Gathering Places
Gathering Places
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Sunshine laws were created to provide the public with the knowledge and motivation required to participate in democratic systems -- and I consider the University of Hawaii to be a democratic system. It should, therefore, be a model of democracy. ‘Sunshine’ will lead
UH and Hawaii to
better governingEditor's note: The following commentary is an edited excerpt from
a speech delivered March 18 at the annual Freedom of Information
Day luncheon by University of Hawaii President Evan S. Dobelle.By Evan S. Dobelle
University of Hawaii presidentThe purpose of sunshine, in my opinion, is not simply to ensure that the public is informed. It is to ensure that the public is engaged.
There exists a paradox in America today. One might think that because we are more informed about the actions of our government than we were 50 years ago, that we would also be more involved. Not so.
An article in the Feb. 27 Star-Bulletin states that Hawaii reported the lowest turnout of voters nationwide in the 2000 general elections. This low turnout was "only 44.1 percent, a figure that has continued to drop since 1980, when 63.5 percent of eligible Hawaii residents voted." And parallel to that, Hawaii ranked at the bottom of the nation's rates for those registering to vote.
This is a strange phenomenon, and a deeply troubling one. The lesson this teaches is that it is not enough to open the door on the decision making. We must seek out community participation. Public citizenship must be a value we actively pursue. Reversing closed-door processes and decision making is a vital way to begin restoring public trust and confidence in governmental agencies and policies. But it is also only a first step.
UH has a new commitment to sunshine, and it will influence our course for the future.
The university is accountable to members of the public not only because their taxes provide our baseline operational funds, but because our mission derives from the public's hopes and dreams for Hawaii. Keeping open books is one way we ensure that we remain accountable to public ambition.
This conviction is eloquently stated in the preamble of Hawaii's own Sunshine Law.
The preamble states that "in a democracy, the people are vested with the ultimate decision-making power. Governmental agencies exist to aid the people in the formation and conduct of public policy. Opening up the governmental processes to public scrutiny and participation is the only viable and reasonable way of protecting the public's interest."
To implement this policy the Legislature declared that it intended to protect the people's right to know. Let me reiterate: The right to know empowers participation.
Of Hawaii's public institutions, the university has special responsibilities to ensure openness. The first responsibility is the noble tradition of universities founded on the principle of a free flow of ideas -- even, and especially, ideas that are considered heretical in their own time. If we look at our canonical academic thinkers -- across the disciplines -- we see that they shared at least two things: a passion for truth, and the experience of a highly resistant establishment. Think of Galileo ... Darwin ... Lenny Bruce.
Letting openness into the university is essential to carry on this tradition. In Hawaii, letting the sunshine into places that have remained dark for a great many years is also one of the ways we re-inspire ourselves according to this tradition. We are building a university culture where risk need not be hidden, but is understood as a possibility whenever new discoveries are being made.
The second responsibility derives from our function of educating Hawaii's young adults, aged 18 to 80. University professors and administrators teach by example. Letting sunshine into the university now is essential if we are to teach through our performance as well as our pronouncements. We teach those lessons not only in the classroom, but through inclusion.
The third responsibility is the need to be accountable to the taxpayers and to the students paying tuition. It's instructive to remember former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Louis Brandeis's counsel to let sunshine expose governmental operations because it is a disinfectant. Now, the university needs to be more accountable than ever before since, 18 months ago, Hawaii's voters approved the constitutional amendment granting us more autonomy in managing our internal affairs.
That freedom, given to us by the people, is a sacred trust. And I believe we are living up to that trust.
The university recently has named a contractor for the construction of the Health and Wellness Center in Kakaako. We made a commitment early in the process that we would be open, that we would involved the public in the decision-making process to the greatest extent possible.
As soon as we did that, we heard the chorus: "you can't do that. You'll get nothing done." Just four months later, we have -- far beyond anyone's expectations but our own -- because there is a new expectation at the University of Hawaii.
In meeting our aggressive timetable, not only have we taken a step closer to the creation of the largest and most complex project in the university's history, but also we have signaled that with the new expectation, there is also a new way of doing business across the UH system: It is quick without being hasty. It is empowered without sacrificing accountability. It is visionary without having lost touch with reality. And it is inclusive without being bureaucratic.
We'll have a shovel in the ground by this fall, we will employ 600-700 local tradesmen and women -- all local -- and when the project is complete we will have created 2,700 hundred permanent jobs at all skill levels for the people of Hawaii. That's what we mean when we say the university is big business. It is economic development inspired by public service, and dependent on public participation.
Being more open is, in fact, making us more effective and efficient. The university has needlessly expended a great deal of staff time and expertise in court trying to defend its secret settlements or to justify its hiring and salary procedures. Perhaps we can serve as a model for the rest of the state. There are other ways, besides bureaucracy, to ensure accountability.
Henceforth, the university's administration will follow the intent of Hawaii's laws that the provisions requiring open meetings and open records shall be liberally construed. Our Board of Regents has its discussions, deliberations and actions as openly as possible, just as the Sunshine Law requires.
On Feb. 1, more than 1,400 community members from around Hawaii convened at Manoa campus for a strategic planning forum. They were students, faculty, alumni, parents, business owners, elected officials -- many fit into more than one category.
The plan utilized a method called Open Space Technology, based on the concept that people think and communicate best outside of controlled settings -- perhaps the reason why so many of us get our best ideas while in the shower, or driving in the car.
With this technique, there is no set agenda. Upon their arrival that morning, we asked participants what their highest hope was for Manoa, and how we could overcome the obstacles to achieve the vision. Participants identified 68 actionable plans and led discussions on these items over a seven-hour period.
There is a tendency to look to others when planning for our own future. "How does Berkeley do it? Cal Tech? Princeton?" This approach is counter-productive, as it keeps us from producing ideas that are derived from our unique values as a community. The Open Space forum asks us to rely not on others, but on ourselves. This approach assures that the status quo will no longer be acceptable as the university charts its future.
But Open Space is more than an way to plan, or a technique for brainstorming. It is a value itself. In making open community forums a key part of our planning process, we signal a change in practice within the day-to-day operations of the university.
"Diversity" is not, then, a state to be achieved, but rather a way of doing things. We value difference, and see that differing viewpoints provide the productive tension that will move UH forward. And by bringing the process into the open, we prevent ideas from being killed off internally by bureaucracy and fixation on the status quo.
Open Space, therefore, is a solution to the problem of cynicism, our only true obstacle in this process. Cynicism is insidious because, as a product of insecurity, it comes from within.
It takes an entire community to make a university great, and by exposing the university's process to the public, we also expose UH to the public's concerns, ideas and ambitions.
I need support to help make the university more open, more accessible, more productive. With public support, we heal the broken contract between the government and the polity which might encourage more people to seek public office and more citizens to register and vote -- all under the watchful eye of the press, always with a healthy skepticism, but retreating from any cynicism that has crept into their lives.
Together, we can help people make sense of their government and learn to trust it again.