Students and faculty at Chicago State University are planning a rally tomorrow afternoon against the school’s presidential search process. And petitions are circulating to ask Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to remove the current Board of Trustees and appoint an entirely new board.

The actions come following a closed-door meeting Friday in which 13 of the 15 members of a campus advisory committee resigned and walked out of the meeting in protest of what they described as a flawed search process.

Last week Wayne Watson, the chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, and Carol Adams, the secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, each spent a day at CSU answering questions from students, faculty and staff in sessions that sometimes turned contentious and argumentative.

“They’re going to keep struggling against this,” says sociology professor Pancho McFarland. “Nobody is happy at all with what’s going on.”

And today the University Professionals of Illinois, which represents faculty at colleges across the state, issued a statement supporting CSU's faculty. The statement read in part, " It is our collective belief that flawed searches lead to flawed candidates, which in turn produce flawed leadership."

Students and faculty oppose the candidates for a variety reasons, including their status as political insiders and their lack of scholarly writing. Adams is an appointee of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Watson is a longtime adminstrator who was backed by  Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Contacted today, Watson says it would be inappropriate to comment on the search process. Adams could not immediately be reached for comment.

But even as protest efforts mount, many faculty say they expect the board to select one of the two candidates. That choice could come as soon as the board meeting scheduled for April 29.

“This board of trustees doesn’t seem to want to listen to anybody. That’s an impression I’m getting,” says Julian Scheinbuks, the director of CSU’s online learning program. “They’re not responsive. I’m just afraid they’re going to make a bad decision.”

Messages for each of the members of the board of trustees – Jim Reynolds, Rev. Richard Tolliver, Betsy Hill, Rev. Leon Finney and Peggy Montes – were not returned. Finney said after Friday’s committee meeting that he would not comment on the search process.

Laurie Walter, a biology professor and president of the faculty union, says Friday’s committee walk-out helped energize people on campus opposed to the search process and the two candidates.

“Morale has been very bad and something like this actually helps morale,” Walter says. “They see that it’s possible to stand up for what one believes in.”

The CSU rally is scheduled for noon tomorrow in the rotunda of the student union.