FACULTY ASSOCIATION

No. 2 North Office Center - St. Cloud State University - (320) 255-3979

MEET & CONFER NOTES

March 20, 2003

 

Present:

Faculty Association:  Theresia Fisher, Chris Inkster, Robert Johnson, Bill Langen, Andrew Larkin, Tracy Ore, Terry Peterson, Annette Schoenberger, P. N. Subbanarasimha, Emily Schultz, Notetaker

Administration: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, Diana Burlison, Larry Chambers, Lin Holder, Nathan Church, Roland Specht-Jarvis, John Burgeson

 

Approval of previous notes (February 13 and February 27, 2003)  

 

FA:   Two faculty members from COE (former traffic safety) received a memo from the Dean of COE that they need to be out of their offices by March 17th (last Monday).

 

AD:  That was reversed last week.

 

FA:   I spoke to one of them this morning, and they still had the problem

 

AD:  I’ll check into that.

 

Academic Calendar

 

FA: The Academic Calendar for 2004-05 was accepted by the Faculty Senate with a recommendation to add a study day between finals and the last day of classes in the fall semester.

 

AD:  [Handout: revised calendar for 04-05 with study day on Dec. 15.]

 

FA:   Other issues concerning the Academic Calendar were referred to the FA Committee on Institution, including earlier and later start for the spring semester and an earlier start for the fall semester.

 

Plans for Budget Cuts

 

FA:  Senate designated the FA Executive Committee as the committee to deal with the budget crisis, so this is our current recommendation.  [Handout:  memorandum “Faculty report on the current budget crisis”]    We see two different scenarios.  One requires terminating searches, not approving sabbatical, replacing probationary positions with fixed term, reducing reassigned time, and increasing class sizes.  The other looks at it in terms of a tuition increase.  We want to make sure we understand the crisis.  We’re concerned that drastic things will be done and then we have to live with this without needing to.  On the back are recommendations.  We don’t expect immediate answers.

 

AD:   Which positions were filled with probationary?  Only three probationary positions were continued in COSE because searches failed three years in a row.  The criteria that were used were distributed. 

 

FA:  Could we get some data on the students in the programs that have gotten the probationary searches?

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA: What’s the relationship between the positions and enrollment?

 

AD:  We are trying to be cautious and to prevent embarrassing behavior of hiring probationary faculty when we know we cannot keep them.  The contract does not provide for a disaster mode.

 

FA:  Article 23 of the contract is about Retrenchment.

 

AD:            Retrenchment has a tremendous impact on the psyche.  Some people called it the big “r” word.  We want to honor their expectations.

 

FA:   Can we have the data we are requesting?

 

AD:   Yes.  We’ll try to put it together.  We authorized around 30 positions.  It would be safe to say that 40 positions were not filled.

 

FA:   What about the nursing department?  They may need more faculty to meet their Board of Nursing requirements.

 

AD:   I have schedule a meeting scheduled with them next week to talk about their needs.

 

AD:  Let me give you some materials provided by MnSCU based on the governor’s proposal.  [Handout: graphs]

 

AD:   Concerning your question about reassigned time, the deans will report to Human Resources by March 31.  We’ve reduced reassigned time to an absolute minimum, unless they were hired for that reason.  Exceptions are the mediator coordinator and assessment directors.  There will be 50 percent reassigned time for every chair and more if the contract requires.

 

FA:  Do you know if that’s consistent around the university?

 

AD:  I can only hope so.  That’s the expectation.

 

FA:   I provided other information after the last Meet and Confer that showed greater reassigned times for some of the faculty in one of the colleges.

 

AD:   I have to talk to that Dean.

 

FA:  Can we talk about class size?  There was no discussion with NCHEMS.

 

AD:  NCHEMS wouldn’t make a recommendation on that.  They did talk about it but from an opposite perspective.

 

FA:  They said it would be better to increase some class sizes without increasing all of them.

 

AD:   I would agree to that.

 

FA:   It also appears that we have too few counselors for the size of our student body.  One of the counselors is taking a two-year leave, and that puts us below the national standards.

 

AD:  There are plans to replace the position with a fixed term.  There are some things we can do on the short term basis.

 

FA:  What are the plans for tuition increase?

 

AD:  If we solve it entirely by reducing employees, we’d be losing 145 employees.  If by tuition we’d have to increase that 20 percent.   You would assume allocations would increase proportionally, but they’ve decreased.  So we are trying to make do in a difficult situation.  How do we cover our instructional needs and other needs without putting more on the students?

 

AD:  Lobbying to get student grant and aid program restored to MnSCU would make a big difference.  Until we get a clearer picture, until legislature has a budget, we won’t know.  We assume that the budget won’t be worse than what is currently proposed.   We hope that as circumstances improve, we can address your request for assurance that we will return to previous student-faculty ratios.  We also need a discussion about curriculum.

 

FA:  What is happening to other bargaining units?

 

AD:  Three AFSCME employees were just laid off.  Other areas are being scrutinized.  Clearly 10-15 percent tuition increases will not solve the problem. What is required is greater than that.  Even 15 percent would still make it hard to meet a budget with mandated steps in contracts and other negotiations. This isn’t going to get better; it could well get worse.

 

FA:  But let’s not go too far in the draconian direction.

 

AD:  We have tried not to be draconian, to balance carefully.  I am concerned that you are making assumptions that decisions have been made.  What reductions are being made in AFSCME, MAPE, reassigned time being reduced?  We plan to have an open discussion with the campus, a town meeting.  The only decision made is the three layoffs.  The rest is still under consideration, we continue to share with the campus community.

 

AD:  Today we heard from MnSCU that the legislature may drag its feet and close the state down on July 1st to make savings.  That is draconian.  But it gives you a sense of the chaos going on in the legislature right now.  All we have to work from now is Pawlenty’s proposed budget.  It is a long road from here, needing lots of discussion.  What we are doing is holding positions.  That may mean we don’t get to fill them, but as we know more, we may be able to release some of those positions.  We need to slow down, we’re racing forward, which could get us in a lot of trouble.

 

AD:  There is an assumption that 15 percent tuition increase will be guaranteed. That’s not even close.  The chancellor does not know where the trustees will come down; many want no increase in tuition.  Also there is the fight between Republicans and Democrats.  Also the $30 million that the privates are trying to take away from us.  If that is put in students’ hands, and they go to Hamline, they will take more away from our base. The Chancellor then has to go back to renegotiate union contracts.  There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in here right now.  We want to be cautious about taking steps that would compound problems.  We are opening it up to all of you. Except for those three people mentioned, we haven’t made any decision, we’ve made guesstimates. We will present this on 24th.  We have just received MSUAASF suggestions about how to save money.  We’re looking at all this.  We have a new MBA at Maple Grove, but just got battered by another legislator because of religious issues (anti-Semitism issues).  We’re moving forward on many of these issues.  This morning we met with the community advisory committee.  They are representatives of the St. Cloud area. One thing they don’t see is quality of faculty.  It is what attracts students, and amounts to 80 percent of our budget. We can’t measure these kinds of things, and it is difficult to translate to the public.  We are focusing on students and faculty creativity. We are looking out not to work the faculty into the ground.

 

FA:  We are saying there has already been a lot of stress, considerable stress, on the faculty.  The question is, who is going to do the work if we have fewer faculty, less reassigned time, etc., and what is it we are not going to do?

 

AD:   As we look at tuition, we can’t resolve everything with increasing class sizes. I am looking at tuition increases, increase in a few seats where pedagogically possible, reassigning some areas.  It will be done methodically, with wide input, and be fair to everybody.   It is not just all cuts or all increases in tuition.

 

FA:   Concerning the townhall meeting next Monday, will you be using questions from webpage?

 

AD:   The webpage has more suggestions than questions.  We received about 60, many were similar and were put into groups.  MSUAASF submitted theirs as a group and put all their suggestions together. There were another 50 or so suggestions.

 

FA:  Can we see a list of those suggestions?  We have been selected by the Senate as the budget response committee for the Faculty Association.  Individual faculty suggestions are not coming from the Senate, but from individual faculty.  In a couple of different places we are looking at different issues.  Some of the issues faculty are looking at come from a history of situations which have evolved and not been resolved, and are compounded by the budget situation. Obviously you have to make decision in current time frame, you don’t know all budget information now.  For example, positions that have been filled for this year, one concern is that we have departments that have largely been staffed by fixed terms, and those will end up losing one-third of their faculty.   They have no problem filling classes.  How does that relate to an area that has had a failed search three years in a row?  Is that necessarily consistent with the strategic plan, looking to student retention and serving students already in the system. It is understandable why you froze those positions, but we need some other discussions on issues of class sizes and pedagogies because we don’t see those happening. Departments come to us and say they are frustrated, like no one is listening to them.

 

AD:   Are you ready to dedicate a weekend forum to these issues?  To evaluate these things, giving departments a forum to present their case?  We need this.  Already 40 fewer positions are allocated than the year before. We need a large scale event.

 

AD:  Departments make a case to deans, deans make presentations to the vice president.  Would it not make sense instead of a town hall meeting that departments make presentations to deans and the provost, so everybody doesn’t have to make a case?   I don’t know.  Departments feel they are not getting enough hearing.

 

AD:  My understanding is that departments make cases to their dean who makes a decision about where to make allocation.  That is how I would have done it when I was a dean, and I assume that is what they are doing.  Based on the competing needs of different departments, choices will not please those who don’t get what they ask for, but I don’t know how else to do that.

 

AD:  The boundaries between colleges are arbitrary.  Disciplines that should be grouped together are not necessarily together, and that can have harmful impact over long term.  There are inequalities in the numbers of retirements between colleges.  There has been a 10 percent loss in FAH, while others have half of that.

 

FA:   I agree that is how it should work, but there is perception that it is not working that way.  It is not clear that deans are hearing cases equally.  We need to do something so that people don’t feel they have no control over anything on this campus.  Anything we can do to make people feel they can make a case and have it heard fairly will help.

 

FA:  In three departments, as people have retired, the dean has said to them it is easy to find fixed term to replace them.  In one of the departments where there should be a search after a failed search, the dean has not done that.  So what is happening in these three departments where fixed terms not being replaced?  They are losing a third or fourth of their faculty.  They haven’t been allowed to have any searches at all to replace those persons. We are actually going to lose spots because we don’t have fixed term people.  It might have been wiser not to search for permanent faculty and use that to hire fixed terms.  But departments were never allowed to make those arguments, or if they were, the arguments were not paid attention to.  Faculty in those departments are very depressed.  They have heavy general education loads, but feel they are getting no support at all.  This inequity has to be dealt with. 

 

FA:  The other issue is that in the last forum we had, it was stopped early.   I repeat our request that you be sure to have time where people can ask questions, because that time was curtailed.  You still owe faculty and employees 45 minutes of free open question time.  People were very disappointed; they felt they were asked to come with questions.

 

AD:   I disagree.  People didn’t ask, and were starting to leave.

 

FA:  But some were coming in after their class.

 

AD:  You are painting it too much the other way.  Maybe we should start with questions at the beginning.

 

AD:  I would like to reiterate one idea Diana brought up.  The Commissioner of Finance talked about the perception that Minnesota taxes are higher than in neighboring states, and higher education is hit no harder here than there, and we need to learn to do better with less.  If not, the state could shut down on July 1. This sounded very serious.  If we don’t get our act together now, only prison guards and state troopers will be around.

 

FA:  Maybe we should let it shut down…  But look what happened when the republicans tried that in the federal government.

 

Emergency Operation Plan

 

AD:   We have an emergency plan, given to you a couple of times, including this one from August 25, 2001. We would like to implement this, given the situation we are in right now. We need to ensure that we have some operational plans in place for emergencies.  If I can get some discussion on that, it would be great.

 

FA:  Is that on a website?

 

AD:  No it is a confidential draft right now.

 

FA:  If it is confidential, then how can we distribute it and discuss it?

 

AD:  This is of course after 9/11.  We’ve updated it, especially with covert types of things that have happened. I keep calling Steve [Ludwig] and others and asking what if this happens?  It used to be for things like tornadoes.

 

FA:  Could you give us a copy that is not so confidential?

 

AD:  Yes.  But we would like to implement this at this time. We are concerned about bomb threats and things like that. Some changes incorporate homeland security measures.

 

FA:  Everything you can make public, put it on website.

 

AD:  Yes. In addition, recently we’ve had contact with the local police department telling what their plans are if we go from orange to red.   We coordinate with the police department and with the state, all the way to the national level. So it is important to have this in place.

 

FA:  We’ll be happy to look at it

 

AD:   The MnSCU plan is that if we go to red, everything closes.  Some of the things include different levels of emergency, who the emts are, what their responsibilities are.  There are other threats taken into consideration.

 

FA:   We should know this. What part is not publishable?

 

AD:  Home phone numbers.

 

FA:   But how can that not be publishable?  You call public safety, and they call the private numbers.

 

AD:   Or you call 911 when something bad happens. We want this approved so we can inform appropriate people what their responsibilities are.

 

FA:  We ought to get it published.

 

Curriculum Processes

 

FA:  These were not discussed at the last Meet and Confer.  [Handout distributed: overlapping credits policy. March 20 is the official one.]     The Upper-division Writing Requirement has been referred to the General Education Committee.  Did you want to say something about relation between the BA and the BS – majors and minors?

 

AD:  We agreed we would continue to approve those as in past but want to address the issue.  Let me talk about each of these three items. I met with the Committee about upper division writing, and they are going to bring forth a different proposal it; should be fine.  I would like to meet with the Curriculum Committee to look at double majors, minors, and overlapping credits.  It seems to me the proposal you have submitted is out of line with what most universities are doing with this issue, and I would like to be able to discuss this.

 

FA:  This came from the UCC; they can reconsider.

 

AD:  BA, BS majors and minors.  I went through the catalog and marked how minors are designated, and there is not a lot of consistency.  In the College of Business, there are department programs and two college-wide programs, which are not consistent.  There is one minor for business majors, and one minor for all other majors. Yet across the departments, the wording is not same, so it is confusing to figure out what they wanted to do with their minors.  It is time for us to look at this.  We have been five years on semesters.  Some of this is the result of all those changes coming home.   We are more than open to the recommendations you bring back.

 

FA:  We will ask UCC to look at this.

 

AD:  I will send you an electronic version.

 

FA:  Good.

 

AD:  We are not sure how the faculty want us to interpret how majors and minors should fit together. Do we really want to look at things in this many different ways? Some are clear, others very unclear.

 

Zero Tolerance of Workplace Violence  [ http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~hr/violence.html  ]

 

AD:  We have two versions of this document, one from the Human Resources website, and the other dated 4/96.  There was some question as to whether or not this had ever been presented at Meet and Confer; we could find no record that it had been, so I have brought it here now for you to consider it.  [copies distributed]

 

FA:  Who wrote this policy?

 

AD:  I have no idea.  It may be a MnSCU policy.

 

FA:  It may be adapted from a MnSCU document.  There is a controversy with this.  MnSCU has this on their website, but the statewide IFO says this has never been through the MnSCU Meet and Confer.

 

AD:  I don’t want to get involved in a MnSCU-IFO controversy.

 

FA:  We’ll look at it. We’ve had this happen before.

 

AD:  What I’m doing is asking the FA to review it and come back with a response.

 

FA:   We’ll do that.

 

Grievances

 

FA:  Does the administration agree that there has been progress on the grievances? I believe there has been some.

 

AD:  There seems to have been progress, as far as I know.

 

FA:  We are prepared to take on another grievance, and rex has agreed to that  -- the English department issue. We have identified Andrew Larkin and a representative of English department to address this.  It would be more efficient if Michael Spitzer rather than just Rex participated in the meetings. We’re ready to begin discussion.

 

AD:  What are you talking about?

 

FA:  The FA grievance having to do with use of fixed term faculty in the English department. On the one hand, the contract does not allow keeping fixed term positions more than four years. On the other hand, it seems suitable for this particular position to have ongoing fixed term faculty members. This is the grievance at step three in St. Paul, from 2001.  It is our oldest unresolved grievance.

 

AD:  I would want Roland present.

 

FA:  We accept that, so we could work on that one.  Our second oldest is this multitude of grievances being worked on. We need the person who resolves grievances to be at those meetings.

 

Institutional research

 

FA:   We learned that someone has been hired to work for MnSCU but only to do institutional research for SCSU.   This seems to be an unusual setup.  Is this correct?

 

AD:  We have a contract with MnSCU to provide some institutional research functions as they choose to provide it. They chose to provide it by hiring this individual.  There is a standard set of reports that MnSCU has agreed to provide to us.  Here is a copy of the contract you asked for.  [one copy provided]

 

FA:   Have we done this before?

 

AD:  Bernie Omann would be an example.  On occasion our employees have provided training, and we get paid for that.  One of the chancellor’s strategic goals is to do more cooperative things together.  Diana had a discussion with Laura King [Vice Chancellor for Finance] who was looking for something to try.  She said she’d put some money into it, we took it, and there are a number of things that MnSCU will be doing for us.  They are sharing part of the cost.

 

FA:  50-50?

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA:  And we are getting a person working for MnSCU but doing IR for us?

 

AD:  This person primarily assigned to this, but others are assisting that person, and we don’t know how all the work is divided.

 

FA:   Is the IR work the same as when we talk about IR in Academic Affairs?

 

AD:   Some is similar.  There are certain standard reports the university has to generate and submit to the federal government.  They will be doing these for us.  The data comes off the same database they use for other information.

 

FA:  Is this permanent, for the life of the contract?

 

AD:  It is a three-year contract, and we will evaluate it after two years to see if we want to continue it.

 

FA:   Can the data be used for strategic planning?

 

AD:  One item they will generate is the academic summary book -- institutional characteristics, number of degrees conferred, and so on.  Departments have told us they would like to know how many graduates the data base says they have.  For example, Sociology and Anthropology are counted in departmental way, which doesn’t show the breakdown of the two disciplines. We hope to provide a more sophisticated analysis to make it more useful for each program.  If the FA has recommendations, you should channel them to MnSCU folks about how to make it better.

 

FA:  Whose data are they? Ours?

 

AD:  Since we are part of MnSCU, belong to both of us.

 

FA:   There is only one data set.

 

AD:   The only place we have to pull data from.  Can we review data for errors and correct the errors we find? That question concerned us; we want to be able to do this and report back to them.

 

FA:   Could they prepare something we asked for, from data that already exist?  Would that automatically be shared with other MnSCU people or just with us?

 

AD:  This is not the kind of report they would be doing. We would do the customized kind of report on our own campus. We would not have MnSCU do that.

 

FA and AD:  There is also a problem with coding.

 

Failed Searches

 

FA:  We asked about status of failed searches in previous years.

 

AD:    We have information from four of the five colleges.  As soon as I have all five, we will turn the information over to you. You can leave it on the agenda.

 

Evaluation of Administrators

 

AD:  The faculty want input.  Some of deans may already allow this, though I am not sure. If there is input in terms of other changes or recommendations, we will be willing to look at it.

 

FA:   Can we standardize this?  Are you suggesting that there actually are processes in place where some deans are soliciting faculty input?

 

AD:   I don’t know how formalized, but I understand some deans do allow this.

 

AD:   At least one dean has engaged faculty in a survey and has included that with materials for evaluation, but I don’t know if there is any formal process, or if this is the best way, but we are willing to consider ways of getting more faculty input.   There is no formal process at this point.

 

FA:  We’re not just talking about deans either.

 

AD:  I understand.

 

FA:  Should we form a joint committee to construct a proposal to come to president’s council (or whatever is the appropriate forum) and to the Faculty Senate?

 

AD:  To implement this semester?  There is a very short time line. 

 

AD:  Why not ask Larry to collect information from other institutions and find out what they are doing, come back, and give us a framework

 

FA:  If others aren’t doing anything, does that mean we won’t do anything?

 

AD:  It would provide a backbone to begin with.

 

FA:  We used to conduct faculty evaluations of administrators a few years ago, so we have some experience as well.  We want to get away from anecdotal quasi-evaluation and move toward model like that of student evaluations.

 

Faculty Supervised by MSUAASF

 

AD:  Some faculty are reporting directly to Nathan Church. They requested it, but it should have been brought here. They requested, I responded.

 

FA:  Can we get that information in writing?  Restructuring of Counseling Center has implications for union membership.

 

AD:  Sure there is.

 

FA:  Anything you consider should come to us so we an take it to the IFO. We can’t willy-nilly change.

 

AD:  I realize this. But it is a very complex issue. All of us have inherited the situation, and it is not clear where that originated.  Our structure is very rare.  The Counseling Center and the Academic Learning Center have always reported to Nathan.  Academic Affairs assists those faculty with maters on the academic side, when it doesn’t seem appropriate for the MSUAASF director to do it.  Academic Affairs has an association with them so they don’t feel abandoned.

 

FA:   Am I hearing that you are moving to change this?

 

AD:  There have been some preliminary discussions – exploration of merits to see what is the best way to serve the needs of students.  There are some restrictions in way it currently operates in that respect.

 

FA:  We understand that the faculty there would like to see more of a regular department structure. Although Nathan is their ultimate supervisor, the academic learning center people no longer have that MSUAASF person as their director.  Only the counselors still are.

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA:   Any further changes in this relationship, we will be informed?

 

AD:  Yes, earlier I consulted with Theresia.  It was not intentional, an oversight, and I will bring it here to discuss as well.

 

FA:   What Nathan and I talked about was in conjunction with the services the Counseling Center offers to students and how that in some respects does not connect well with the collective bargaining agreement in terms of duty days.  Nathan asked me questions, and we said that sort of matter would need to go to Meet and Confer.  But the issue of student services and the administration looking at how to optimize that is very consistent with the Strategic Plan. No preliminary discussions have even taken place, just conversation. No planning.  Conversations are not a substitute for following the formal process.

 

AD:  Understood.

 

Public Expression Policy

 

FA:   [handout: faculty memo]  There was a committee of two administrators and two faculty that developed a recommendation last fall, dated Nov 18.  The Senate referred it to the executive committee to develop a recommendation, and this is that recommendation.  It will also go back to the Senate for approval.  The Executive Committee does not support the draft public expression policy in its current form and has listed some concerns and is going to ask the Senate to refer this to the FA Committee on the Institution for further review.

 

AD:  We are rapidly approaching a time when preachers make themselves vocal on campus, demonstrators opposed to and in favor of war will be on campus.  Do we have another policy in effect if this is not adopted?  It is from 1995, but it is outdated with today’s circumstances.  Our understanding is that this policy was implemented by a committee with faculty input, and we’ll wait for report from FA, but we need to do something immediately.  We will implement it now.  For items 2 and 3, we have a supplemental document about how to use peace officers, a management document we haven’t incorporated that would address these issues. I don’t know if it would satisfy Executive Committee.

 

FA:  We need a policy, I agree.  One question is who it is going to be implemented against first.  On Out Proud day, is someone going to say they are advocating criminal behavior?  It makes me nervous. We want to protect free speech, but…

 

AD:      Who would this be sent back to?  The committee who drafted it?

 

FA:  That group has been abolished as far as we are concerned. We greatly appreciate all their work.  They have provided us with a good first draft.  We will recommend that the Senate refer this to our Committee on the Institution. This needs a lot more discussion.

 

AD:  We will continue to work on this with you.  Probably some of your concerns can be addressed right away.  We will try to this, but know you will be doing more work on this.

 

FA:  We have had an ad hoc committee working on this – the sit-in in 2000 – but they are not representative of the faculty.  Faculty input is not the same as faculty voice.  The section of contract on Meet and Confer requires a 10-day notice.  The issues raised in this document are very serious.

 

AD:  We agree.

 

FA:   I spent the afternoon with CNN on in office, and who knows what is going to happen. It is easy to imagine that there will be groups of faculty and students who will be compelled to express their opinion. We are operating under a whole new set of expectations about what is acceptable in country.  We were puzzled looking at this document.

 

AD:  Shouldn’t we wait until the next Meet and Confer?  The problem is that things may happen in the next two weeks. You have done a good job alerting us to areas of concern.  Are we adopting these changes?  Not necessarily. You have our commitment to be sensitized to these areas of concern.  It is helpful to have your concerns registered. We will work on this immediately.  But clearly the context of the conversation in senior administration around these issues is to be more responsive to safety concerns.  There have been very positive movements.  We hope we don’t have other incidents.

 

FA:  Who implements the public expression policy?  I have a lot of faith in a lot of people around this table, but it is hard for me to have trust and good will given what is coming from federal government. I don’t know how long protesting will be legal in this country.  What does it mean to say you want people to be “safe”?  We need a policy, but I’m concerned about rushing things through.  Some universities already ban “extreme speakers.” Maybe not here, but you have to understand people’s extreme skepticism.

 

AD:  There are no changes in the university response based on this particular document.  I understand the concerns; it is good to hear them.

 

FA:   There has been effort to be vindictive toward faculty and students who engage in free expression in recent history on this campus.  That motivates our concerns. Previous administrators tried to be punitive toward faculty, staff, and students.  The response to the Administrative Services sit-in was vindictive.  There were no discussions; all of a sudden a policy appeared without a name on it or a date.  That event was rather chilling. You can say all you want, but we have only one data point.

 

AD:  What I can share is what I said before.  The tenor of the conversations has been to respond.

 

FA:  When we read this policy as saying what was done at that event was perfectly fine, in fact it legitimized

what we found as an overreaction and illegitimate.

 

AD:  That is helpful for us to know.

 

FA:   Faculty make signs when the chancellor comes when we don’t have a contract.  This draft policy doesn’t allow this.  The Chancellor could go back and say we are happy.  We could be arrested for expressing our dissatisfaction with his not getting us a contract. These are serious concerns.  I frankly don’t know that you want to send a message saying that we want to legitimate what was done during the Administrative Services sit-in, and not allow faculty to do those pickets. Those are the two things we noticed in particular.

 

AD:  We need to bring things to a close.  I wasn’t here at the time, and we have a different concept as to how that went. We just can’t accept one side of the view.  Meet and Confer in two weeks?

 

FA:  April 10. Hold for three weeks until the next Meet and Confer.

 

Meeting ended at 5:03.