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Editor’s note: In recent weeks at Kapiolani Community College, 80 percent of the academic units in the Faculty Senate voted no confidence in and for the immediate removal of  Leon Richards, who has served as chancellor since 2007 and as a faculty member since 1977. A spokesperson said UH Vice President for Community Colleges John F. Morton will consider the resolution as part of Richards’ annual evaluation, along with no confidence votes by the KCC staff council, student congress and Native Hawaiian council. A version of this column recently appeared on the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly website.

I first began teaching at Kapiolani Community College in 1989. Since then, I have moved from being a part-time lecturer teaching in multiple disciplines to a full professor and the current chair of the Department of Arts and Humanities.

I recently took part in the KCC Faculty Senate vote on Chancellor Leon Richards, and like so many of my colleagues, voted “no confidence” in the man who has led the college since 2007.

On a personal level, because I have watched myself and many of my colleagues shift slowly and inexorably from professionals who joyfully engaged students, sharing our passion for the subjects we teach, to feeling like we must put our heads down, disengage and just treat our profession like a job. The accompanying apathy and cynicism I felt was simply too distasteful to allow it to continue unanswered.

On a professional level, I have discovered since becoming department chair of one of the largest units on campus that I have been placed in an untenable situation due to what seems clearly to be inaction and ineptitude on the part of the KCC administration over many years and across several prior department chairs.

The administrative atmosphere I walked into was one of hostility and manipulation. I believe I have been lied to and used as a pawn in the administration’s broader agenda because under Chancellor Richards’ leadership, fundamental problems, which have been widely acknowledged by virtually all involved, could not be resolved.

If the chancellor is genuinely shocked by the current state of affairs, then he is out of touch with the sentiments of a large part of the KCC ohana. He is not the engaged leader he envisions himself to be, and those most close to him have served him poorly by allowing him to think he had broad support.

The vote of no confidence has been a long time coming. Many efforts over many years have been made to communicate low faculty morale and the myriad problems and frustrations many experience in their daily work life at KCC. These efforts have been met with deflection, derision and dismissal.

Yes, numbers can be manipulated, but the consistent 3-to-1 or greater margins registered by all four groups that raised the issue of no confidence sends a clear and unambiguous message to Richards, Vice President John F. Morton, University of Hawaii System President David Lassner and the Board of Regents. The fact that faculty and staff in 13 of KCC’s 16 departments and units registered majority support for the no confidence decision makes that message even more emphatic.

I am proud of what my campus has done. This is not a time to negotiate but to reiterate: Chancellor Richards must leave.