that values shared governance,” the statement says. “They have also become increasingly common at institutions facing difficult budget decisions and other change-management issues.”

As to the Gallegly lawsuit against CLU, a judge is expected to rule very shortly if the trial will be held locally or moved to Los Angles County due to media coverage.  According to the Thousand Oaks Acorn, CLU believes it cannot get a fair trial because of a letter writing campaign, allegedly organized by the Galleglys, that has tainted the jury pool.

The change of venue request, in a very scorched earth manner, stated that the Gallegly’s suit seeks to “destroy” CLU for not “displaying a permanent shrine to (his) greatness” and that they have mobilized their political connections to “serve as a powerful machine of misinformation.”

The Galleglys have called the university change of venue demands a “delaying tactic.”

And since “misinformation” does not actually exist, it’s not a very good one.