I meant to post about the stuff going on at Albion College last week and was reminded about this morning with an update in Inside Higher Ed: basically, as this IHE story “Power Play” discusses, the Board of Trustees at Albion College decided to eliminate faculty and departments pretty much with no input from anyone else on campus. Here are the opening paragraphs:
A plan to eliminate 15 faculty positions regardless of tenure status might hit some speed bumps if Albion College’s faculty handbook were followed, but the college’s trustees have decided to ignore that minor inconvenience.
When Albion faculty said the dismissals might violate the handbook, the board promptly passed a resolution washing their hands of the guidelines. Indeed, the board didn’t even bother to say which parts of the book they would change; the trustees simply declared that anything standing in their way was “amended effective immediately.”
“RESOLVED that exercising the authority of the Board of Trustees under the Charter of 1857, the Faculty Handbook is amended effective immediately in all ways necessary to permit the reduction of 15 full time equivalent (FTE) existing faculty positions, which may include tenured faculty positions, by the beginning of the 2010-11 academic year,” the resolution states.
Needless to say, this all reminds me of the last minute denial of tenure for two faculty by the Board of Regents about a year ago. Back in mid-January, I was under the impression that the faculty/EMU-AAUP had won the arbitration that took place for one of the two folks denied, based on an email sent from EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller (I posted about it here). But someone I know who is very much in a position to “know” told me that this is still actually being disputed. Perhaps the initial finding was just the first step in the process and it has advanced beyond that?
There are certainly a lot of differences between EMU and Albion, but I do think that one of the big ones in this particular instances is the unions on campus. I would just as soon be in a work situation where unions were completely unnecessary and where all faculty, staff, and administrators coexisted in a harmonic, beautiful, and communal environment, where everyone trusts everyone else, etc., etc. But that’s not the case, and I think it’s fair to say that in the current less than ideal economic climate, faculty across the country have been better off on unionized campuses than non-unionized ones.
Speaking of which: I haven’t heard much about the contract negotiation process yet, other than to note that the process is moving along, I am sensing an air of “reasonableness” (which might be just my imagination, frankly), and Jim Greene is not at the table for the administration. Yet. Anyone want to share anything else about the process so far?
