Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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In the aftermath of this year’s vote on Ballot Question 1, the overseers of Nevada’s universities and colleges have two ways to go.
One, they can heed the loud-and-clear message sent to them by Clark County voters to clean up their corruption and work in the best interests of our schools here, particularly UNLV.
Or two, they can continue their flagrant abuses that cripple Nevada’s higher education from reaching its potential.
Sadly, the outcome of the vote makes the second option possible, as Nevadans overall voted down the ballot question by a razor-thin margin. That “no” vote means the Nevada Board of Regents and the Nevada System of Higher Education, which oversee the higher ed system in a way similar to a school board and a superintendent’s office in a K-12 school district, can maintain their status quo. A “yes” outcome would have allowed Nevada lawmakers to gain oversight over the regents and NSHE, restructure them and bring accountability to the system.
But in Clark County, the outcome was a roar of disapproval against the regents and NSHE. We voted overwhelmingly in favor of the question — 485,822 to 375,660. That’s a margin of 110,162 votes, or almost 13 percentage points, more than enough to be considered a mandate.
This was entirely predictable. Southern Nevadans long ago became fed up with the regents for micromanaging our schools, disrupting the leadership and abusing their authority. The regents should take that as notice: clean up your act, or the process of stripping you of your power to mismanage the system will begin again, with more vehemence than before.
Nowhere has the regents’ dysfunction been felt more deeply than at UNLV. Meddling by the regents and their hired hands at NSHE has led to a revolving door of presidential administrations at the university, which now has its seventh leader in 14 years, counting temporary presidents.
Each of those changes caused a disruption in progress and a start-over toward a new set of policies and goals. It’s often been said that making progress at an institution like a four-year university is like steering a battleship, but in our case it’s like trying to steer one where the captain has 13 regents and the NSHE chancellor criticizing his or her every move and constantly trying to put their hands on the wheel.
The inevitable result was the succession of UNLV presidents who threw up their hands and walked out.
Then there’s the endemic malfeasance among the regents and NSHE. There’s not enough room here to dredge up every instance of misbehavior, but it includes demanding special favors from university staff and threatening retaliation for any resistance, turning a blind eye to sexual harassment, and brazenly lying to state lawmakers.
So why did the question fail? Possibly a mix of voter apathy and a reluctance to change the Nevada constitution, which the question was designed to revise by removing the regents from it and ending their status as essentially a fourth branch of government. In general, Nevadans don’t pay much attention to the regents, and may have felt that the ballot question was taking something away from them when it was actually giving them more control over the board.
It’s reasonable to think that while the fury over the regents among Southern Nevadans prompted the different outcome here, residents elsewhere weren’t feeling the pain and were not paying much attention to the situation, and therefore voted no.
Unfortunately, it looks like Southern Nevada is stuck with the “no” vote, at least until we can put our heads together and come up with a new strategy.
But in the meantime, there are a couple of key takeaways in the vote for local leaders.
One, for the Southern Nevada members of the board of regents, it’s time to become champions and defenders of UNLV and our other institutions. The naysaying, micromanaging and bullying must end, or you’ll be voted out. Your time of manipulating events in the shadows is over — voters are watching.
Second, our legislative leaders must go to the mat for institutions, especially by ensuring that UNLV gets its fair share of state resources.
As the only county in Nevada to approve Question 1, we’ve shown we’re on our own in this fight.
The regents and NSHE have an opportunity to hear our concerns and change their stripes. But if they don’t, we’ll have to protect our own.
The vote showed that many people in the state are unhappy with the regents and want them to improve their game. That means giving all institutions a chance to reach their potential. As Southern Nevada goes, so still goes the rest of the state, but we in the south root for the success of the entire system because it allows us to grow even more.
