According to Greg O’Dell, the police chief at EMU, marijuana is prohibited on campus for any reason, including medicinal uses.
Associate Director of University Housing Brian Fitzgerald said though there were meetings in place discussing the possibility of allowing medicinal marijuana on campus, after looking at the possibilities, and other universities in Michigan as well as other states, EMU’s administration came to the conclusion that keeping campus a drug-free zone was best for the school.
The consequences for students caught with marijuana on-campus will most likely be treated as a conduct issue, and the first offense would be a $100 fine. This applies to students who have a medical marijuana card.
It’ll be interesting to see how (or if) this plays out. I’m not a doctor or a lawyer, but I have to wonder if this is both good for students who have a medical need and/or if it is legal. As one of the commentators on this article pointed out, imagine if EMU banned some sort of prescription drug that a student brought to campus that had the potential to be abused. That would be bad, right?
Eastern Michigan University’s head football coach Ron English said he wasn’t attacking single moms.Earlier this summer, English said he wants recruits that have fathers in their background because they had experience listening to men.”I regret that some people thought I was attacking single moms,” English said.. “I was raised by my grandmother. My father wasn’t really a part of my life until I was a teenager. So, I have all the respect in the world for women raising kids on their own.”
Maybe it’s just me, but my EmuMail (aka Eaglemail) is working a little weird for me right now. It says I’ve got 23 unread messages in my inbox (I see none) and that I have 311 draft messages (waa???) Anyone else getting anything odd like that?
As far as I can tell the email still works; it’s just a little schizo.
A slight update: I’ve cut and pasted EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller’s email to faculty below after the “read more” part. Note that the two links in her email take you to PDF files.
A few last thoughts on the tentative agreement that the EMU-AAUP negotiated with the administration:
The feeling/vibe I had from the negotiating team and the crowd in general in Roosevelt this afternoon was more of “relief” than it was of a feeling of “victory” or even of “happiness.” I suspect it got pretty brutal in the last throws of the negotiation process. In any event, I think that the negotiating team calculated– correctly, in my view– that this was as good as they were going to get and to go on strike again would get the faculty very little more than this agreement. So, as Kenny Rogers reminds us, one needs to know when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em.
And this is also part of the two year deal, no doubt. I have to assume the union is feeling like the shorter term on the contract will help them in the next round of negotiations; I have no idea if that is right or not.
It was interesting to me how long this stupid idea about tying faculty pay raises to rises in enrollment apparently stayed on the table. According to what we heard at the meeting today, that was an issue of negotiation until 9:30 this morning, and it was also the “brain child” of Board of Regent member Jim Stapleton. Jeesh. Anyway, I think that was a “line in the sand issue” for the union– rightfully so– and the administration gave up on the idea. And I suspect that the administrators negotiating at the table also knew it was a stupid idea.
I am disappointed that the pay raise for full professors after 10 years was taken off the table, though. I don’t know exactly what the details were with that and maybe it was something too complicated to work out for this contract, but I really REALLY wish there could be a deal here. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: it is too easy to get tenure and promotion at EMU (at least it is in my department), and there ought to be some sort of reward/motivation for people who get promoted to full professor to keep active in terms of scholarship, service, and innovation in teaching. In any event, this is an issue that might actually motivate me to participate in the Bargaining Council for 2011.
By the end/middle of the meeting today, the villains here were the Board of Regents. Supposedly, there were all sorts of threats from them and in-fighting amongst them, and there was a lot of energy at this meeting for political action and organizing to educate folks about the problem of the Board, but I have to say, I am a bit of a skeptic that anything will come of that.
If there is an effort to make something happen with a political action committee or some other charge to educate people about what’s happening with the board, I’m happy to contribute this space or my expertise with making a space like this work for this yet to be formed group.
Speaking of which: EMUTalk.org came up a couple of time over this process in ways I thought were kind of interesting. One of my friends/colleagues tied to the negotiating process wasn’t happy with something I posted earlier; someone who has been involved in union stuff/Faculty senate stuff around here for a long time complimented me today on what I’ve been posting; and someone mentioned EMUTalk.org in a comment/question at the meeting today in a way I’m nut sure was favorable or not.
Well, look: the thing about EMUTalk is I want and encourage people associated with and interested in EMU to participate. That includes everyone and anyone: faculty, students, staff, administrators, alumni, people in the community, whoever. So if you read something here that you don’t like and/don’t agree with, why not go ahead and comment on it? As long as it falls within the realm of “The Rules,” I will happily allow it and encourage it.
And better yet, why not apply to be a writer on EMUTalk so you can write original posts and start conversations on your own? Just write me at emutalk@gmail.com
One of my colleagues (who is not yet tenured) expressed some interest in becoming an EMUTalk writer, but was worried about it. Be assured that while I need to know who is writing original posts, there is no reason why you can’t write under a pseudonym. And has clearly been the case many times over the years, you can comment on posts anonymously and/or with a pseudonym, too.
And I know that everyone is pretty happy that it’s a meeting to talk about terms instead of a meeting to talk about striking. A pretty good crowd; here’s hoping the terms are decent enough. Much more after the break.
I don’t know if this is good news or no news, but I noticed this morning that there has been no update from the EMU-AAUP and the update on the EMU web site says:
Monday, August 30
As of 9 p.m., negotiations remain under way. Further details will be provided when available.
Don’t know if this matters or not, but after I got back from walking my dog, I checked the EMU web site again, and it actually changed to something more vague:
Both bargaining teams continued to exchange proposals. Negotiations resume Tuesday, August 31.
Huh.
Oh, and BTW, I will be “live blogging” at the EMU-AAUP meeting at noon today.
…. and then I’m going to turn off the computer and/or go to bed: Susan Moeller sent around an interestingly short message tonight:
Unfortunately, today’s negotiations have been distressing. At several points, we thought we were on the road to an agreement, but nothing has materialized. We are meeting again tomorrow morning, and hopefully things will have improved.
It is absolutely critical that you all come to tomorrow’s meeting, noon in the Roosevelt Auditorium. At that point we can fill you in on where we stand and discuss options for how to proceed.
Oh, I’ll be there, believe-U-me. I have been and remain under the opinion that in the current negotiation climate, we as faculty would retain the high ground by agreeing to continuing negotiations while working (at least for a while) without a contract. But I will be very curious to see what the EMU-AAUP folks have to say about all this.
See you tomorrow, with both live blogging and (later on) some video of various events.
I say “non-strike” news, but it is hard for me not to flinch/remember the stuff that the EMU-AAUP has been saying about how much money we’re spending on football. English starts talking about this at about the 3:20 point. And then at the end of the video, English talks about how he’s going to talk with everyone who has anything to do with the players: the parking attendants, the secretaries, etc. I wonder if he’ll talk to the faculty at all?
And I might be mis-remembering this entirely, but didn’t the previous football coach or previous athletic director come out with some kind of statement in favor of the faculty in the 2006 strike?
Also in non-strike news (sort of) and news I find personally amusing: From the Waterloo Cedar Falls (Iowa) Courier comes this, “Expert on financial state of universities to speak at UNI.” That expert is none other than our own Howard Bunsis, and UNI is the University of Northern Iowa in my hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
While I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa down the road in Iowa City (go Hawkeyes!), I grew up in Cedar Falls and know UNI and the area very well. So Howard, if you want any “what to do when in the middle of nowhere northeast Iowa” advice, just let me know.
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