Introduction to the Documents

In January, The Committee for Integrity (made up of current and former faculty, alumni and friends) designed a survey to be sent to all full time faculty at Shorter University. The reason for this was to give the faculty a voice which has been denied them by the current administration. A series of events, mostly related to a legal issue instigated by Shorter’s attorney, at Shorter’s direction, caused a much longer delay than we wished. This resulted in the delay and a legal expenditure for the Committee. The letter that is attached from the Committee explains this more fully.

On this site you will find links to three documents that The Committee for Integrity has sent to Dr. Dowless, Dr. Price, and to all the members of the Board of Trustees.  These were mailed by USPS on Monday, March 26. The Committee delayed sending these documents to you so that Shorter’s leaders would have time to react and possibly to respond following their Board meeting yesterday, March 30.

The documents are:

1. A letter from Read, Martin & Slickman, CPAs, LLP, the CPA firm that conducted the survey you received in early January.  In the letter, Jennifer Brynteson has recorded the results of the survey.

2.  A copy of the original faculty survey form.

3.  A letter from The Committee for Integrity addressed to Shorter’s leaders.

In the cover letter that was attached to the original survey, we stated:

“Whether the results will make any difference in the direction of Shorter, the Committee believes that faculty opinions can and will be heard by all involved.”

To insure that faculty opinions will indeed be heard by all involved, the Committee will today send copies of these three documents to additional interested parties, including SACS and AAUP representatives, Baptist Today (a moderate Baptist paper), and The Christian Index (the GBC’s paper).  Feel free to distribute these documents as you choose.

You may be interested to know that the Rome News-Tribune published an article about the survey:

Survey results show some Shorter faculty unhappy Shorter administrators say results are not an accurate reflection of entire school.
Rome News-Tribune, Apr. 1, 2012

We appreciate the large number of faculty who returned their surveys.  That was an act of courage and selflessness for which we hope they will be amply rewarded.

Thank you,

The Committee for Integrity