Editorial: What are they running from?

If one’s an incidence, two’s a coincidence and three’s a pattern, then what does five make?

We’re talking about administrators leaving the University of Toledo.

Last week, it was simultaneously announced that Larry Burns and Godfrey Ovwigho will leave the university for positions at the University of Akron, making them the fourth and fifth higher-level administrators to leave UT in the past year.

Jeffery Gold, Scott Scarborough and Lloyd Jacobs already led the way, all three of them having left in 2014.

Jeffery Gold was the first to leave. Gold was the chancellor of the UT Medical Center for nine years before he departed as chancellor for the University of Nebraska Medical Center in January 2014.

Lloyd Jacobs, who served as UT’s president until June of 2014, was next to go when he stepped down and was paid $150,000 to do so. However, it was also announced that Jacobs would continue on at UT as a professor emeritus, continuing to receive his presidential salary of $392,700 for the next three years. The presidential search committee is currently trying to fill his position.

Scott Scarborough was third to leave. He left his job as UT main campus provost to become The University of Akron’s president in July 2014. John Barrett took his place, currently acting as UT’s interim provost.

Burns and Ovwigho are now the fourth and fifth administrators who’ve decided to hit the road.

Burns is the vice president for external affairs. His job responsibilities include leading marketing and communication initiatives at UT as well as overseeing UT’s community engagement activities, like the annual Tie One On basketball game that raises thousands of dollars in funds for prostate cancer.

However, in his new position, Burns will be the vice president for advancement at the University of Akron. According to the Toledo Blade, this expanded senior leadership role was created by Scott Scarborough, who recommended Burns to the University of Akron board of trustees. Burns was selected from four other finalists interviewed for the position.

The Toledo Blade reported that Burns will start his new job at the end of April and will be will be paid $285,000 annually. At UT, he was paid $217,495.16 in 2012, according to The Blade’s public employee salaries database. That’s a pay increase of $67,504.84.

Godfrey Ovwigho is the vice president and CIO of information technology and oversees the entire IT department. Like Burns, Akron has also hired Ovwigho as chief information officer.

The Beacon Journal said Ovwigho’s salary will be $226,600 annually. When compared to his reported UT salary of $238,603.01 in 2012 from the Blade’s public employee salaries database, we can’t help but notice that he made over $12,000 more at UT in 2012 than he will his first year in Akron.

With a growing number of administrators who are choosing to leave, the university has had to fill their roles with temporary interim positions. Consequently, this leaves students asking questions – who holds which titles now and who is responsible for what?

The exit door to the university seems to be wide open, beckoning administrators and causing us to wonder — what does this say about UT? A plethora of questions follow: is there an underlying problem that we can’t see? Why are so many choosing to leave for jobs elsewhere? Where will the new administrators come from? Will they be brought up from lower-level administration or will they be hired in from the outside?

While you ponder these questions, ask yourself one more — what does this mean for the university?

It means that more people are picking up the slack the administrators are leaving behind as they go. People in lower-level positions have to accommodate for the loss of administrators, which may mean picking up more responsibilities on top of already-existing ones. Current administrators also have to divvy up their time between finding and hiring new members and managing day-to-day tasks.

We don’t have answers to all these questions, but that doesn’t mean the answers aren’t worth thinking about.

Yet we’re still stuck questioning — what are they running from?