Dubuque to SJC: Breaking up is (not) hard to do

SITKA, ALASKA

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Chris Bryner is the former Dean of Student and Community Affairs at SJ. He was not surprised that the partnership with Dubuque University faltered, but he was surprised by the tone of Bullock’s letter.

“What I didn’t expect for sure was identifying people almost by name, and saying they were to blame. And I absolutely wasn’t expecting the very last paragraph in the letter, raising up Dr. Dobler to visionary.”

Bryner is the blogger Bullock refers to. He started the blog SJWatch shortly after the campus closed in June of 2007.

“I don’t think that Jeffrey Bullock understands the nature at all of faculty, staff, or students at Sheldon Jackson College. In my opinion most of what he’s learned about the campus has not been first hand. He’s been here a couple of times but he’s not lived it.  He wasn’t here when this happened. People are not disgruntled, but when it comes to the leadership of SJ they expected accountability for things that happened.”

Bryner and the approximately one-hundred other staff were laid off with an hour-and-a-half’s notice three years ago. A common sentiment among former employees is that there was never an all-out effort at the time to bring everyone together to figure out a way to keep SJ going. Marcel LaPerriere, the former maintenance superintendent, says he’s one-tenth as stressed as he was working at SJ then. He told me, “We could have saved that school.” LaPerriere estimates that there is at least $50-million dollars in deferred maintenance on the historic campus – an overwhelming prospect for Dubuque. LaPerriere thinks the proposed partnership was a ruse, a way for the SJ administration to claim that it did its best before throwing in the towel.

Scott Harris, a former outdoor leadership instructor at SJ, now chairs the board of the Sitka Sound Science Center – formerly the Sheldon Jackson Hatchery. Harris says Bullock’s letter has brought some clarity to his organization’s relationship to SJ.

“You know it’s unfortunate Dubuque’s not coming, but a decion’s been made and now we can really move forward in earnest, and aggressively develop other plans.”

Harris says the center has been actively negotiating with SJ to separate the hatchery from the campus, but uncertainty over Dubuque has clouded the process. He thinks the lack of clear detail may have contributed to Dubuque’s decision to withraw.

“You know both Dubuque and the SJ board of trustees recognized we had the capacity to do quite a bit there. We successfully operated the hatchery, increased our revenue, got quite a bit of grant money, and started running educational programs. Whether Dubuque would own it, the Science Center, or some other entity – that was never worked out.”

And, by the way, Harris says he’s not disgruntled.