We last reported on September 5 that the PSU-AAUP Negotiating team was considering the administration's last proposal and their ideological desire for the "free flow and sharing of materials and pedagogy." The Negotiation team ultimately decided that it could not support such an ideology for a number of reasons: 1) it perpetuated the practice of PSU-AAUP members developing courses, and then assigning those courses to lower cost adjuncts; 2) it substantially diminished the value of the course materials themselves; 3) faculty members tend to put high value on ownership and control of the materials they develop.
We submitted a counter proposal September 25 that creates a permission for use system withn deadlines for the request for permission in all cases except when a scheduled instructor is unable to teach a class and a substitute is hired on an immediate basis.
The counter proposal also addresses the assertion that the copyright ownership decision was a matter of academic judgement. We've determined that copyright ownership is not academic judgement, but rather a significant property interest for faculty that would otherwise compell them to seek remedy through the filing of tort claims or lawsuits if the grievance process could not yield results. As such, it would be unreasonable to declare copyright ownership to be a matter of academic judgement where the decision of management is final and only procedural defects could be addressed.
We also re-submitted the proposed MOA to address how the Negotiating team would like to have the policy addressed in CBA Article 20; we have not yet received a response to this proposal.
A follow up negotiating session on the matter has been requested.