Critics say Temple president’s resignation is impacted by race

After Temple University President Jason Wingard abruptly resigned last week, some analysts are suggesting that the struggles of his tenure and his eventual ousting were amplified because of his race.

Leaders of the Black community in Philadelphia told the Philadelphia Inquirer that, as they see it, Wingard had to meet higher expectations as a person of color and the first black president of Temple.

“There is always a different expectation of outcomes when Black folks assume leadership positions,” community activist Jacqueline Wiggins told the Inquirer.

Wingard, who holds degrees from Stanford, Harvard, Emory, and Penn, was selected in June 2021 after a 10-month search, according to the local PBS affiliate WHYY.

[RELATED: Temple University hires 8 new officers, but campus police say more needs to be done to address ‘rampant’ violent crime]

“Wingard was only here for 18 months,” Wiggins added. “He came into a mess—union issues, enrollment, crime. He needed time to form and cultivate relationships.”

Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow Ilya Buynevich told Campus Reform that the insider perspective, however, is much different.

But between Temple dropping in US News and World Report rankings, the prolonged graduate student workers strike, and the rising crime around Temple’s campus, Campus Reform has covered the significant issues that have worsened since Wingard’s induction.

For undergraduates and their parents, Buynevich says safety is the most important of the issues.

In December 2021, six months into Wingard’s tenure, 21 year-old and Temple student Samuel Collington was killed during an attempted robbery. This February, Sgt. Chris Fitzgerald was the first Temple police officer killed in the line of duty following a robbery attempt.

Campus Reform previously reported that 92% of Temple students see campus safety as a necessary top priority moving forward.

Most Temple students, 92%, see campus safety as a necessary top priority moving forward, as Campus Reform previously reported.

Buynevich, who has two children attending the university, sees the problem from both the professor and parent perspectives. 

He says that safety is “a huge concern for the parents,” especially those who do not live in the area. Buynevich also notes that parents are largely responsible for undergraduate tuition funding. 

Buynevich said it “was a huge, huge mistake for faculty and students, but especially for faculty two years ago…just going to defund the police” on campus and in the broader metropolitan area during the height of the movement in 2020.

Campus Reform Correspondent and Temple student Oscar Buynevich concurs with his father Ilya.

“Many on the left, including leftist professors and students who called for the defund the police movement at Temple, go back to their cozy suburban communities, where their fully staffed police department protects them from crime,” the younger Buynevich reasons.

“[M]inority urban communities,” however, suffer because “police officers are resigning because they have been villainized by our city’s politicians who were looking for political gains during the BLM movement, and our crooked district attorney who sides with criminals instead of cops.”

[RELATED: WATCH: Campus crime is surging, ‘eleven students were taken hostage at gunpoint’]

As the younger Buynevich sees it, Wingard’s race had nothing to do with the lack of attention to these systemic issues facing the campus community.

“Temple is an extremely pro-DEI university,” Oscar Buynevich said, “and I witnessed students and faculty of all different backgrounds, across the political spectrum join to call for his resignation. And at first people seemed to like him, but the longer he stayed in office the more apparent it became that he was unfit to lead the university.”

Temple’s faculty union is still slated to hold its vote of no confidence in Board of Trustee Chairman Mitchell Morgan and Provost Gregory Mandel over the week of April 10.

Neither Wiggins nor the Temple administration have responded to Campus Reform’s request for comment, but this story will be updated accordingly.

Follow Gabrielle M. Etzel on Twitter.