After my latest campus visit, I returned to find a massive shakeup in the academic cabinet at Romulus University. Life seems to work that way. You leave home base for a brief moment, and everything changes. It’s like when you ignore your email inbox for a weekend and come back to an avalanche on Monday morning. I don’t know all the details behind our administrative upheaval, but I can speculate on how this chaos began.

Earlier in the week, the board of trustees approved a contract extension for our Fearless Leader. In the short time she has been in the president’s office, a number of improvements can be seen on campus. There was a lot of course correction, albeit sometimes painful, to ensure that Romulus could stay afloat. I still maintain that my termination is how the rest of the faculty will be able to resume receiving retirement benefits. My former department chair does not like it when I make that joke. She would prefer that her classrooms have working HVAC systems over a 401(k) plan. Sometimes you can’t get what you want.

The extension given to Fearless Leader was nothing substantial, an additional two years of security to help right the ship even further. Apparently, and this is where I am extrapolating, this was not the best news to the rest of the academic cabinet. Shortly thereafter, several senior administrators announced their departures. There were five leaving at the end of the school year. That is a little alarming.

Losing one of the VPs made sense because she was offered a position closer to her family back east. I can understand that. If family means a lot to somebody, why not try to land a gig close to where you call home? Two others were jumping ship to take over for a mentor they knew who was retiring from another institution. I don’t understand the rationale, but that is what I heard. Those three moves seem pretty coincidental at best or highly suspect at worst.

The fact that the chief financial officer is leaving is what set off my alarm bells. I saw this song-and-dance a couple of years ago, when I first arrived. Our previous CFO ran our finances like they took a crash course from Enron. Our money manager manipulated the numbers to make everything sound better than it actually was. Upon discovery, the CFO and president (a.k.a. Commander Converse) were hastily removed from office.

I don’t believe that this is the case this time around, but I am aware that Fearless Leader is slowly becoming known as a wartime consigliere. The strategies used during their watch are successful, but they are rather painful in the present. As far as I can tell, Romulus has survived the worst of the crunch. However, having a stable future is important. I can only assume the contract extension is to ensure the current trajectory continues.

That might be the most painful pill to swallow for some of those currently at the top. They were willing to take the brunt of Fearless Leader’s overbearing managerial style, but I think most of them have had enough. As far as I can tell, it looks as though Fearless Leader has lost their shine and is slowly becoming the villain around here that many are fearing might happen. I will have more information on this as things progress toward graduation. Stay tuned.