MINUTES
of AAUP Executive Board meeting,
Wednesday
10 May 2018, 3:30-5:20pm
UW
Club
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
3:30
PM Announcements
3:35
PM Reports
1. Court Hearing on Freedom Foundation (Hagopian)
2. Elections
3:45
David Corbett on Disciplinary Process and “Housekeeping” Concerns
4:15
Executive session
4:40
Planning for next year. Retreat
and/or Annual Meeting
Minutes
AAUP Board elections
Election
ballots for the 2018-2020 board have been distributed to the AAUP membership.
Wrinkle: Amy technically “owns” the webQ, because she
had initially designed it. That makes the votes not “anonymous.” Jim Liner is
the administrator. Jim Gregory noted the Faculty Senate votes aren’t
technically blind either, so it’s the same level of confidentiality as that.
It’s not a contested election so the stakes are low here. When Dan distributes
the reminder to vote, he’ll clarify these points. We should probably have
another election next year to fill out the vacancies on the board (to get to 15
at large members).
Amy’s
report on the Appeals Court hearing on Freedom Foundation case
Amy
attended the 4/23/2018 hearing at the Washington Court of Appeals on the
lawsuit [No. 76630-9-I IN THE COURT OF
APPEALS, DIVISION I, OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON FREEDOM FOUNDATION, Appellant,
v. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON and SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION LOCAL
925, Respondents.]
The
Freedom Foundation seeks public disclosure of emails and records in the
University of Washington’s possession concerning faculty union organizing
efforts. Four faculty were targeted: Rob Wood, when he was president of AAUP;
Amy Hagopian, when she was secretary; Rob Liner and Aaron Katz, who were both
active in the union organizing. The union argues such documents are not “public
records” under the Public Records Act because employees creating the documents
are not acting within the scope of their employment and are not creating
“public records” when engaged in communications with co-workers and unions
related to organizing efforts.
The
UW argues “email records at issue in this case are maintained on the University's
electronic servers. In order to comply with the PRA, when the University
received the PRA request for these records, the University had to identify and
assemble the records that were potentially responsive to the request. At the
same time, to avoid the appearance of an unfair labor practice, the University
conscientiously isolated the records so they would not be reviewed by any
person in management. When the University found no basis for withholding the
responsive records, it notified the affected faculty to give them an
opportunity to seek an injunction against release. The University has in good
faith attempted to comply with the mandates of the PRA and has done nothing
with the records that could be considered an unfair labor practice, or a
violation of the PRA or any other statute.”
So
far the court decisions have been in our favor, so the Appeals Court would be
overturning lower courts to rule in favor of the Freedom Foundation here. We
should hear in a couple of months at the earliest.
Faculty
discipline procedures and policy
David
Corbet, attorney for Steve Schwartz, has reviewed the Faculty Code in great
detail in his role as Stephen’s representative. He has previously represented
faculty in cases relating to the Faculty Code, and because of that noticed a
discrepancy in how he remembered the code in relation to how it is now. This is
how we learned of the “housekeeping” modifications of Section 25-71 when Corbet
compared previous versions (originally 1994) of the Code section to the current
(2015) version. The changes were not in favor of faculty. Corbet used the “Wayback Machine” to find the previous version of the Code.
Code
revisions occurred under then-Secretary Marcia
Killian while Norm Beauchamp was Faculty Senate chair, 2015-2016;
these were inappropriate and well beyond “housekeeping.” [A side-by-side
comparison of the pre- and post-amendment versions of 25-71 is available here:
http://www.davidcorbettlaw.com/yahoositeadmin/assets/docs/JustHousekeepingupdated121217.34583505.pdf.] There is no record of the Faculty Senate approving
these housekeeping changes.
The
stated motivation for the housekeeping change was to harmonize the Code with
federal research misconduct regulations. Several things were changed, including
how we refer to harassment and scientific misconduct. The President could have
issued an executive order rather than sneakily revise the code. Duane noted the
UW has never been able to cite the specific federal requirement that anyone at
the UW could refer to.
In
the earlier version of the Code, if any allegation of misconduct came to a
chair, the chair’s responsibility was to inform the faculty member of the
charges and offer to meet with them.
The
revised Code now moves scientific misconduct directly to UCIRO. The
housekeeping revision also took away pre-adjudication notice.
The
unauthorized Code revisions protect secrecy. Administration may. now routinely
punish people without adjudication. It all happens in secret; if you ask for
adjudication it will be worse for you. Corbet noted the reports of the faculty
adjudication panels indicate only two sexual harassment cases have been filed—that
likely indicates the bulk of cases are resolved in secret.
Faculty
Forward has submitted a FOIA request for
public records concerning discipline of UW faculty based on Section 25-71 of
the UW Faculty Code – Standard of Conduct, subsections D and E. Corbet has
similarly asked for complaints against faculty, his request is unrestricted to
25-71 category.
Members
of the AAUP expressed gratitude to Corbet and Schwartz for bringing our
attention to this.
We
went into executive session to discuss what AAUP can do. The UW should be
alerted that AAUP cares about this.
1) We should systematically do an annual Code storage and comparison. Keep it on the AAUP website.
2) Jim Gregory will draft a Class C resolution stating the Code should never be changed without Faculty Senate authorization, and that recent unauthorized changes should be reversed. All Code changes, even housekeeping changes, should be approved by the Senate. This is an egregious violation of faculty governance. Next Faculty Senate meeting is May 17.
3) Op-eds and list server posts would be appropriate now.
Meeting
schedule
Dan
will host an event at his house over the summer on a Thursday.
Next
year, we’ll attempt to meet Mondays. Dan will distribute a schedule