Buckle up. There’s a lot to unpack here.
Shockwaves were sent throughout the student and faculty community Monday morning, as an email sent by Ron Branch, Millikin’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees announced the news that President Jim Reynolds has stepped down from the role of President.
“I want to inform you that President Jim Reynolds has stepped down from his role and will transition to administrative leave effective today, March 3, 2025,” the email read. “As Chairman of the Board of Trustees, I am honored to serve as Acting President until further notice.”
Former President Jim Reynolds was a kind, compassionate man who was thrown into an extremely difficult situation as President, which Athena Pajer, former Director of Student Engagement and Leadership Development and International Student Services Coordinator, realizes.
“He was fighting an uphill battle since day one, and he never got to know and understand what I call the ‘Old Millikin,’” Pajer said. “That’s because of COVID and all of the fallout from that. However, there are some very critical blind spots in how they’ve moved forward with everything that’s happened since COVID.
“I think people are still upset about the economic stringency that happened three or four years ago, because that process was supposed to make us get back on track financially. We still have not had clarity if we are doing well financially, and it makes things incredibly difficult for faculty and staff going about their daily lives trying to make things better for students.”
This affected Pajer’s role at the Center for International Education greatly, because the budget for the Center was unclear.
“We had no type of clear idea of what our budget really was,” she said. “We would spend money on important things like orientation activities and going to conferences to help us advance in our field, and we wouldn’t know if we were going over budget. People can get fired for spending too much money, even if it’s just a little bit.”
There are several questions about Reynolds’ Presidency, but there is one that is in much larger font than the others.
Was Millikin gearing up for an early exit from Reynolds, or was this a total surprise to everyone?
To Dan Monroe, Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences, the news caught him by surprise.
“I’m very surprised that Jim stepped down,” he said. “He announced last summer that he was retiring in July, but the assumption was that he would work the full academic year.”
However, for other staff and faculty, the reasons may be much more clear. The full extent of the reasons may never be known, but speculation surrounding a supposed deal with the Woods, Millikin’s primary option for housing after freshman year, may have played a large part in Reynolds’ early departure. Pajer was in the room when the supposed deal was discussed in passing.
“There were already rumors buzzing around about a supposed deal, and that was back in September,” Pajer said. “When I heard it described, it was not described as an extension of the Woods contract, but that the Woods would have some sort of deal pertaining to Millikin’s website, and in exchange, Jeffrey Tinervin (the owner of the Woods) would negotiate to lower some of the interest rates for our loans.”
Pajer noticed the red flags right away. The Woods already has a huge hold over Millikin, so why possibly give it any more leverage?
“Immediately when I heard that, I thought it had sort of a mafia feel to it,” she said. “People in the business world do these sorts of things all the time.
“However, the optics are not good, given the fact that Tinervin does not have a good reputation with Millikin staff or students.”
This reputation has been strained with many years of complaints and unsatisfied tenants living in the confines of its mostly secure walls.
Take the most recent incident, with students being charged around $45 extra for the Woods’ gate being broken, something they had no involvement in.
Not only were they charged extra, but it took several months for the gate to be fixed in the first place. Problems taking extended time to be fixed has been a common theme for students to deal with at the Woods, often at the expense of their time and money.
“Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that the Woods is not a good deal for students, especially in the midst of the economy being the way that it is,” Pajer said. “I don’t know the exact details, but even back then, the idea of the President or members of the President’s Council being involved with giving the Woods more power than it already has made my stomach turn.”
To be clear, Reynolds obviously had nothing to do with the original deal Millikin and the Woods signed in the 90s, the deal that is in effect today. Simply put, Millikin is under a quota of apartments to fill in the Woods. If that number is not met, Millikin owes the Woods the cost of the apartments that were not filled. This is the reason that there is so much pressure for upperclassmen to live there. However, the standards of living do not meet the hefty price that students must pay to live in the only apartment option they have.
The exact details of the supposed deal remain up in the air, leaving many important questions remaining unanswered, but there is one extremely unnerving question.
What does the Woods get out of supposedly making a deal to revamp Millikin’s website, especially when the website was recently revamped?
Pajer has a theory, and a sound one at that.
“Tinervin is a landlord,” Pajer said. “He makes a lot of money off of Millikin students, so it is in his best interest to help Millikin get more students. That is what he gets from trying to help Millikin as much as he can. Does Millikin benefit from that? That would be the question I would ask in the short term.”
This is the question that has been plaguing the minds of many staff and faculty at Millikin. There is seemingly a lack of transparency from higher-up leadership at Millikin, and it extends beyond leaving many of the hardworking staff out of important discussions such as these. After meeting with several professors, it is clear that there is a central problem with all of this.
There is, according to several staff members at the university, a lack of accountability from the higher-ups at Millikin.
In order to combat this belief, a private website titled “Ask Jim” was created. In order to access this website, a faculty member must enter Millikin credentials to access a Yik-Yak style forum. Professors are able to ask anonymous questions and receive weekly feedback from an account with Jim Reynolds’ name on it.
Amid speculation about the Woods’ involvement in Millikin’s website, there were likely many questions about this topic.
Perhaps rumors about the supposed deal is the reason that a professor-only meeting was held last weekend. While the topic of discussion is not exactly known, former President Reynolds’ departure a few days after raises several questions.
Did the staff and faculty of Millikin completely lack confidence in its leaders, and did that lack of confidence lead to a vote of no confidence from the staff? The answer to that is unclear, but one thing remains clear.
The sudden departure of Reynolds, without a clear explanation, is the perfect way to end a tenure that, according to several hardworking professors, lacked that crucial transparency. We may never know if Reynolds truly left on his own accord.
Perhaps these important questions will be answered in a recently announced closed staff Q/A meeting with Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer Sarah Kottich that will be taking place this Thursday. The staff and faculty of Millikin University deserve answers to any questions they may have.
(Editor’s Note: Millikin administration has reached out to the Decaturian and assured us that no vote of no confidence was taken, either by faculty or staff. Additionally, the meeting was not a private faculty meeting, it was a closed session of a regularly scheduled full faculty meeting.)
