EMUtalk.org

Despite its potential illegality, myths, misinformation, or whatever, I’m still planning on attending the budget forum meeting this afternoon at 2 pm in the student center.  Ahead of that and after yesterday’s meeting, EMU-AAUP released last night a “Response to EMU Administration Press Release of August 25, 2010,” which is a PDF chart comparing the “myths” and “facts” of the negotiation process.  (And BTW, I put those words “in quotes” for the same reason I put all sorts of terms, like “truth,” in quotes, since I question most absolutes.  I’m a college professor, for “God’s” sake!  No wonder I’m working on putting together a syllabus for a rhetorical theory class in the fall).

I looked around the EMU web site this morning and couldn’t find a press release (which is unusual– they usually make these readily available), but I did see this in AnnArbor.com, “Eastern Michigan University, faculty union far apart in contract talks,” which is a so-so article pieced together by various press releases, I think.

In any event, I think that the EMU-AAUP has some great data, but sometimes I think they “bury the lead,” as they say in the journalism business.  From what I’ve seen so far, here’s what I would say are the key, “let’s boil it down to the highlights” issues of the negotiations:
Continue reading “Myths & Facts” and sorting through some EMU-AAUP highlights

Update: It would appear that there are “mixed feelings” amongst the leadership of Faculty Senate about 0/0/0% to say the least.  This morning, I (along with all other faculty) received this email from Faculty Senate President Matt Evett:

As you are probably aware, last week the EMU Board of Regents approved a budget for next year that calls for a 0% increase in tuition, fees, room and board. This is excellent news for Eastern, as well as for the families of Southeastern Michigan. It will make Eastern even more affordable and hopefully bring more students into our classrooms. I know that we faculty are sometimes cynical about applications of the phrase “education first”, but this is one we can be proud of.

Go figure….  Anyway, here’s the rest of the post as it was before:

Along with all the other faculty, I received an email today from Mahmud Rahman, who is the vice president of the EMU Faculty Senate, and it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the recently announced freeze on tuition and fees next year. I don’t disagree with what Rahman is saying, but I am also not quite sure this is the strategy faculty want to take.  It seems to me that we really ought to be a little more cautiously optimistic about all this.

Which brings me also to the predictions of a faculty strike. I learned my lesson a long LONG time ago not to make predictions one way or another about that (mainly because I am, as more than one of my colleagues has pointed out to me, always wrong about such things). But I will say this:

• A strike is in no one’s interests for fall 2010.  It’ll make the faculty look greedy (even though I don’t think we are and even though I think we do deserve modestly more money and a hold on benefit costs), and it’ll take all the wind out the promotion for a freeze on tuition and fees.  Lose-lose.  Actually, it’s probably a bigger loss for the faculty as it stands now because if it turns out we negotiate a contract that the administration claims costs too much and forces them to raise tuition and fees after all, faculty will not look good. And it won’t matter what the “truth” of the matter is, either.
• It occurs to me that the EMU-AAUP and the Faculty Senate needs to be a little smarter about this stuff.  For example, how about instead of complaining about the problems of this freeze, why don’t we ask the administration to pledge a freeze on rising costs associated with health insurance plans, a freeze on dropping the number of faculty, etc.?

Okay, the letter from Prof. Rahman after the continued:

Continue reading Not exactly a Faculty Senate endorsement of 0/0/0%