UFF-USF

Passed by voice vote at the UFF-USF Chapter meeting April 4, 2008:

WHEREAS the study of women, African Americans, Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean are vital areas of research and teaching that are fundamental to the mission of a modern university in an ever more globalized and multicultural world, a goal explicitly recognized in the USF Strategic Plan’s goals of global engagement and impact, as well as the Provost’s e-mails to the faculty the week of March 31;

WHEREAS such programs need to be recognized and supported through their maintenance as clearly discernable, separate and autonomous units with full voice and vote;

WHEREAS sweeping all these units into a special unit under one chair would diminish their importance, identity, strength and vigor and undo the years of hard work and intellectual labor that scores of faculty members, students and administrators have invested in these areas in order to start and develop separate and independent programs that can offer the careful study and elucidation of such vital areas of human endeavor and provide national and international visibility to the University of South Florida;

BE IT RESOLVED that the autonomy and integrity of the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, the Institute on Black Life, and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean must be protected in these difficult times, and that great care need be taken not to foster the impression that these units and their subjects of study are of lesser importance to the University and its mission to serve our diverse and internationalized community.

In 2000, Los Angeles prosecutor Richard Ceballos reported to his superior in the District Attorney’s office that the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department had relied on an inaccurate affidavit to obtain a search warrant. There was sound, fury, and office politics, and subsequently Ceballos was reassigned, transferred, and denied a promotion. He sued, and the case – Garcetti v. Ceballos – was resolved by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the majority ruled that Ceballos did not enjoy First Amendment protection for statements he made as part of his official duties.

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In the parking lot this morning, I met an assistant professor I know well who told me that he’s leaving USF. He’s going to a public university in another state where he’ll be paid a good chunk more than what he’s paid here (at a place that is definitely not the flagship university), and where he’ll get credit towards tenure for the three years he spent at USF.

I asked him if he was worried about selling his house. He said that the salary differential was about equal to his mortgage payments here (he’s in a small house), and as soon as he sells the house, even if it’s in a year or more, he’ll get the sale price and also an instant bump in effective take-home pay. USF couldn’t match the salary, and that is consistent with the administration’s behavior in the past (which is to match offers very, very rarely).

He said he was leaving because he saw the state “sinking into a hole,” and while we talk up the status of USF, “the pay is far below the rhetoric of Research I.” That certainly is true: according to AAUP statistics, USF salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors are all in the fourth quintile of Research I universities.

So I wished him well and said that while we’d miss him, I certainly understood why he’s leaving. I just hope the legislature understands, too.

Follow-up: Within minutes of writing this entry, I received an e-mail from another colleague: I’m also leaving USF, and what you wrote … could have been a conversation with me.

In the past two weeks, the university told deans and chairs to cut the summer schedule dramatically, or rather cut the budget for summer teaching. For students, this reduces their choices available. For faculty who have a regular 9-month contract, there are two important things to keep in mind:

• Faculty should be paid at a pro-rated basis for a summer course. A three-hour course should be worth three contact hours, or 12.5% of your academic-year salary. If an administrator has approached you with a request to be paid less for summer teaching, please contact the chapter’s grievance chair immediately.
• Equitable opportunities. Chairs must treat in-unit employees on an equitable basis in making summer appointments. That does not mean that nine-month faculty are guaranteed their pick of teaching opportunities, but that if two faculty are equally qualified to teach a range of courses and say that they are interested in teaching during the summer, it would be wrong for the chair to offer two courses to one faculty member and no courses to the other. Below is the language from the Collective Bargaining Agreement:
  • Available supplemental summer appointments shall be offered equitably and as appropriate to qualified employees, not later than five weeks prior to the beginning of the appointment, if practicable, in accordance with written criteria. The criteria shall be made available in each department/unit. [A memo issued by Dr. Kofi Glover on this summer's appointments was issued in the fall.]

For many 12-month faculty, summer teaching appointments are part of the regular assignment for the year. Given the uncertainties, it is to be expected that even after the last two weeks’ cutting of the summer schedule, there will still be some uncertainties for 9-month faculty, but when most 9-month faculty have their summer schedules, 12-month faculty certainly should.

In February, the chapter Vice President Mark Klisch and I met with Provost Ralph Wilcox and Senior Vice Provost Dwayne Smith to talk about the financial struggles in the university system and USF. The discussion ranged broadly, and I followed up with a memo, which is linked below. Despite the date (which Microsoft Word helpfully changed automatically to appear as if I wrote it today), this was sent in February.

Memo from Sherman Dorn to Ralph Wilcox February 2008

Congratulations are due to programs receiving recognition in the latest ranking of graduate programs in U.S. News & World Report. The U.S. News rankings on grad programs are most sensitive to grant and reputational statistics, and the programs listed this year do very well in at least one of those measures.

April 4: the programs listed by the provost:

• Education
• Fine Art
• Audiology
• Public Health
• Rehabilitation Counseling
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Clinical Psychology
• Physical Therapy
• Social Work
• Nursing
• Library and Information Sciences
• Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Psychology

Given the uncertainties around university budgets, the following is intended to quash several rumors as firmly as possible:

1. Summer salaries are pro-rated in the collective bargaining agreement. Neither administrators nor faculty can negotiate any variation from this by themselves. That means that a chair cannot offer a faculty a course on condition that the faculty agrees to be paid less than normal. If you hear of such a situation, please contact the chapter immediately.
2. Using or reading the term “financial exigency” does not change the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Right now, UFF and USF are in negotiations over the entire contract, and if the administration and Trustees wanted to save money by changing the contract, they have the ability to propose changes at the table. Thus far, the administration/Trustees’ representatives have proposed two changes that represent marginal savings, and the UFF team has proposed addressing one of those interests in combination with interests that the chapter has.
3. Layoff priorities are specified in the collective bargaining agreement. On this point, it appears that the administration and UFF are in agreement on the importance of avoiding layoffs: at the last faculty meeting, President Genshaft said that given her experience with retrenchments at other institutions, she would be horrified to lay off tenured and tenure-track faculty, and I believe her.
4. Furloughs cannot be imposed without collective bargaining, and UFF does not see any need or reason to have furloughs at USF.

At this point, it is in everyone’s best interests to work together to reduce the damage done by budget cuts, and one way we can do so is to avoid spreading rumors.

In the last six weeks, longtime St. Petersburg Times reporter Lucy Morgan has reported on what she calls double-dipping, or public employees who returned to work after committing to the state’s DROP program that gave experienced public employees an incentive to retire (retire, be paid for working another five years after the eligibility for the program started, and have pensions for that work-time go into a secure account for that last chunk of time working). Morgan’s language of double-dipping and triple-dipping implies that the problem with the DROP program is that the rules aren’t very strict on returning to employment after retirement.

The real problem with the DROP program is that the state legislature thought it could be clever, operating government on the cheap and discounting the value of experienced public servants. First, the legislature thought it could dangle an incentive in front of experienced public employees, get them to retire, and replace them with much cheaper, younger workers. Then, the legislature discovered that there was a shortage of people willing to teach and do other important jobs because they were taking early retirement through DROP, so they created an exception for areas with documented shortages. Then the legislature expanded those exceptions.

And now Lucy Morgan is pointing out that a program designed to operate government on the cheap is costing the state in the long run.

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During break and in the last week, higher-education news in Florida has been dominated by the budget crunch and by Senate President Ken Pruitt proposal’s to strip the Board of Governors of its constitutional authority, replacing that authority with whatever is delegated by the legislature.

Higher education governance

The proposal by the senate (SJR 2308) would place a measure on the fall ballot to shrink the size of the Board of Governors and replace its constitutional authority to govern the university system with whatever the legislature delegates.

The universally-accepted explanation for this is that Senate President Pruitt is upset that the Board of Governors wants to exercise authority over tuition, because increasing tuition to replace cuts from the state budgets would force the legislature to restructure Bright Futures, the scholarship program that is funded partly by the lottery and party by the state budget. It is that latter part (the state budget) and Senator Pruitt’s investment of time in and identity with Bright Futures that is motivating the proposed amendment.

The amendment is sailing through Senate committees because Senator Pruitt combined the higher-education governance change with something that Senate Democrats wanted, a return to an elected education commissioner for the state.

Right now, the proposal’s status is uncertain; while it moved through one committee on the House side, UFF officials know of several House Republicans who have either voted against it in committee or voiced reservations. The proposal would need 60% of each house in the legislature to go on the ballot; that means 72 votes in the House, and there are 77 Republicans. If a small number of Republicans join all House Democrats in opposing the proposal, it dies…

Thus far, the opponents of higher-education governance change include UFF, the Association of Faculty Senate Presidents, the Board of Governors, the (business-oriented) Council of 100, and every single newspaper editorial board that has written on the topic. USF’s Faculty Senate joined that list this week, and most of the system’s presidents (including USF President Judy Genshaft) have voiced extraordinary concerns about a third round of governance change this decade.

Because most of the dirty work of the legislature happens in swaps between the two leaders of the houses in the last few days, the greatest chance for passage is in one of those swaps.

Florida’s budget

In the first week of the session, the university system’s base budget was cut 1.9%, the second cut this year. The budget woes continue, with estimates that the legislature will cut more than $2 billion in the next budget. K-12 and higher education represent more than 50% of general revenue expenditures in Florida, and since the majority Republicans in the legislature are opposed to any new revenues, they will cut the state’s budget. Both Governor Crist and the Democrats have suggested dipping into the rainy-day fund, given that it’s thundering, but there are no guarantees either that it will happen or that it will be more than a small buffer against the budget tides.

What can we do

The United Faculty of Florida is asking that all members of the bargaining unit use their own resources to contact legislators about the budget and contact their representatives in the state house about higher-education governance, since it is the House that has the greatest chance of blocking governance change from getting on the fall ballot.

The chapter has decided to sponsor drawings for gift cards for faculty and professional employees in the bargaining unit who place letters to the editor during the session or write to their legislators and receive a response on either the budget or higher-education governance. For more, read http://faculty.ourusf.org/educate-the-public/

Yesterday, the UFF Steering Committee joined the Board of Governors and the state’s faculty senates in opposing Senate Joint Resolution 2308 (SJR 2308), a proposed constitutional amendment that would abolish the Board of Governors and replace it with a small group with far less authority. This proposed constitutional amendment would make the education commissioner an elected position once again, but for the university system, it would return the state to the days when the legislature not only tried to micromanage universities but had the clear constitutional authority to do so.

Six years ago, voter in Florida created a constitutional body to insulate the universities from the type of legislative interference that has been the historical norm, from witchhunts investigating individual faculty and students for supposed Communism and homosexuality in the 1960s to foisting various professional schools on the system based on political rather than educational priorities. Before voters created the Board of Governors, former universities Chancellor Charlie Reed called the state’s higher-education chaos a “goat rodeo.”

This year, we finally started to see the Board of Governors stiffen its spine and speak up for stable and predictable university funding. This is clearly a retaliatory move by some legislators.For the St. Pete Times’s view on the political dynamics, you can read its editorial, Ken Pruitt’s Destructive Fit of Pique.

SJR 2308 needs the approval of 60% of legislators in both houses. It sailed through a senate committee yesterday, but it has to go through the House Schools and Learning Council, which will probably consider it tomorrow.

Please contact members of the House Schools and Learning Council — especially your own representative. DO NOT USE UNIVERSITY E-MAIL ACCOUNTS, COMPUTERS, OR PHONES OR THE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER NETWORK. If you click on an e-mail address, it will automatically insert an appropriate subject line into your e-mail program.

Make an e-mail or phone call very short, and here is the message you need to send:

• The Board of Governors is doing its job the way voters wanted it to when creating it in 2002.
• Senate Joint Resolution 2308 will harm the integrity of Florida’s university system.
• The House should strip the Board of Governors provision from Senate Joint Resolution 2308 or reject it entirely.

Contact information for the House Schools and Learning Council members:

Chair, Joe H. Pickens (H-21) 850-488-0665 joe.pickens@myfloridahouse.gov

Vice Chair, Trey Traviesa (H-56) 850-488-9910 trey.traviesa@myfloridahouse.gov

Democratic Ranking Member, Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall (H-109) 850-488-0625 dorothy.bendross-mindingall@myfloridahouse.gov

Thad Altman (H-30) 850-488-9720 thad.altman@myfloridahouse.gov

Marti Coley (H7) 850-488-2873 marti.coley@myfloridahouse.gov

Anitere Flores (H114) 850-488-2831 anitere.flores@myfloridahouse.gov

Clay Ford (H3) 850-488-0895 clay.ford@myfloridahouse.gov

Bill Heller (H-52) 850-488-5719 bill.heller@myfloridahouse.gov

Martin Kiar (H-97) 850-487-1588 martin.kiar@myfloridahouse.gov

John Legg (H-46) 850-488-5522 john.legg@myfloridahouse.gov

Janet Long (H-51) 850-488-6197 janet.long@myfloridahouse.gov

Charles McBurney (H-16) 850-488-4171 charles.mcburney@myfloridahouse.gov

Seth McKeel (H-63) 850-488-2977 seth.mckeel@myfloridahouse.gov

Bill Proctor (H-20) 850-488-2977 bill.proctor@myfloridahouse.gov

David Simmons (H-37) 850-488-2231 david.simmons@myfloridahouse.gov

Shelley Vana (H-85) 850-488-4791 shelley.vana@myfloridahouse.gov