Our Journey, Day 63
The faculty senate met again on Monday. I heard they devoted some of the meeting to discussing the union's response to the Deans' emergency reorganization plan. It sounds like some progress was made. They apparently got all but one of the volunteers they needed to fill out the committee with a member from each college and a couple "at large". There's a week or two until the next "meet and confer" between the executive officers of the union and the senior management of the university. But I've also hear a rumor that the president has moved the due date forward, when the plan is supposed to be completed. I'm not that confident that they will have a counterproposal to offer, whatever the administration says they are planning.
The last thing I remember the president saying about moving forward was that he promised to digest the results of the survey management sent to faculty and staff. Then after talking with the bargaining units, he said he would roll out the new strategic plan. I suspect the meetings with the bargaining units have mostly happened and may be capped with the next meet and confer with my colleagues. I did hear that four more people have had their positions eliminated, including the head of the sustainability office and the director of graduate studies.
Some of my colleagues in the faculty union are a little leery about jumping in and working hard on this plan the Deans have introduced. The Deans had hoped that their reorganization plan wouldn't be the final one, but that faculty would get in there and make it better as well as making it their own. Faculty, for their part, seem to be feeling like they've been burned before, where management has asked for their input and then either let them do all the work and/or ignored their recommendations. I don't think this is the case with the Deans; I think they are 100% sincere. But I'm not sure the people they report to haven't already decided what they're going to do.
This sounds a bit negative, but I don't think it's necessarily because people aren't trying to do what they think is the right thing. It seems like the structures we're working within make it particularly difficult to think outside the box or to move with the speed that seems necessary at this time. The distrust that has come from past episodes doesn't help, but I think the main thing is the way these organizations imagine making decisions and acting on them. Faculty do all these "service" duties as volunteers, after they've already done their main jobs of teaching and research. What works when the university is healthy and there's time to make decisions and act when it's convenient and people are done with their main responsibilities, may not be appropriate for emergencies.