While Harvard University's faculty is still determining whether it will take a vote of no confidence about President Lawrence Summers, professors at Penn say that such a measure is unlikely to ever be taken here.
Though Penn's faculty has collectively expressed disapproval of the administration in the past, professors have never taken an official vote of no confidence -- a vote taken to publicly express dissatisfaction with a university's leadership.
Faculty Senate Chairman Charles Mooney says that while the senate does have the option to vote no confidence in the president if it chooses, he doubts that such a step would ever be taken. He said that faculty at Penn would be more likely to be dissatisfied with a specific policy than with a particular administrator.
"I just really don't see this culture [at Penn] speaking to the individual as opposed to the policy," Mooney said.
And even if Penn professors were to ever vote no confidence, it would not necessarily have a direct effect on administrative decisions.
"The Faculty Senate can do whatever the Faculty Senate wants to do, but that doesn't mean anybody's going to pay attention," Mathematics professor Gerald Porter said.
However, he qualified this statement, saying, "The president serves the desires of the trustees, [and] it always becomes difficult for anyone to govern any place if the troops are not happy."
Such was the case in 1978, when the Faculty Senate -- an advisory body of standing faculty members created in 1952 -- convened for an emergency meeting. The purpose of the meeting was "to assess the performance of the central administration," according to a petition of faculty members who requested the meeting.
According to Political Science professor Henry Teune, faculty members had a number of grievances regarding then-president Martin Meyerson, one being a sudden change in the nature of graduate fellowship allocations imposed by the president and provost.
"He was governing this University through one of its most difficult decades," Teune said.
"There were a lot of things going on, and this was the one that blew up," he added.
At the meeting, over 600 faculty members voted to establish a panel that would review the faculty's concerns about the administration and work with administrators to strengthen confidence throughout the University.
However, the Faculty Senate overwhelmingly defeated a motion by then-Dental professor Richard Orkand for a vote of no confidence in the administration.
At the time, then-Finance professor Morris Mendelson said to The Daily Pennsylvanian that, "A no-confidence resolution would put the administration on trial without reply. ... It might be an exercise in futility."
Later that year, Meyerson announced that he would step down sometime during the 1980-1981 academic year but denied that faculty unrest forced his decision.
Prior to the emergency Faculty Senate meeting, then-Provost Eliot Stellar had already resigned. He said that he stepped down to give the University a fresh start after its period of tumult.
