Strike deductions under the radar

Jyotsna Kapur of C & P asked me to post the letter below, since the DE seems uninterested in printing it. I am happy to oblige.

February 2, 2012

An open letter to Chancellor Cheng

Dear Chancellor Cheng,

As expected, I noted along with others who had honored the strike, a cut in our February paychecks.  In my case, I expect another paycut next month.  What surprised me, however, was that the paycheck gave no reason for the cut—just a lower salary, that’s it.  Last time, you administered a cut in our salaries it was duly noted as the cost of administrative closure days.  I am sorry, I don’t have language suggestions for what you could call the strike days: dock days, fine for striking, ticket for loitering on campus, or simply--on strike.   But noting the reason for the salary reduction would be the transparent thing to do.

As far as money goes, there is little difference in the loss of pay between the furloughs you had imposed on us last year and the cost of going on strike this year.  But there is a world of difference in what it means for my self-respect as a faculty member.  The furlough days were imposed on us without negotiation and that is why the FA insisted on our right to challenge their legality in the current contract.  If we win, we will win back the loss of pay for all faculty and validate the principle of collective bargaining.  The cost for going on strike, on the other hand, was a price I agreed to pay.  So, I am not complaining about this cut, Chancellor but the discourtesy of not acknowledging the strike while making that cut.  Could you then please revise my salary statement for this month, noting the days I was on strike?  You may keep the money but I’d like to keep the record.

With best wishes for the New Year,

Sincerely,

Jyotsna Kapur

Associate Professor, Cinema and Photography

Satan and Higher Education

Yes, that was the teaser headline over at Inside Higher Ed to an article on recent remarks by Rick Santorum, who has managed to lose the lead in Michigan over the past week by attacking contraception and higher education, the two pillars of our modern society. Of course the incumbent president has himself made some controversial remarks on higher education, essentially jumping on the performance based funding bandwagon. 

Dominus noster

Santorum's argument appears to be that (a) there are decent, hardworking people who can and should make fine lives for themselves and their families without going to college and (b) the arch-liberal, Satan, has taken over Higher Ed.

(a) isn't unreasonable, and all professors at places at SIUC have heard and made plenty of complaints about the strategy of making college accessible to all by letting everyone in to college only to have many of them fail. 12 years of decent education, culminating in a high-school education that goes beyond mere job training (but includes that), could well be enough. But I don't know if this ideal is still practicable given the increasingly high-tech workplace out there and the chronic problems facing our K-12 educational system.

(b) I can't comment on, as I, like many readers of this blog, have taken a blood vow to remain silent about my fealty to Our Great Master. But Santorum's remarks do lend a certain weight to those arguing that we ought to change the name of the College of Liberal Arts, lest it be taken for a College of the Dark Arts by a certain sector of the population.

University state budget news good so far

The Southern has a quick story on Quinn's budget address, with reactions from Cheng and Poshard. The news here re the overall budget is good (i.e., Quinn does not advocate cuts to the higher ed budget), and includes plans to increase funding for MAP grants. But there are lingering concerns about pensions, in two senses: employees may be asked to pay more, and employers (i.e., the university) might be asked to pay more, which would mean less money was available for other things. Of course the final budget approved by the legislature may differ greatly. But the reaction to Quinn's message from the democratic leaders of the legislature was warmer than last year, at least according to the Chicago Tribune article, which including the following interesting bit from Senate President John Cullerton:

Cullerton called it time to “take the next leap forward in comprehensive pension reforms that control costs while preserving the constitutional rights of current employees and retirees.”

“Unlike Indiana and Wisconsin, we intend to work with unions to accomplish this goal,” Cullerton said.

There is of course plenty of bad news in this budget plan as well, including closures of several downstate facilities. Quinn, though, is obviously making education, including higher education, a priority, for which those of us in that line of work should be thankful.

Differential teaching loads

At least two college deans on campus are pushing chairs to assign extra teaching to faculty who haven't produced any research over some period of time. This raises all sorts of issues re the FA contract, tenure and promotion, and merit procedures (even if we have no merit for the next few years, more teaching now will mean less research production later). But I wanted to start a thread for faculty to comment on this push on its merits. Would you like to empower your chair to assign additional teaching to faculty she or he determines are non-productive in research? 

Faculty Senate 2/14/12

A report on this month's Faculty Senate Meeting.  (Agenda here.)

Upcoming events

• On Friday, February 24, at 3:00 G. W. Reid, the executive director of the IBHE (Illinois Board of Higher Education) will speak on performance based funding, and take questions. Faculty were encouraged to attend; he's not going to every campus, and this will be a good opportunity for SIUC faculty to give him our input and show our interest in this process. 
• On February 29 President Poshard will speak on campus about employee pensions, from 1:30-3:00 in the student center auditorium.   

Program review. For me the highpoint of yesterdays' Faculty Senate meeting was what didn't happen: there was no significant discussion of the draft document on program review, despite a lengthy and somewhat critical review of the draft document circulating about that process. This was in large part due to the unspoken rule that after a meeting has gone for over an hour, everyone starts to clam up, together by Senate President Bill Recktenwald's urging us to submit comments in writing rather than engage in an extended discussion. The Chair of the Undergraduate Education Policy Committee, Stephen Ebbs, had to buck Recktenwald a bit to say anything at all.  He was answered, cordially, by Alan Karnes, co-chair of the committee that produced the Program Review Report; Karnes said that this was just the sort of feedback his committee wanted. Karnes also made the smart observation that the Public Act's requirement that universities report underperforming programs directly to the legislature, rather than merely to the IBHE, was particularly scary. It was unfortunate, though, that there was no more discussion. I don't entirely blame Recktenwald for this--he is also responsible for organizing the faculty panel on program review earlier this month, and so is hardly suppressing debate on this. It is rather probably part of the m.o. of the organization to have meetings consist far more of reports (mainly by the Chancellor and Provost) rather than discussion, much less debate—especially debate, which is scary.  But reports, unlike discussion and debate, would perhaps be better left to written form, perhaps with quick oral summaries; we don't need to hear which streets are going to be repaved this summer, etc., when we could be discussing more pressing matters. More on program review, perhaps, in another post. In what follows I'll try to cover other highlights of the meeting.*