MINUTES
of AAUP Executive Board meeting,
Wednesday
5 March 2018, 3:30-5:20pm
306
Smith
Three priorities in the current AAUP strategic plan:
1. the escalating division of insecure academic labor
2. reductions and restructuring of public funding and budgeting processes
3. the increasingly hostile environment affecting students and faculty
Items we’re monitoring
Faculty Regent bill
Freedom Foundation request for emails
Dental School deficit
Lecturer job security
Higher ed finance
Hate crimes on campus & The shooting and UW Police Department
issues
The use of the UW’s “workplace violence” rule and Faculty Code 25-71 to
pursue faculty
Minutes
Announcements/Brief discussions
Nancy McClean will be at Town Hall
Saturday 7 April, would we like to have a discussion with her the Monday
following (at our regular meeting)? Topic: Rise of the new right. Greenwood Senior Center, 4 pm https://townhallseattle.org/event/nancy-maclean/
Faculty
Senate voted in a new policy that senior or principal lecturers at 50% FTE or
more should get to vote. The Senate rejected a proposal that all lecturers at
50% or more on annual or multi-year contracts be voting members of the faculty.
New pending Senate legislation says assistant professors shouldn’t be able to
vote on the promotions of senior and principal lecturers. The President and
Provost want to limit searches for those faculty at 50% and more FTE. Dan is
promoting a search for all positions after 1-3 years. FCFA is divided. At the
January 8 Faculty Senate Executive Committee, it was announced Provost Baldasty
will be putting together a committee to see how the lecturer-hiring guidelines
have been implemented thus far. Among other things, the committee will be
looking to see if there has been any “slippage” between the guidelines and
actual practice. It will also consider how best to communicate similar
guidelines to units in the future
Faculty
discipline procedures and policy
Mike
Townsend, Secretary of the Faculty Senate (and thus our only ongoing Faculty
Senate officer with institutional memory) was here as a guest to talk about
faculty disciplinary procedures and grievance. Mike is in the law school, where
he tends to hear about dispute resolution problems. After talking it through,
and looking at the issues on the student side, there was an institutional decision
to launch a do-over on the faculty discipline and grievance policy. The goal is
for discipline to be consistent and coherent from the ground up, involving all
the stakeholders. Most administrators have been forthcoming on this.
A
steering committee is overseeing the endeavor. A “values committee” is coming
up with the principles that should drive the effort. They emphasize the methods
that are less adversarial than the adjudicative model, with more of an emphasis
on mediation. This could be mandatory mediation, or at least strongly
encouraged. Statistics show that when you do it with mediation the outcomes are
much better.
There
are serious concerns about transparency and vagueness in UW’s current
discipline and grievance processes. On the faculty side, when it gets to the
adjudicative level, we should consider whether people on the wrong end have
some access to legal representation. That will be a sticking point; how would
this be funded?
Washington
Administrative Procedures Act governs this sort of dispute resolution. Is the
administration willing to take part in conciliation? Depends on the
administrator involved. The ombuds process is there, but is not emphasized.
Chuck Sloane’s office (Ombuds) is woefully understaffed (Chuck plus 2 people,
should be up to 5 if we use comparable schools as a guide). The ombuds office
would logically be the dispute resolution office. Chapter 25-71 encourages the
dean to host a mediation at the unit level, but instead it turns into a de facto
plea bargain situation.
What’s
the current process? Depends on the fact pattern. If someone came to Mike
Townsend (Secretary of the Faculty Senate), with a complaint that a chair was
retaliating against them, Mike would suggest going to the divisional dean to
mediate the issue, or to the Ombuds office. Divisional deans tend to support
chairs. The ombuds would call the chair and offer to mediate. A conciliator
would set up the meeting, if the chair agreed.
Jim
raised the point that administrators are feeling they can impose sanctions
without much due process. Mike thought the problem was larger, but definitely
includes that.
Rob
sits on the new “Values committee.” He mentioned the role of UCIRO (University
Complaint Investigation & Resolution Office). The role of the secretary of
the faculty is key, and that person’s attitudes towards adjudication and
conciliation changes with who holds the office. The UW’s lack of records of
precedents is a problem. These complaints are brought as an adjudicative
posture in an adjudicative agency court. There is no one really trained in
administrative agency rules who gets involved. Bill Anderson of the UW law
school called out this problem years ago.
It
was posited that south campus faculty (med school and health sciences), most of
whom don’t have tenure or salary, aren’t really “employed” and therefore cannot
avail themselves of adjudication. The chair of the adjudication panel didn’t
really understand this argument in a current pending case.
Washington
Administrative Procedures Act has two types of procedures available: full and
brief. Other states have more options. The courts have ruled that if you are
subject to the WAPA, you have only these two options.
Section
25-71 includes a section the deans have turned into a third procedure, to
impose sanctions.This 25-71 has turned into its own mini-procedure.
The
President can overturn a faculty panel, or at least has in the past. Faculty
members have 90 days to file an adjudication. They get to Mike when they’re
about out of time.
Theo
clarified. The disciplinary system at UW is completely decentralized to the
unit level. The mediation process is referred to as ADR (alternative dispute
resolution), but that is voluntary. If the unit doesn’t want to do it, it won’t
result in a settlement. In Washington state, we don’t have a lot of common
administrative law. The student discipline process has more protections.
Suspending a student, for example, entitles a student to a full hearing.
Mike
spoke of a case where a faculty member was suspended with loss of 95% pay for 2
months. Mike argued the law required due process, but the administration
disagreed. If the sanction sought was severe, you need more process (like a
“grand jury”) at the unit level, not just skip to sanctions.
The
25-71 (plea bargain) letters now require the faculty to sign off that all due
process was followed. Faculty don’t get much time to sign (a few days).
About
two years, the “housekeeping” process for adjusting Faculty Code (created for
correcting spelling errors and such) was used to significantly change the 25-71
section. The people who signed off included Norm Beauchamp as Faculty Senate
chair. Why does our “housekeeping” process permit this? It shouldn’t.
Cheryl
Cameron (Vice Provost for Academic Personnel) says UW administration centrally
doesn’t keep track of 25-71 charges. All the deans could be asked separately to
dig out all their letters, though. That might seem overly antagonistic from the
Faculty Senate’s point of view. The Secretary of the Faculty reports only 6-12
he’s seen, but most people probably won’t bring these to his attention. [Note:
SEIU, the Faculty Forward union, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request
for a count of these 25-71 charges.]
How
many people manage a 25-71 complaint without a lawyer? Probably most, because
it’s a multi-$10,000 proposition to get an attorney. The more formal the school
gets, the more the AG’s office gets involved. The AG pretty much always
interprets in the administrator’s favor. Without a union, there is no
systematic mechanism to protect faculty in these situations.
What’s
the plan for defending a good proposal if (when) administration pushes back? How
can we advance this conversation? What’s the role of the AAUP list server
conversation? Surveys? Forums? Would the UW even be willing to engage in a
public conversation about the policy and procedure? Keeping the momentum going
is important, so our AAUP tools can advance that.
The Faculty Senate Task Force on the Faculty Disciplinary Code and Process drafting committee includes Mike Townsend (law), Lea Vaughn (law), and Rich Christie (engineering). Then it would go to FCFA and the senate as a whole. The values committee is Rob Wood, Zoe Barsness, Jack Lee, who else? (the AAUP secretary cannot find evidence of this committee on the Faculty Senate web page.)
Reputation
matters here. Academic units have a lot to lose when stories of administrative
ineptness or injustice get out. Faculty have reputations, careers and incomes
at stake. Duane asked what punishments would be available for administrative
misconduct. Can the university be ordered to pay the faculty back for lost pay,
costs of defense? The authority of the panels are unclear.
People
in the medical school (half the faculty) are often being disciplined as
employees of UW Medicine, not as faculty. That takes a lot of faculty out of
the (even weak protections of the) faculty code.
Other
business
· Amy gave a brief dental school update.
· Next month’s meeting (April 7, 3:30): Nancy MacLean? Or start a subcommittee to look at finance (include Bill Zameta, chair of Budget & Finance Committee).