Column: What on earth is IU President Pam Whitten thinking right now?

Even as a Bloomingtonian with no affiliation to Indiana University, I can't help wondering what on earth IU President Pam Whitten can be thinking right now.

Whitten and her administration have alienated the university faculty badly enough for them to vote 93% no confidence in her on April 16, as reported in H-T. She has alienated the graduate student body by her continual refusal to recognize their labor union, and by suppressing it not merely through stonewalling and stalling, but by threatening to fire those who participate in strikes.

Now, she has called out the Indiana State Police against the undergraduate students who were peacefully protesting, along with faculty, non-IU Bloomingtonians, and others, in Dunn Meadow, having them arrested, charged with trespass, and banned from campus for a year or more — an expulsion in all but name — under the pretense that a policy which had stood since the Vietnam War had been changed in the dark of the previous night by "the Ad Hoc Committee."

IU Maurer School of Law Professor Steve Sanders opined to Indiana Daily Student that this dystopian-sounding method of changing policy is not only unprincipled and and bereft of integrity (which it obviously is), but also reflective of poor legal judgment, and that it does not reflect the actual, regular, appropriate procedure for changing such a policy. Other lawyers interviewed by H-T opined that the enforcement of this supposed policy change rises to the level of a violation of the protestors' constitutional rights.

One has to wonder whether President Whitten and the other members of her administration who participated in creating such a sham policy change and then calling in state police on that basis haven't opened themselves to a lawsuit for wrongful arrest or some other abuse of their offices.

Given that I've never heard any of the folks I know who work as staff for IU say a single positive thing about Whitten either, who does she think it is that she's serving within the university community? Whose corner does she think she's in, if not her own, and who can she possibly think is in her corner?

Although the Board of Trustees has stood behind President Whitten and her administration through her unpopular mistreatment of the unionizing graduate students and the rising tide of general criticism over the past several years, does Whitten think they'll stay in her corner following not only the vote of no confidence, but the images of absolutely peaceful student and faculty protesters being shoved to the ground, cuffed with zipties, and arrested, all while overlooked by a much-photographed sniper from the roof of Indiana Memorial Union? Will they stand behind a university president who attempts to rule by fiat and use such massive force and violence against IU community members, American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly, adhering absolutely to nonviolence, with not so much as a single punch or plastic water bottle thrown?

I'd hate to have to bet my career on it. So what is Pam Whitten thinking?

It's evident that she's predisposed to be very concerned with appearances and "optics," so what could her interpretation possibly be of the reputational damage she (and the university) are suffering through these events? And could it be that she thinks things will somehow ameliorate over the coming years, when her reputation has consistently, relentlessly declined over the length of her term so far, only to plummet now?

The writing's on the wall. If she doesn't make a graceful exit soon, she may or may not be removed by the Trustees or forced out by legal action, but her reputation — her legacy — will only sour more the longer she remains.

Perhaps the upshot of this circumstance is that President Whitten no longer has to make an ethical choice between her own self-interest or career, on the one hand, and the best interests of the faculty, staff, students, or the institution of the university, on the other. As I see it, it's now in the best interest of all for her to leave her position at the soonest opportunity, which saves face acceptably for her, under whatever pretense of personal difficulties or exciting new projects she finds suitable.

Such a departure would do her less reputational damage than continuing to ride the downward spiral, and certainly look better than being forced out.

Rob Halm is a resident of Bloomington.