Monday marked the last of 16 listening sessions for Florida Atlantic University’s new presidential search, where the FAU community across all three campuses got the chance to share their desires for the next university president.

Faculty and staff have dominated attendance, sharing their concerns about political interference, referencing the last search, which was suspended shortly after Florida State Rep. Randy Fine did not make the cut.

Only a few students showed up at each session. Two graduate students in particular made their presence known Monday morning, emphasizing a need for more housing on FAU campus.

“It’s tough out here for graduate students, housing-wise,” said Sydney Worrall, who is pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology and works on campus as a peer academic coach with FAU’s ACCESS program.

Worrall lives in University Park, an apartment complex five minutes from FAU that she believes serves a primarily undergraduate community. It was not her first choice, but she decided to settle after struggling to find housing on campus before the school year began.

FAU prioritizes freshmen and sophomores over upperclassmen and graduate students, which graduate student Danae Ayra said has made obtaining on-campus housing quite difficult. Ayra is also pursuing her master’s degree in anthropology and works with Owls Care Health Promotion on the Boca Raton campus.

Ayra first applied for housing in 2022, one week after the application opened, and had no issues. In 2023, she said there was nothing available after only an hour. 

“I wanted to live on campus, but it just filled up so quickly,” Ayra said.

The only faculty member to comment on FAU’s housing availability was Katherine Frazier-Jones, director of communications for the College of Social Work and Criminal Justice.

“Student housing is a crisis here,” Frazier-Jones said. “I mean, there’s a reason it is, right? The explosionary growth that we’ve had, and we just don’t have housing; we don’t have parking. So [we need] somebody who’s willing to figure out those expensive but really urgent needs.”

Faculty and staff remained more concerned about the search itself, which Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody determined violated state law on Oct. 30.

Long-time university donor Howard Weiner was the first to acknowledge on Monday that the previous presidential search ended in failure. He attended the virtual sessions on Sept. 5 and 6 but believed those meetings were not a good place to dive into politics.

One of only two attendees at the 8 a.m. hour, Weiner expressed his concerns one-on-one with the moderators. Presidential Search Committee Chair Sherry Murphy and Buffkin/Baker search firm partner Ann Yates.

“I feel that you’re in a challenging position,” Weiner told Sherry Murphy, chair of the Presidential Search Committee.

He was referencing the former search committee chair Brad Levine, whose handling of the search and personal political affairs resulted in a no-confidence vote from the Florida Board of Governors and eventually his resignation from the FAU Board of Trustees (BOT).

Weiner said he’s sure the search firm involved in the previous search had good intentions. Rep. Fine’s late introduction to the candidate pool put the final three candidates in an uncomfortable position and set a bad precedent for this next search attempt.

Ann Yates, a representative from the search firm currently working with the committee, Buffkin/Baker, responded with optimism.

“We’re trying to put all that behind us and move forward because this is such an incredible opportunity. The past search is gonna have an impact on [our] candidate pool… but we’ve already had conversations with a handful of people,” Yates said.

Engineering professor Borko Furht is currently on the faculty advisory board for the presidential search. Once BOT Chair Piero Bussani announced the advisory board members, Furht said he received at least 15 emails from colleagues asking him to raise the issue of politically assigned presidents.

“We know what happened with the first search. From all these emails, this was [the] number one requirement from our faculty,” Furht said, representing the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The Presidential Search Committee will hold its next meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 25, according to Murphy via an announcement on the presidential search website.

Elisabeth Gaffney is the Editor-at-Large for the University Press. For more information on this article or others, you can reach Elisabeth at elisabethgaffreports@gmail.com or DM her on Instagram @elisabethgaff.