The Faculty Senate approved a resolution expressing a “lack of confidence” in President Petersen’s handling of the university’s information technology management in a resolution passed on October 22, 2007. Senators cited Petersen’s failure to respond to faculty complaints—expressed both formally through the Faculty Senate and informally through personal contacts.
The senate had passed a resolution at its February 5 meeting that asked for a clear written policy on the use of private data and acceptable encryption methods to encode private information following a security breach through which Social Security numbers were released. But the senate received no response from Petersen other than a memorandum he sent to faculty and staff on February 28 indicating that he would establish a firm IT structure, including hiring a chief information officer.
Repeated e-mail system failures and delays generated many memos to Petersen, but he did not respond. He also, according to the resolution, failed to allow transfer of Office of Information Technology functions to the Knoxville campus as he had promised. The plan he had recently released for management and operation of the campus and the UT system had an outline of a plan, but it was not to be implemented until further review.