Closing thoughts on the strike

Some closing thoughts on the conflict between the FA and the administration that culminated in last fall's strike.

I suppose the lead can be that less has changed, at least in relations between the FA and administration, than many of us expected. Many expected Armageddon. It didn't happen. Neither the FA nor the Poshard/Cheng administration has ceased to exist. Neither side won a clear victory, but neither has peace and goodwill broken out. Now back to business as usual isn't the worst of all possible results. The Cheng administration has not engaged in any significant retribution that I'm aware of (my relatively smooth approval to serve as chair is one sign of that for those who don't regard me as a traitor to the True Cause). Nor, so far as I am aware, has there been much in the way of action by FA stalwarts to punish their colleagues who didn't strike.

Of course that fact that nothing much has changed doesn't mean that a stalemate was inevitable, or that there aren't longer-term consequences of the strike and the conflict leading up to it that have yet to become evident. I still tend to believe that the FA faced a true existential threat during the strike, and suspect that putting an end to the FA was at least one result devoutly to be wished as far as some on the administrative side were concerned. It's also possible that had more faculty joined the FA strike, more effectively shutting down campus, Cheng could have been sacked. The fact that one emerges from a contest with the parties more or less where they started doesn't mean that the stakes weren't high in the first place, only that the contest came out more or less even.

Thoughts on possible longer term results after the break.

On coach Hinson

As you'll no doubt have heard, SIUC named Bill Hinson as our new basketball coach. I've learned too much about the seamy side of college athletics, and the fact that well over half of the budget for athletics at SIUC (as most schools) is diverted from academics, to remain much of a college sports fan. But if one grants, as I'd rather not, that SIUC should divert over $10 million per year to provide entertainment in the form of athletics, then you can recognize better and worse decisions about athletics on campus. If you buy that premise, then the decision to pay our new coach less than half of what Chris Lowery was making is most welcome. It is also good to hear administrators were full of praise of Hinson's job promoting academic success among his players; that may be just talk, but talk is a start.

Hinson's salary is still a rather respectable $1.5 million for five years. But Bruce Weber, who many in Carbondale would have liked to see return to his former stomping grounds after he was fired by Illinois, will earn $1.5 million each year at Kansas State going forward, again on a five year contract. By my math, that means that SIUC will have $6 million dollars more on hand after five years than it would have had with Weber back in town. Is he a six million dollar man? He's charming and all, but I rather doubt it.

Put otherwise: you could pay 20 Associate Professors of Classics for the price difference each year between Weber and Hinson. Of course this doesn't mean that SIUC will hire 20 more professors. Most, after all, would be rather poor basketball players.

If only it were this easy to undo some of the lavish spending on Saluki Way, which our students will be paying off in the form of bonds for years to come. But give Cheng, and perhaps Moccia, credit where credit is due. They seem to have realized that we shouldn't continue to spend ourselves silly on athletics. In contemporary American academe that puts them ahead of the curve.

Graduation requirements change

[Be sure to check the comments for a clarification about the change.]

According to an email from the Chancellor sent out late Friday afternoon (and pasted at the end of this post), SIUC will now require graduates to complete only 42 hours in upper division classes (the old requirement was 60--out of the 120 minimum required).

I haven't done the research necessary to determine whether this lowering of our requirements for upper division courses is in keeping with our peers or not. Nor was I privy to the discussion about this change that took place in the Faculty Senate (which presumably took place before my election to that body). So I'm hoping for some informed comments. I did find it odd that the email came out at 4:43 on a Friday afternoon, the traditional time to hide things, and then, upon reflection, found it a bit odd that it came out at all. I at least had no idea of how many upper level hours were required for our undergraduates, so this one could have gone under the radar as far as I was concerned.

The question to ask, obviously, is whether or not lowering our formal graduation requirements will seriously undermine academics. It may not.  Student can now graduate with four fewer upper-level classes--but these classes will be replaced by lower level classes, of courses, classes which may be valuable in their own right. On the other hand, the change raises the specter of dumbing down the curriculum. It is in keeping with removing the requirement for a core interdisciplinary course (a 300 level offering) and replacing it with University College 101.

The Chancellor triumphs this move as one that will help us attract more transfers, but does not in her message say anything about any potential downsides--she does not say why it took "thorough and careful study" to reach this decision. She does, at the end, throw in a bit about continuing to ensure academic integrity of our degree programs. "Our degree programs" may be the key phrase here; perhaps the idea is that individual programs will need to safeguard academic integrity, as the university as a whole won't be doing it, at least to the same degree it had in the past. But just as SIUC faces competitive pressures with other potential hosts of transfer students, our academic programs vie with one another for students. So don't be shocked if you hear a Friday afternoon suggestion that your program reduce the number of upper-level offerings it requires.

The Chancellor's email is pasted after the break.

Her first 556

The DE ran a rather comprehensive review of Chancellor Cheng's first year and a half in office last week, a story I've just gotten around to reading. The money quote, for me, came early on:

“I think people that are critical either don’t know me, haven’t paid attention, or don’t really want anyone in the chancellor’s office to make the final decision,” Cheng said.

One has to be careful about judging someone's attitude based on a single quote in a newspaper, but, that said, this quote is rather revelatory. The Chancellor did not (at least in this comment, or any from this article) take the obvious opportunity to suggest that she could be fallible, or even that there could be honest differences of opinion about the issues we face.  President Poshard, to his credit, did note that there will be always be "contention" about shared government and academic freedom--though his wording implied that such contention, like the poor, will always be with us, and hence isn't something to take all that seriously.

But has Chancellor Cheng or anyone in her administration, ever apologized for the Facebook screw up--ever walked back from the initial false story that they were only censoring "inflammatory" postings?  In the article even Mike Eichholz, bless his heart, characterizes some of the Chancellor's emails during the strike as "blunders."  But there's no admission of any error, or that there may be honest disagreement, from the Chancellor's side.  Criticism is instead due to the following factors:

Chancellor Cheng, the DE, and Freedom of Information

Today's DE has a story on their victory in a Freedom of Information Act dispute with the SIUC administration. While the administration was able to conceal many emails from the DE, they did have to release at least one email relevant to SIUC's policy on limiting reporters' access to administrative sources.

The DE got interested because administrative sources kept telling them that all interviews with the press to be funneled through Rod Sievers, spokesman for the university. Just who this policy applies to (i.e., whether all employees are supposed to follow it) isn't entirely clear--though if it is supposed to apply to all campus employees, some of us have been, ahem, acting contrary to university policy. Oh my.

Money quote, from the email released following the FOIA filing:

In that email, which the university released to the DE, Cheng tells Sievers to make sure administrators have DE reporters go through Sievers for their stories.

“We cannot have the DE kids shopping for responses. Please remind them all to go through you to coordinate official responses,” she said.

"DE kids shopping for responses" is a particularly nice example of contempt for our students. "Shopping for responses"--i.e., reporting, isn't something we want our kid reporters to do. The university has tried to escape via obfuscation: this isn't a "policy"--because only things they ask the BOT to approve count as "policies". And it's just an attempt to be more efficient, not an effort to control information. Of course it's an attempt to "coordinate" & control information.

Back on the Line for Another Day

The Chancellor's stunt last night -- and it was certainly a stunt -- has assured another day of picketing, another day of missed classes, when there could so easily not have been one.  The Administration has made a "final" offer that "addresses" all of the faculty concerns (much in the same way a bully's taunt  "stop hitting yourself" addresses violence).  After putting this offer on the table, the BOT team went home and the Chancellor used a press conference to announce that the Administration was done for the night.

All that is clear in that "final" proposal is that we are close enough that a continued commitment to bargaining could have ended this thing in the late night or early morning hours. But the Administration would rather see the strike go on, would rather see students hoping to graduate soon face unqualified or no instructors in their upper level classes. 

Yesterday was the first day of classes since the Adinistration's census last week.  This was the day the Chancellor had to begin to deliver on her promise to provide "qualified substitute instructors" in those classes.  In some few cases, she may have delivered on this promise.  But in far too many cases, the substitutes were not present, were unable to do anything more than take attendance and hold the space, or just read from the texbook.  We are starting to hear these stories on the picket line from very frustrated students.  We are seeing them reported in the press.   Students are encouraged to share their experiences of the Chancellor's version of "business as usual" on the newly re-opened SIUC Facebook page...or even here. 

But maybe they already have made their presence known.  At the same time the Administration was devising its latest tactics in misdirection and abuse of process, hundreds of students formed a very large, very vocal crowd of supporters for the faculty on strike.  They marched from Anthony Hall to several of the picket locations then back to the Student Center and finally fully surrounded Anthony Hall. Their support for their faculty was truly inspiring. 

So, on a day when we might actually have gotten back to real "business as usual" the Administration has chosen to drag the process out, endure the likely continued growth of the student protest, avoid the accumulation of further evidence of their failure to provide qualified instruction in classes, and face the firm resolve of the Faculty on strike. Further evidence of their skewed priorities and short-sightedness.

The FA critics will enjoy something like free-rein on this site again today as most of the FA are either back at the bargaining table or back on the picket line.  These critics' chides, critiques, venom and "advice" are welcome -- we all need an outlet, after all.  Mine, today, is on the picket line where we are making a difference and will continue to do so.

A Strike Brings Out the Creativity in Folks

Never doubt that a strike is a serious labor action and serious work, but there's also a fair amount of creativity involved in a protest.  It's good to see that on the picket line.  I understand from people who were at that GPSC meeting Thursday morning that several upper administrators were rather smugly enjoying the weather conditions for the opening of the strike.  Let me be the first to reassure them that cold wind and rain did not dampen our spirit or our resolve.

After the break I'll offer some examples of that creativity.

News Flash: The Administration LIES!

However one might choose to characterize the beginning of the first strike in the history of SIUC, it was definitely not business as usual.  We know that the Administration is deep into crisis management mode and trying to assure all audiences that there's nothing going on here, keep moving along. But if you were on campus yesterday, you had a very different experience.  And even though the Administration has shut down striker's emails, we still heard plenty about the behind the scenes shouting matches and kerfuffles as the Administration struggled to put out "fires" all day all across the campus as a result of the disruption to business as usual.

I am on the line again today, so this will not be as full an analysis as it could be of a very full yesterday.  Still, I have a few comments after the break and an announcement or two.

Message from the Chancellor: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

...unless you are in the vast super majority not supporting the strike, in which case would you please sign up to help us break these unions.

The Chancellor continues the Administration media blitz with a radio interview:

http://www3.wsiu.org/radio/podcast/player.php?podid=991945&title=Morning+Conversation+%2811%2F01%2F2011%29%3A+SIUC+Chancellor+Rita+Cheng

And emails:

[Click to Enlarge]

I'll offer a few comments after the break, but really the Chancellor's comments in both venues are pretty much "business of usual" if you are in the business of "threaten" and "mischaracterize."

When "Facts" Become Petulant

As the unions kicked off the official opening of Strike Headquarters this afternoon, the Chancellor sent around a new missive proclaiming "facts" about the history of these negotiations.  Was someone jealous there was a party that she was not invited to?  Here's the text of her recent email; I'll have comments for each of her "facts" after the break.

[Click Image to Enlarge.]

Me and Mr. Baggott

The office of the Chancellor attempted to disrupt the informational meeting the IEA unions held for students in Lawson Hall on campus today. They did not succeed; at least 250 students came to the meeting, and most questions and comments from those in attendance were quite supportive of the unions.

I was in the middle of the abortive attempt to disrupt this meeting, and I don't come out of it unscathed, but I'm going to give you the straight scoop, as there will be rumors about this and the story may get reported in the DE (which interviewed me about it). The moral of the story is as I report it in the lead, but like many such stories, there's something of a twist.

On Twisting Words

[See my comment thread below for a partial retraction. It now looks to me as if a paraphrase of Randy Hughes in the DE would indeed allow for the Chancellor's interpretation. I remain sure that Randy Hughes meant what I suggest below that he meant, but that is far from clear from the DE story itself. Whether or not she or her scribe knew better, the Chancellor's version is a plausible reading of the newspaper story itself. She is perhaps guilty of inadequate care in characterizing her opponent's position--particularly if she said, as I thought she did, that a FA leader had been "quoted" as saying this. But that's a more venal sin than that I attribute to her below. I've relegated the controversy I raised to below the break. ]

The Chancellor's rhetoric at her State of the University Speech today was pretty sly on the whole (which I, as a fan of rhetoric, can appreciate). She implied, without every quite explicitly saying as much, that all the unions wanted was more money, and that the only way to get them more money would be to gouge students by increasing tuition. She, on the other hand, had heroically saved jobs, 75 in fact, by cutting salaries, rather than, say, using the furlough money to pay for athletics, new construction on campus, marketing, new "non-faculty professionals" etc. But we've been down this path before, with administrators insisting that money cannot be moved from pot to pot, unless they move it from a bad pot (layoffs) to a less bad pot (furloughs), in which case they are happy to take credit.

The Chancellor's false reassurance about tenure

I've just learned how something the Chancellor said in her email from last week is confusing some faculty.  The Chancellor made the following misleading comment in her email.

In fact, it is important to note that both bargaining teams tentatively agreed to the contract articles governing tenure and academic freedom last February. These articles remain virtually unchanged from the prior collective bargaining agreement. Based on these agreements, it is a little puzzling that these issues are still being raised in statements to the public.

Watch out whenever someone begins a sentence with "in fact".  I commented last week on the academic freedom issue: the Chancellor herself goes on to admit that there is disagreement about distance learning, but she failed to connect that issue with academic freedom, either through ignorance or in an attempt at misdirection.

Her comment about tenure is more seriously misleading--it is so divorced from reality that it didn't even register with me. The article agreed to spells out procedures for awarding tenure. Both sides have indeed agreed that those provisions need no substantial revision.  The disagreement, which is very real indeed, is about how to fire tenured faculty. I'd call this another golden fleece if I didn't feel that this statement, which is clearly intentionally disingenuous, and clearly meant to provide faculty with false assurance of the Chancellor's position and to falsely imply that the FA was lying about the very fact of disagreement, was too serious for that sort of cute moniker.

Unless the Chancellor truly finds it "a little puzzling" that faculty are concerned that her terms allow her to fire tenured faculty with 30 days notice, her statement here is the most irresponsible falsehood I've heard her utter so far.  It ought to at least be possible for the sides to accurately portray where the areas of disagreement lie. We expect both sides to make their own case and attack that of their opponents. Well and good. As I've noted elsewhere, SIUC tenure policy is a muddled mess, allowing rival interpretations. But denying that there is any disagreement about tenure is utterly irresponsible behavior that is unworthy of the leader of a university.

You should, in short, be reassured by the Chancellor's email only if you don't think being fired after you are tenured is something to worry about.

Cheng: SIUC without faculty means "business as usual"

According to the Chancellor it would be business as usual around here without faculty, GAs, and support staff. I think that pretty much says it all--it's the thesis of the Chancellor's email sent out this afternoon, which I'll paste after the break. That's right, after describing the measures she'd take to meet a strike, she concludes:

In other words, it will be business as usual.

Business as usual.  I suppose it is what one would expect a campus CEO to say. Rather like an airline CEO saying, sure, it will be business as usual with the pilots on strike.

Yes, the police won't go on strike and students won't starve. And yes, some classes would meet with their normal instructors, those who choose not to honor a picket line. But if the Chancellor believes she can find "qualified instructors" to fill in for all the faculty members who would go on strike, then her definition of what counts as a "qualified instructor" is even lower than I thought. Business as usual without faculty: that sums up her worldview beautifully. It's just business: business as usual.

Cheng's Counteroffensive

After a long silence, the Chancellor is again speaking on union issues, in a comment in today's DE and in an email.  I'll here try to respond to major points in order.  The full text of Cheng's email is pasted at the end of this post. 

1. The Chancellor has decided to start an unseemly fight about meeting times. I don't think it is in anyone's interest to spend our energies bickering about who turned down more dates. And if you do choose to go this route, at least get your facts straight: the Chancellor has failed to do so. But the whole issue is basically a red herring, and it is based on the false premise that meeting with the other side is all one needs to do to negotiate in good faith. While the pace of meetings can and will presumably pick up, the problem has never been that one side or the other is unwilling to meet, rather that the meetings thus far have not made sufficient progress. But below the break, before moving on to substance, I will squabble back. Skip to 2 if you'd rather avoid this silliness.

Tenure 1.5

[Some of what follows will require correction following Jonathan Bean's calling my attention to an SIUC policy page I hadn't checked--details in the comment stream.]

This won't quite amount to my no doubt widely anticipated second posting on tenure (to follow up on the post I did on AAUP tenure policies), but I will emphasize some good points from yesterday's op-ed in the DE on tenure, while also clarifying something I think that op-ed left unclear.   Plus I'll make a newish point of my own: that the administration's actions on furloughs presage possible action on tenure.

Yesterday's op-ed, by Richard Fedder, a Carbondale attorney, squarely nails what I take to be the central point: that the imposed terms are an effort to undermine tenure. So the scenario he outlines, in which the administration decides to go after a given program (or professor), and claims financial justification for doing so, is all too possible.

Fedder also makes a very important point indeed about intentions and legality. The Chancellor has said that she has no intention of undermining tenure. But her bargaining team has, to the best of my knowledge, not budged one inch from the imposed terms that have led many on campus, myself included, to conclude that her terms, if not her intent, undermine tenure. And if you end up being that laid-off tenured professor, her attempts at reassurance won't help you pay the bills any more than tenure without a job will.

If the Chancellor meant what she said when emailing the faculty about tenure (there's a link to her email after the break), it ought to be relatively easy to design contractual language outlining the proper process to be followed in the event of a bona fide financial exigency. To the best of my knowledge, though, the administration bargaining team has shown no interest in doing so.

On the other hand some of what Fedder says about financial exigency doesn't quite ring true to me--and it is devilish details like this that have tied me up in knots and kept me from posting my own take on this issue sooner. More on that after the break. More also on how the "administrative closures" policy sets a precedent of sorts for lowering the bar on firing tenured faculty. I'll also provide links to the main documents on tenure in case you want to engage with the details yourself. It's great fun!

Hughes v. Cheng

Dueling emails this evening, as FA President Randy Hughes attempted to rally faculty for the demonstration tomorrow at 11-1 (at Grand Ave and Route 51), while the Chancellor attempts to rain on the union parade by pointing to the "false assumptions that appear to be held in some parts of a campus".

Hughes' email, which includes a report from the FA bargaining team, makes it clear that little progress has been made during the first bargaining sessions this fall. In addition to the perennial issues of tenure and furloughs, there is a cluster of issues about distance learning. While the administration has made a positive step by moving control over distance education from continuing education to academic units, it appears to be insisting on the right to require individual faculty members to teach distance learning courses, to outsource distance learning work to other institutions, and to not include distance learning students when calculating the student/Faculty ratio the contract is supposed to protect.

The bargaining team also reports that they have been told that the Chancellor is working hard to attempt to offer faculty the following generous compensation package:  -2% for FY 11 (counting furloughs); 0%  for FY 12; 0.5% for FY 13, and a whopping 1% for FY 14. Some context: the current rate of inflation (as measured by the CPI) is 3.6%. SIUC's budget (tuition and fees + state appropriations) for next year, assuming static enrollment, will go up $4.1 million dollars in FY 2012 (-$1.3 in state appropriations, +$5.4 million in tuition and fees--this from the reports the Chancellor references in her email).  That's approximately a 2% increase in the budget (tuition & fees and state appropriations). Thus SIUC has a hiring freeze for faculty, decreasing our numbers greatly, and says that, over a four year contract period, it can't even compensate faculty for the 2% cut they took last year. I believe it is safe to conclude that the administration plans to give Faculty a smaller and smaller share of campus resources.

After the break, a first take on the Chancellor's email.

Cheng on WSIU (2): Budget, Athletics, and the Golden Fleece

Let me start out with what I consider the Chancellor's most significant mispresentation of the facts. I will mark it with our first ever Golden Fleece designation.  (I am a classicist, after all, though this usage mangles the classical reference).  Jennifer Fuller did a rather good job of asking the Chancellor some challenging questions.  The Chancellor's responses, were, in some cases, truth-challenged.

Golden Fleece #1.  Fuller noted our observation that SIUC actually received more money in tuition and fees last year than the year before (this at about 14:00 into the interview).  Cheng responded that that's a good thing, because faculty got $500,000 in promotional raises last year.  What she didn't mention was that, even including these raises (earned fairly by promotions to associate and full professor, as the Chancellor noted), SIUC spent approximately $1.8 million less on Faculty in FY 2011 than FY  2010 (as so many Faculty lines have been left empty).  Oh, and add the $1 million extra they sliced off via furlough days.  So let's check the figures . . .

The Chancellor said that SIUC spent $500,000 more on faculty last year.

In fact, SIUC spent $2,800,000 less on faculty last year.

Cheng on WSIU, Part the First: Logogate

I was feverishly finishing up syllabi yesterday so managed to avoid listening to Chancellor's Cheng special "Morning Conversation" of Friday until today; she was invited to respond to "clear the air" about certain questions raised by the Board of Trustees and yours truly. Plus she'll be back on Monday! Here I'll respond to what she said about the BOT special meeting and the concerns raised about marketing. A second post will follow, probably tomorrow.

Why did the BOT call a special meeting about the logo? The Chancellor really hit this question out of the park: the Board of Trustees has four new members who don't know what the hell they're doing. So she'll spoon feed them next time. That will go over well.

Marketing. The Chancellor started by saying the new logo did not cost $1.5 million. I'm not sure where that figure came from (she just blurted it out during the interview); rather, the spending went for all sorts of marketing efforts. Obviously the logo itself didn't cost $1.5 million (it looks more like about $1.50). The charge she raised is a straw man--perhaps she has learned something from our ace debate team. Then she argued that most spending was facilitated by "reallocating and reallignment" of current spending and staff. She said that almost all of the $1.5 million was covered by via savings, moving SIUC communications staff to other areas, etc.  This is a more substantive response. Is it true?

A speech for the Chancellor

I've been asked, reasonably enough, whether I'd ever approve of something the Chancellor proposes. So here's a suggested speech. I hereby give Chancellor Cheng carte blanche to use it as she chooses.  Neither consultant's fee nor charges of plagiarism shall apply.

We all know that SIUC faces a difficult budgetary situation, and that SIUC faces a long-term enrollment decline. I'm convinced that we need to improve our campus athletics and administrative facilities; to upgrade our marketing by developing a new message and doubling our spending to communicate it to the world; to continue aggressively funding scholarships for our student athletes and other aspects of our athletics budget; to set up innovative Saluki First Year and Saluki Start Up programs; and to put greater resources into more effective enrollment management. And we need to get the best people we can to fill top administrative positions, and pay them competitive salaries.  None of these moves will be cheap: in fact I believe that we must increase our spending in these areas by X million dollars in the next Y years if we are to get ourselves where we need to be in these crucial priorities. But if we do not up our game in these ways we may well face a bleak future.

To fund these priorities we are going to have to hold the line on spending on faculty and staff.