Announcements!
1. Fourth Day of Mediation, All Day, Monday, Jan 13th.
2. If we don't e-mail you that we made real progress in mediation on Monday,
Join us for Tabling on Either Side of Smith 11 - 1, Tues, Jan 14th & 15th:
"Ask Me Why PSU Faculty May Have to Strike for the Future of PSU"
3. Flyer Party, Pizza and Beer! Weds, Jan 15th. Meet at 5 pm in CH 265.
4. Plan for a Membership Meeting, Friday, Jan 24th, Noon to 1:30, with
National AAUP Speaker Howard Bunsis, who's Investigated PSU's Financials.
News:
1. Why Run a Provocative Ad in the Vanguard?
2. What's Happening in Mediation?
Why Run a Provocative Ad in the Vanguard?
Because we're not getting any answers, after weeks of asking.
On Tuesday, Jan 14, we're running a provocative, full-page ad in the Vanguard, with an overview of the reasons that the PSU-AAUP is skeptical of the "structural deficit" in PSU's budget, and the case for serious cuts to the budgets of academic units.
The ad points to significant questions about the argument for the existence of a sizeable structural deficit in PSU's budget, which we've been raising
* as written questions submitted to the PSU Budget website,
* as questions noted in the Joint PSU-AAUP/Faculty Senate Budget Forum on Nov. 25th,
* as written questions passed across the table in Mediation in December, and
* in a formal, information request in December.
There's a piece coming out on the home page of the PSU-AAUP website (https://www.psuaaup.net/assets/docs/images/blog/entry/open), which spells out our questions in detail, with citations to sources indicating discrepancies in numbers, and evidence of questionable budget priorities.
VP for Bargaining Ron Narode has been asking without result, since we began bargaining at the beginning of Spring Term, for meetings to clarify our joint understandings of the numbers, as we have always done in previous bargaining rounds.
The bottom line is that the PSU-AAUP is very skeptical about a structural deficit in PSU's budget, and believes that PSU, with different priorities, could be making substantial investments in academics, despite the fact that we are lean and underfunded compared to many institutions.
What's Happening in Mediation? So Far, Very Little
We have tried to break the bargaining logjam in which we've been stuck,
* by asking for clarification on the case for the budget deficit
* by offering up small trades of something faculty particularly want
for something the Admin particularly wants
* by clarifying our priorities.
But we continue to get nothing back.
The Administration Team is simply holding a hard line, bargaining
very differently than in the past, with
* No academic Dean on the team, nor any representative of the President,
* No apparent understanding of PSU's particular history or conditions on the ground,
* No willingness to hear faculty perspectives, or compromise, and
* A hardball, rather than collegial, approach that includes deception.
This Bargaining round is the first for which
* The key Executive Administrators include no-one with history at PSU
* The President is not bound by the Chancellor or the Governor, and
* The governing legal framework of the University provided by the Oregon
Administrative Rules may give way to a set of policies to be devised
by the President and our new, incoming PSU Board.
Is the President so determined to reduce faculty power in shared governance
a) merely to simplify his life, by freeing himself from the requirement of obtaining faculty
agreement to changes in policies and practices?
b) in order to re-write the rules of promotion and tenure, the bedrock of academic
freedom and orientation toward public concerns, rather than private interests? or
c) to ease ongoing progress toward a more and more contingent and poorly paid faculty,
who have been forced to cede leadership of the University to an ever-growing corps
of Managers?
This year, we're in a real fight for the future of Portland State University, as
a faculty-led University with academic priorities, or a management-led school,
with a surfeit of administrators, faculty reduced to insecure appointments and
students understood as customers to be packed into large classes and milked
for fees, who better remember the adage: Buyer Beware!