Dr. Radenka Maric was officially inaugurated as the 17th president of the University of Connecticut Friday, Sept. 29 in a ceremony held in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. Maric has served as president since February 2022 and was officially appointed to the role last September. During the ceremony, Maric was showered with praise by members of the board of trustees and Gov. Ned Lamont for her work to “prioritize students” at UConn. “Her ‘students first’ priority is something you will hear over and over again when she speaks,” said board of trustees chairman Dan Toscano in a speech during the inauguration, making it entirely clear that university and state leaders are in approval of Maric’s performance during her tenure as president.
Despite the praise lauded to Maric, complimented by the posh regalia of the event, her record of putting “students first” is not reflected by reality. The Daily Campus Editorial Board believes that Maric’s inauguration reinforces the status quo of rigid bureaucracy, maximizing revenue above all else, unsustainable growth and dependency on corporate interests, all to the detriment of students and university workers. Students remain a secondary interest at a state university that is increasingly undemocratic and privatized.
Maric has been the source of many student concerns since her appointment to the position of interim president following the January 2022 departure of her predecessor Andrew Agwunobi. A watershed moment in her interim presidency was her response to student protests against sexual assault, which, as identified by The Editorial Board, led to a broadly ineffective task force that offloaded the work of sexual violence and prevention onto UConn police rather than identifying and addressing their root causes. In that same month, students protested Maric’s trip to Israel, accompanied by Lamont, conducted because “UConn has a lot to offer companies looking to expand in the U.S.” and was “grateful to have a chance to help strengthen the bond between our regions.” Palestinian students at UConn were quick to criticize how their new interim president sought to erase and benefit indirectly from Israeli apartheid and oppression of Palestinians, to which they were responded with empty platitudes.
As The Editorial Board has also discussed, during her appointment process, the board of trustees largely ignored student concerns about issues like proper funding for cultural centers and environmental sustainability. There was also a startling lack of transparency regarding the hearings in the leadup to her official appointment. The student body at regional campuses and the Storrs campus were invited to two 45-minute presidential search “listening sessions” exclusively offered in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. This caused students to be less informed about a decision that would greatly affect them. These were the warning shots of what was to come.
Under Maric’s leadership, or lack thereof, UConn has failed to take meaningful and direct action on a laundry list of issues, including the failure to release a plan to become carbon neutral by 2030, not taking definitive action on UConn’s high rates of sexual violence and promoting the blatant misinformation campaign that was #SaveUConn. Coupled with increasing ties to the war industry and the ever-growing cost of tuition, Maric’s tenure should be viewed as a continuation of systemic harm towards UConn students and something that should not have been celebrated with an excessive inauguration.
Students should be justifiably frustrated with the lack of action that has been the hallmark of Maric’s tenure. Her administration has largely maintained the status quo while failing to properly address the aforementioned issues on which students have been advocating for meaningful change. By rewarding Maric’s failures with an inauguration ceremony with praise and fanfare, it sends a message to students that their concerns don’t matter and that UConn’s leaders will continue to celebrate amongst themselves while their constituents’ situation collectively worsens.
Go to another university if you hate it here so much.