Welcome to the Oakland University AAUP Chapter web site

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Call for the 2012 Bargaining Forum

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Promises made.... promises kept?

The negotiations of the summer of 2009 were particularly difficult, and ended in a week-long work stoppage to order to successfully fight off unprecedented attacks on both the faculty´s intellectual property and their role in university governance. In the Fall of 2009 several AAUP members initiated a drive for a vote of no confidence in President Russi. In response, the President Russi promised sweeping change across nearly all of Oakland University, with the goals of more and better communication between the Administration and the faculty. The very long list of promised changes included:

1. Improved communications and consultation
   1. Hold two meetings per semester with chairs and program directors
   2. Hold two meetings per semester with AAUP leaders
   3. Hold two meetings per semester with deans
   4. Hold one open forum for discussions with faculty each semester
   5. Open the Leadership Meetings to anyone wishing to attend
   6. Enhance electronic communications with faculty
   7. Announce willingness to meet with faculty and groups of faculty upon their request
2. Open direct communications channel between faculty and trustees
   1. Request trustees to establish immediately an Academic Affairs Committee and have committee offer open forum for discussion with faculty
   2. Intensify effort to get trustees to establish two faculty liaison positions similar to current student liaison positions
3. Open "security corridor" in Wilson Hall to help reduce the perception of isolation of upper administration from campus community
4. Initiate new model for negotiations with labor unions - proposed joint working groups to tackle complicated issues that could delay or prolong negotiations with goal of achieving timely settlements without job actions
5. Announced one-time donation of $100,000 by the Russi family to the university
6. LCME application with confidential Beaumont material redacted will be made available in a room in the library for inspection by any party
7. Enhance transparency and consultation in budget development and allocations
   1. Provide formal role for Senate Budget Review Committee in budget process
   2. Have Vice President for Financial Affairs attend SBRC meetings
   3. Provost and deans to develop procedures to give deans more budgetary authority
   4. Deans to expand consultations with chairs and program directors on budget
8. Change culture in Office of General Counsel
   1. Eliminate perceived anti-faculty attitudes and actions
   2. Make public the line-of-authority for Diversity and Compliance Officer is to the President and not General Counsel for those aspects of her duties.
   3. Charge Diversity and Compliance Officer with developing a non-discrimination policy that does not discriminate against LGBT employees
   4. Give Provost, rather then General Counsel, ultimate decision on wording for pre-tenure review letters
   5. Fix process that has caused extended delays in approval of standard software license agreements

This is a fine list of promises, and was enough to mollify the faculty to not go forward with a vote of no confidence in the Fall of 2009. Unfortunately, only one promise in this entire list survived past the 2009-10 academic year, that of the development of a new anti-discrimination policy for the University and a new Board policy that includes other eligible adult coverage for benefits. Based on the recommendation of the joint committee responsible for the draft, the faculty ratified the necessary changes to the Agreement in the Fall of 2011. However, at the time of this writing (January 2012) the OU Board of Trustees has yet to adopt the changes officially.

So what happened to the other promises? One by one, they proved difficult for the President to continue, presumably since they involved engaging in actual dialog with the faculty. In most cases where regular open forums were promised, small groups of hand-picked faculty are occasionally invited to meet with the President and hear his plans. In other cases, such as meeting with the AAUP Executive Committee, developing meaningful budget procedures and pushing to institute faculty liaisons to the Board of Trustees, the promises have been simply ignored. Instead of actual two-way dialog, the President´s staff developed a new website to tout his activities, the President´s Office Information and News Terminal (the POINT). Here one can find copies of "various communication pieces" such as Powerpoint presentations, email messages and videos of meetings in which the Powerpoint presentations are delivered. This is the state of communication at Oakland between the Administration and the faculty: an archive of one-way electronic messages from the President to the faculty.

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