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Announcement :: Labor |
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GEO Struggle Featured In New Issue Of "The Faculty Advocate" |
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by David Brodsky
(No verified email address) |
04 Oct 2002
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David Brodsky writes about the long-term struggle of the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that finally tasted victory after nearly a decade of organizing. |
The September 2002 issue of The Faculty Advocate, newsletter of the AAUP chapter at UMKC, is now online. Its address is: http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/facadv10.htm
Since the last Education for Democracy Network mailing, the crises at UMKC have escalated. At the end of July the Provost issued an ultimatum that the administration would impose its choice for Dean on the embattled School of Biological Sciences (SBS) without faculty input or consent. At the same time, the Board of Curators' de facto abolition of tenure has not been rescinded. In response the UMKC AAUP chapter is involved in a membership drive and an informational campaign on faculty governance and shared governance. It also continues to co-sponsor the successful series of Teaching Tolerance Teach-Ins which began last year right after 9/11.
The issue leads off with Stuart McAninch's report of continuing inaction on the part of the UM Board of Curators and the system administration to rescind the Board's de facto abolition of tenure when it amended its bylaws at the end of May. A promise that an executive order protecting tenure would be issued has not been fulfilled, and despite verbal assurances from a system vice-president that the amendment will not affect tenure, the faculty are insisting on written guarantees. Faculty are also questioning the process by which the amendment was adopted, without faculty prior knowledge or consultation. The text of the UMKC-AAUP resolution on tenure follows.
AAUP Chapter member Amy Zeh, a graduate teaching assistant and part-time instructor in English, reports on her experiences at the AAUP Summer Institute at San Diego State University, entitled "Freedom Summer." In a second article she announces the formation of a Graduate Employee Organization at UMKC, of which she is a founding member.
A news item excerpted from the latest issue of Academe, the AAUP magazine, about the unionization of grad assistants at University of Rhode Island in an AAUP collective bargaining chapter is one of many success stories about grad student organizing.
The participation of three Chapter members and some UMKC students in the Third Campus Democracy Convention in Lawrence, Kansas, is the subject of the next report. Pat Brodsky gave a presentation on the continuing crisis entitled "Cluster Bombs over Academe: The Case of Missouri."
The escalating administration attacks on the School of Biological Sciences are chronicled by Pat Brodsky. She provides copious documentation from published news reports of the undistinguished past performance of Frank Horton, the administration's imposed choice as Interim Dean of SBS, in his previous positions as President of three different universities. She also recounts the undistinguished performance of the UMKC Faculty Senate, which refused to condemn the administration's assaults. Following this report is the AAUP statement on SBS, pointing out the administration's multiple violations of AAUP principles.
Alfred Esser, a faculty member in SBS, skewers the Senate for evading its responsibility to defend faculty interests.
In her "Food for Thought" column, Pat Brodsky asks, "What kind of university would I like to work in?," and argues that respect is the most important attribute of a desirable workplace. She then discusses the latest examples of disdain, if not outright contempt, which the Gilliland administration is exhibiting in its war against the faculty and the university community as a whole. She also questions the aptness of an award given to the Chancellor for her allegedly extraordinary support of academic freedom, by cataloguing more than a dozen violations of academic freedom perpetrated by her administration which have been reported in The Faculty Advocate.
David Brodsky writes about the long-term struggle of the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that finally tasted victory after nearly a decade of organizing. The GEO victory demonstrates the rewards of persistence against apparently insurmountable odds, a lesson urgently needed in places and at times where the situation appears to be bleakest.
Gary Zabel argues in his essay on the corporatization of higher education that the process has been underway for a century. Today it is reflected in the composition of the academic workforce, of which much less than half is tenured or eligible for tenure. At the same time he reminds us that "Campus, Inc. has created the forces capable of replacing it with a more humane, democratic, and egalitarian institution. A broad coalition of contingent faculty, increasingly beleaguered full-timers, other campus staff, and students (many of whom now work their way through college) is the key."
Finally, Maria Alvarez thanks the Education for Democracy Network for its conference and cluster of articles published in Workplace, the online journal of academic labor. The essays confirmed her own intuition, helped articulate her concerns, and showed her she was not alone in her commitment to sound pedagogy. |
See also:
http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/facadv10.htm
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