WACO, Texas — Baylor University regents voted to postpone indefinitely a call for President Robert Sloan’s resignation, and they unanimously rejected a request by the university’s faculty senate to hold a faculty-wide referendum on Sloan’s administration.
After a motion was introduced at the Sept. 24 regents meeting calling for Sloan’s resignation, a second motion called for the matter to be postponed indefinitely, chairman Will Davis announced after the executive session.
“It does not kill the idea forever and ever. It can be brought up at another time,” he said. Davis declined to reveal the vote margin on the motion to postpone, but one regent characterized it as “very close.”
The motion to postpone a call for resignation was the latest in a series of votes by regents on Sloan’s leadership. The board voted 31–4 in September 2003 to affirm Sloan. But his support had eroded by spring, and at the board’s May meeting, a motion to ask for Sloan’s resignation failed by an 18–17 secret ballot.
Regents took no vote on Sloan’s presidency at their July retreat, other than unanimously affirming the Baylor 2012 10-year plan that has become the controversial centerpiece of his administration.
While Davis described the Sept. 24 meeting as “collegial,” a regent said the mood was “very tense.” A majority of the board members expressed their views during extended discussion of Sloan’s leadership, he added.
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