REAL DIFFERENCES

(The following ran in the Athens News on June 19)

Almost a dozen campuses in Ohio have faculty unions and last week Ohio University considered joining them. The Faculty Senate heard a resolution for organizing full-time faculty members into a collective bargaining unit.

This resolution came in the final meeting of a year in which senators watched the administration disregard or reject one after another of its resolutions. It was a year in which the Board of Trustees violated its own, newly crafted rules for presidential evaluations and added four more years to the contract of Roderick McDavis, a president who has suffered expressions of no-confidence from faculty, staff, and students.

It was a year in which his administration showed itself willing to take back any promise it makes to faculty members, from health care surpluses to salary increases meant to lift the university from the bottom rung among its self-selected peer institutions. It was a demoralizing year for faculty, as more than one senator lamented. The reasons for establishing collective bargaining have never been starker or more urgent.

Executive Vice President and Provost Kathy Krendl responded the way many faculty members have come to expect: she lectured them as if they were ignorant schoolchildren. She began with the basics: "Ohio University faculty have contracts." Professors know this, especially those who teach year-to-year, some of them for decades now, worrying whether their contracts will be renewed.

Krendl then listed a disparate set of "elements" -- from appointment letters to class schedules -- that she claimed "come together to form a legally binding contract." Faculty members who wanted to see what makes a real contract would be wise to look in the Faculty Handbook on their own. Better yet, look at any one of the numerous Collective Bargaining Agreements current in Ohio and available online.

Krendl did not come close to the real reason why faculty senators have called for collective bargaining. By definition, these faculty members are willing to work tirelessly alongside the administration in the interest of shared governance. Most of them have much more experience in their jobs and with their contracts than the provost has with hers.

The contracts that bind individual faculty members were not what angered senators. They decried the lack of trust binding the administration to its constituents -- faculty, students, and staff. Faculty members are bound to the university already. It is time for the university to be bound in a contract with the force of law, because its administrators have lost the strength of credibility. Krendl must know what is really going on, because it looks identical to what happened to unionize the faculty at the University of Akron in 2003.

While Krendl assumed the role of impatient parent, other administrators tried scare tactics. According to the Athens News, Associate Vice Provost for Budget and Planning John Day worried that "he doesn't know what form 'shared governance' would take if OU faculty had a union, or if Faculty Senate would even continue to exist in a union environment." His feigned concern is either calculated or ignorant. Faculty Senate would not only continue to exist, it would be stronger.

As for what form of shared governance, that is what the bargaining part of collective bargaining is all about. No prognostication is necessary, just look around Ohio. University of Cincinnati has kept its Faculty Senate along with its American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter as its bargaining representative. This is written into their contract (see Article 27) and helps to refine the respective responsibilities of the two bodies. This is practically boilerplate in all Ohio bargaining agreements, such as the original contract at Wright State. Day does not need to worry whether the faculty share of university governance would benefit from a "union environment."

Some faculty members may not be moved by talk of governance and process, but everyone will care whether the new University System of Ohio makes their jobs better or worse. Here again, collective bargaining makes a great difference. Take the decision of switching from quarters to semesters, which both Ohio University and University of Cincinnati are dealing with simultaneously. Last year, some faculty senators at OU were put on a committee where they collectively spent hundreds of hours investigating, debating, and finally offering their careful considerations to the administration. That document gathered dust for most of the academic year, until the president made his own recommendation in the last week of classes, just four days before the final senate meeting. That is how OU shares governance.

What a difference the combination of collective bargaining and real shared governance makes. While OU watched and waited, in Cincinnati every constituency on campus, including over a hundred faculty members, was invested in the productive work of projecting costs, weighing different calendars, and ensuring quality education, whatever the outcome of the quarter-semester decision. As bargaining representatives, the AAUP deferred to Faculty Senate to ensure shared governance, while contractual issues would be handled if and when the decision was made. So by last week, in their June meeting, senators at UC were deep into the substantive nitty-gritty of preparing for change.

Presidents at OU and UC both sometimes attend senate meetings. As a rule, President McDavis delivers lectures and soundbites. Last week, President Zimpher asked her faculty members for guidance, sharing with them a draft letter to Chancellor Fingerhut outlining four major concerns about changing to semesters. The letter had been written by three university presidents besides Zimpher, including Roderick McDavis.

It is telling that the President of Ohio University was not so open with his faculty. The Board of Trustees has endorsed this administration's persistent disregard of faculty, student, and staff concerns. They have recognized no obligation to trust, respect, and accountability, except when convenient. That is what finally wore faculty senators down and what has faculty members across campus fed up and angry.

The time has come to hand in false governance for collective bargaining. Ohio University will be stronger and the people of Ohio better served when faculty members have a meaningful role in how this institution is run.