When I met Nancy Cantor for the second time last semester, she gave me a hug. Her bushy head of hair barely came above my chest as I awkwardly put one arm around her shoulder in my vain attempt to return the embrace.

It was weird, kind of how I imagine hugging Dennis Kucinich.

Who would feel any other way when hugging a politician?

There’s a nebulous sentiment on campus now regarding Cantor, and not just among undergraduates, but some professors too. It’s skepticism. When our chancellor spends more time trying to promote her own image rather than lead our campus, it’s hard not to see her as anything but a politician, seeking new avenues to raise her status among the academic community.

The Daily Orange article ‘Undergraduate Unrest,’ which ran March 30, implied that anti-Cantor Facebook groups are a good measurement of Cantor’s approval. I say it comes more from what we have seen on campus and on her record, not online.

Since Cantor arrived here in 2004, ‘scholarship in action,’ ‘the Soul of Syracuse’ and ‘the Connective Corridor’ have become the buzzwords on the Hill. And since 2000, ‘compassionate conservatism,’ ‘terrorism’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’ have become buzzwords across the country. We all know what those catch phrases do to approval ratings.

Last semester, two students were kicked out of an SU football game for holding up signs that said ‘Dump Cantor’ and ‘Cantor Smells.’ During the HillTV incident, letters flooded The D.O.’s Opinion pages by students admonishing Cantor’s decision to shut the station down. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that professors openly spoke out against the chancellor’s policies, both in university-sponsored open forums and in the local media. It wasn’t exactly a revolution, but it was the first time the campus heard a unified voice of dissent.

Student dissent isn’t unfamiliar to Cantor. When she was chancellor at University of Illinois, beginning in 2001, Cantor was at the center of a controversy to eliminate UI’s mascot, Chief Illiniwek. Cantor said the mascot was a negative portrayal of American Indian stereotypes. Once the community found out about her position on the matter, signs reading, ‘Retain the Chief! Retire Cantor!’ were a common sight around the UI campus. One private citizen in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., even rented out billboard space to spread the message.

I’d honk at that.

When Cantor accepted the job as chancellor at SU in early 2004, speculation at UI ran rampant that it was her unpopular stance about Chief Illiniwek that prompted her to leave UI. According to a UI spokesman who was quoted in The Chicago Sun-Times after Cantor’s decision to leave UI, the move was ‘not about the chief,’ it was ‘about her being able to take her career to the next level.’

She’s good at that, and her recent resume proves it. Cantor has bounced from job to job, with only a few years between each one, finally moving her way up the ladder to the chancellorship at SU, a tier 1 school.

She was chair of the psychology department at Princeton University for five years. She was provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at University of Michigan for four years. And she only lasted three years as chancellor of UI.

If you are beginning to see a pattern here, that’s because there is one. If this keeps up, you can expect to see Cantor moving up from SU in at least another year. I hear Harvard is looking for a new chancellor … wink, wink.