I would like to address this from a previous responder
“The president of a university is employed by the Board of Trustees, not by the bishop. The religious community has a contract with the Board. In this case, the Congregation of the Holy Cross has a contract with the Board of Trustees to allow Fr. Jenkins to serve as the president of the university.”
It is my understanding that the Board of trustees is made up of 50% Congregation of the Holy Cross Fathers and % 50 secular/laity/whomever. Why don’t the Congregation of the Holy Cross Fathers on the Board do something?
May God bless you
They don’t have total control. They don’t have enough votes on the Board of Trustees. Even if they did, the Board of Directors runs the day to day operations of the university, not the Trustees. The Trustees would have to go over the heads of the Directors. That creates an internal mess. Presently, no Holy Cross Brothers were elected to the Board of Directors of ND. Everyone on that board is lay.
It often happens that when you have lay boards such as these, they start off well, but as they grow in power, they begin to exert it over the religious and there is not much that the religious can do.
Unfortunately, the reason why so many religious have had to surrender control of their colleges and universities to lay Boards and non-profits is because the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Department of Education could not give tax money to religioius institutions unless they rendered a service to the state. In other words, unless they were subcontractors for the state.
Many students depend on federal money to attend college. They get federal grants to pay tuition and the schools also get federal grants to make up the operating budget. Should the schools lose those grants, they would have to pass the cost on to the students.
The federal loans and grants that the students get is not enough to pay for oeprating larger universities. The Catholic community is stuck. We surrender control of our colleges and universities to non-profits and lay boards or we reduce our colleges and universities to teach only those who can pay $200,000.00 for a four year degree. Even with federal aid to students and schools, the average tuition for a private university in the USA is average at $80K. That does not include housing and meals.
My son lives at home and attends a private secular unviersity. His four-year degree will cost $110,000.00. Most os us cannot afford that. We count on federal aid to the kids and the schools.
This whole thing had to be though out better by the university’s administration. That’s the problem. Fr. Jenkins is not the only guilty one here. He has become the whipping boy and so has his congregation. In the meantime, the other administrators and trustees are living in anonymity, while there is a problem that they helped to create. But their argument is going to be that the president of the university gets paid to deal with the public and the Church. The truth is that what they pay the congregation for his services is only half of what they would pay a lay president.
Fraternally,
JR
