Grad Workers React to President Ono’s Resignation and the Regents’ Appointment of Domenico Grasso as Interim President

MAY 17, 2025 — On May 4, U-M President Santa Ono announced that he is leaving the university and seeking the presidency at the University of Florida (UF). Former Chancellor of the Dearborn campus, Domenico Grasso, has been appointed as Interim President. President Ono arrived shortly before the beginning of our previous contract negotiations and is departing before we start another round of negotiations in the upcoming academic year. In his brief time here, President Ono has been directly involved in or overseen several policies we have found troubling. 

David Gamba, a PhD candidate in the School of Information and rank-and-file GEO member, reflected on President Ono’s administrative legacy: 

UF Professor Meera Sitharam, in an article announcing the resignation of the UF’s previous president, poses the question of “whether the next president [of UF] will be:

1. More willing to speak out against political meddling, or at least
2. More willing to ameliorate its effects instead of rubbing salt into the wound,
3. More respectful of faculty and student rights, abilities, work ethic, and power to shape their own future,
4. Less prone to using students as scapegoats to grandstand on national media…”

In response, we are sorry to say that President Ono will likely be none of these. Under his watch, the university closed the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and did not defend international students facing threats of deportation, folding under obvious political meddling from the Trump administration without acknowledging it as part of the far right’s broader agenda to dismantle U.S. public education. Actually, Ono did sign a letter opposing government intrusion in higher education but decided to remove his name when it was no longer professionally convenient. Instead, he admonished the community of students, faculty, and staff fighting for a better university and a better world as perpetrators of “partisanship and ideological activism.” This is not Ono’s only instance of scapegoating students to grandstand on national media, with another example being his controversial address at an Anti-Defemation League summit earlier this year. 

President Ono’s suggestion that activists have too much power in the university is undercut by his administration’s actions and policies, which silenced the voices of students and faculty in university decision-making. In November 2023, the Ono administration canceled voting on Central Student Government ballot proposals about the genocide in Gaza. Over the summer of 2024, the regents and President Ono unilaterally changed the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities taking power from faculty into the hands of the administration in student disciplinary processes. These among other power grabs drove the UM Faculty Senate to censure the Board of Regents, the body to whom President Ono was most accountable. Altogether, President Ono will likely not meet the majority of Professor Sitharam’s desired qualifications.

We have a wishlist of our own when it comes to traits we would like in future U-M presidents. Along with the points above, we hope future presidents will be:

1. Less likely to threaten the accreditation of the university by upholding fake grades in an attempt to undercut grad worker power, 
2. Less likely to sue its own students instead of paying them a living wage,
3. More willing to defend students from police violence and deportation, 
4. And more willing to divest from Palestinian genocide and reinvest in grad workers and other laborers on campus

To Interim President Grasso specifically, we hope that you commit to the values of protected political speech on campus as we turn the page on an anti-popular reign. Regardless of whether U-M’s future presidents live up to our hopes, U-M graduate workers stand ready to fight for improved conditions in their workplace and community while keeping each other safe.