Results

The results of this week’s faculty referendum speak for themselves. 200 to 21, in favor of the resolution below:

We, the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, wish to declare our support for the Faculty Senate as our representative body, and endorse the Faculty Handbook as the sole instrument presently in force concerning faculty governance at Rensselaer.In particular, we affirm the legitimacy of the spring 2007 election that was conducted in accordance with the procedures of the Faculty Handbook, and we call for the immediate restoration of the Faculty Senate and its committees to their governance functions.

Furthermore we support only those proposals to revise faculty governance that follow the procedures outlined in the Faculty Handbook for such changes.

Finally, we call on the Provost to enter into dialogue with the Faculty Senate in a legitimate process of shared governance that results in restored mutual trust.

We’re also seeing results in the attention we’re getting. The Albany Times Union reported on the situation at Rensselaer today. Toeing the line for Shirley Jackson, Bob Palazzo had the following to say:

“The board in my opinion is strengthening the role of tenure in university governance and stewardship,” said Provost Robert Palazzo. “It’s basically calling for the tenure and tenure-track faculty to take responsibility.”

Was it not these same tenure and tenure-tract faculty who started this fight by saying they wanted to extend the right to vote to clinical professors? Some other good observations have been made on the “Digg” website.

Finally, you can look at Bob Palazzo’s Shirley Jackson-choreographed performance in front of the student government (it’s around 44 minutes in). It takes a while to load, but that gives you enough time to think about how much money Bob must be getting paid to propagate this rubbish.

8, 9 and 10

“A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”
- Josef Goebbels

In March 2005, an email went out to the faculty.  It asked the reader to provide their opinions of several statements, including the three below:

9. Some type of legal work action (e.g., “work-to-rule”) should be used to illustrate the current state-of-mind of many faculty on this campus that governance is failing.

10. If attempts to repair the current situation fail, I would support brining in an outside mediator (e.g., the Committee on Governance of the American Association of University Professors).

11 . If all attempts to repair a worsening situation fail, I would support organizing the RPI faculty.

Within days of the distribution of the survey, an edict came down from then-Provost Bud Peterson denouncing the survey and declaring that the action of simply typing the above sentences was illegal.  In the interest of rectifying this miscarriage of justice (and ending the misconception that the action of making such statements warrants reprimand), let us explore these radical ideas from the safety our homes.

Some type of legal work action (e.g., “work-to-rule”) should be used to illustrate the current state-of-mind of many faculty on this campus that governance is failing.

This could mean anything from wearing a certain color clothing to putting pieces of yarn around office doorknobs.  To say that such expression is somehow prohibited by the law or Institute policy is insane.  We’re allowed to wear purple wristbands to raise awareness for pancreatic cancer.  We’re allowed to wear pink ribbons to raise awareness for breast cancer.  Why shouldn’t we be allowed to wear red armbands to raise awareness for the cancer in the Troy Building?

If attempts to repair the current situation fail, I would support bringing in an outside mediator (e.g., the Committee on Governance of the American Association of University Professors).

Before considering the concept of outside mediation, perhaps it’s prudent that the most volatile part of that statement (the mention of the AAUP) be examined.

Through assistance and advice to individual faculty members and administrators, state and federal lobbying, amicus briefs before the courts, support for collective bargaining, and other means, the AAUP helps shape American higher education and ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.

While the AAUP is engaged in the formation of unions, statement 9 was referring to one of the many other services by the organization.  Had mediation by another organization been suggested, it’s unlikely that the Provost would have been able to make a case against it.

If all attempts to repair a worsening situation fail, I would support organizing the RPI faculty.

There’s consistently one answer to this: Yeshiva.  A 5-4 Supreme Court ruling more than 20 years ago said that faculty members were considered by the law to be members of management, thereby prohibiting them from unionizing under federal law.  The administration would have us believe that Supreme Court rulings are written in granite, and in the case of those affecting college campuses, empower the President and the Provost to tar and feather those who would violate them.  This is not the case.  In its two centuries in existence, the Supreme Court has reversed plenty of past decisions, and there’s no reason to believe that Yeshiva can’t be one of them.  The administration might still try to make the argument that the survey was soliciting support for a cause, something which is forbidden by the Human Resource Policy Guidelines; however, in defining those causes which are and are not acceptable (professional societies instead of political parties) I suspect we’ll find that the chief requirement be that the cause be one which seeks to advance RPI, and that, my friends, is what this is all about.  So what can we take away from these three statements and the reaction they caused?

• Silence is consent.  We need to do something to show that we’re united and upset without compromising the educational process.
• Outsiders should be encouraged to come to campus and assess the situation, whether they’re from other schools, the press or professional societies.  The more sunlight we bring the better.  The recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education was a good start, but we have to go further.
• Finally, keep everything on the table.  Organizing must be a last resort but still an option.  Our unwillingness to go as far as necessary in righting these wrongs has been our undoing, and we can’t make that mistake again.

The MacBeth of Rensselaer

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

–Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1

Whenever someone asks me to compare Shirley Jackson to a figure in history or literature, it’s always to MacBeth.  The air of superiority she casts and her belief that her actions are without consequence is of a magnitude to which we must look to fiction to find anything comparable.

Last week’s meeting didn’t bring anything unexpected. The faculty voted overwhelmingly to affirm their support for the Faculty Senate and endorsed the Faculty Handbook as the sole instrument concerning faculty governance. The ball is now in Shirley Jackson’s court, but we all know that her answer, delivered eloquently by her hand-picked Provost, will be nothing constructive.  In the interest of being proactive, let’s talk about what happens next.  We’ll vote no-confidence in Bob Palazzo (by a huge margin) and in Shirley Jackson (by less, but still a majority). Being the impermeable warrior she is, Jackson will stay on. The only people with the power to remove her–the Trustees–have already shown their indifference for our opinion in allowing things to continue as they have. This will leave us with a very unpleasant choice: call a strike of the faculty, or allow Shirley Jackson to step on us once again.

Frankly, no one I’ve spoken to wants to see the Institute shut down, solely because no one wants the education of the thousands of students to be used as a bargaining chip. Ergo, we need to find another avenue to resolve this problem.  This fight must be taken to Shirley Jackson and the trustees. If there’s one thing I know gets under Shirley Jackson’s skin, it’s seeing her name in print in a negative light. So let’s talk about some of the many things that Shirley Jackson doesn’t want us talking about:

1. The staff have taken an effective pay cut over the past few years, as raises haven’t kept up with the cost of living.
2. The Institute has had a very serious problem with sexual misconduct by faculty members.
3. Her election to the National Academies was not without some funny business.
4. The Provost search committees were largely ignored.
5. The life expectancy of Deans has been dismal since her arrival.

Let’s imagine a New York Times profile on “the other side” of America’s most overrated college administrator. Perhaps Forbes will do a story about Jackson’s spending and extrapolate how long it will be before she bankrupts the Institute. Even better, I wonder how little it would take to get the state attorney general to open a probe into the failure of the Jackson administration to fully address those reports of sexual misconduct.

Shirley Jackson may be one cool customer when the faculty are badmouthing her, but when things show up in ink, this won’t be the case.  If we can show the world that the misdeeds of this administration are newsworthy, we’ll get the changes we’ve been waiting for.

What’s Next

Don Steiner wrote a fantastic letter to the faculty, reprinted below.

From: Don Steiner
Date: Sep 5, 2007 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: Faculty Senate resolution
To: Larry Kagan
Cc: V-Faculty-L@lists.rpi.edu, Clinical-Faculty-L@lists.rpi.edu, leusnj@rpi.edu

Dear Larry:

I am glad to see this resolution and I commend you and the Faculty Senate. However,I am concerned that the Senate appears to be taking a somewhat reactionary position when I believe a more proactive position is called for. Specifically I would recommend that the Faculty Senate take the following actions:

1. Urge the Faculty not to participate in the Provost’s Governance Review which I consider to be in violation of two of the Middle States Standards as I discussed in a recent memo which I attach to this email..

2. Hold a referendum or circulate a petition requesting that the Administration accept the results of the Spring 2007 elections and halt its current Governance Review until a Review Process can be identified which is acceptable to the Faculty Senate and Faculty.

3. If item 2. above yields no positive results, call for a Vote of No Confidence in the Administration.

I think that the time has come for the Faculty Senate and the Faculty to fight back and actively resist the “illegitimate” actions of the Administration.
Sincerely,

Don

Larry Kagan wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
> At its Wed meeting the Faculty Senate (suspended) passed the following
> resolution:
>
> We the Faculty Senate resolve that the Promotion and Tenure Committee and
> the Curriculum Committee as elected in Spring 2007 are legitimate as
> constituted.
>
> The Faculty Senate is confident that the spring 07 election was
> legally carried out according to the handbook rules that were then in
> effect, and that no unauthorized clinical faculty voting took place.
> The Faculty Senate also intends to show that the brief that the
> administration presented as the rationale for its suspension of
> governance is not supported by the facts.
>
> Larry Kagan
> Arts Professor
> FS President

Don’s plan is a good one. Give the administration a chance to rectify the situation, and if they ignore the opportunity, take action.

Governance

It’s hard to set foot on campus these days without hearing the “G” word. Unfortunately, most people–including those in the press–have no clear idea what ‘governance’ in this context means, or, for that matter, just what the faculty are looking to fix. Plain and simply, the faculty would like to have a voice in where the Institute is headed. I think it’s fair for people who have such a vested interest in Rensselaer to have more than what they have now, which is nothing.

Part of the problem begins with the misuse of the Office of the Provost. I don’t mean to single out Bob Palazzo, because the problem certainly predates him. As the Chief Academic Officer, the Provost shouldn’t be a hack for the President. Unfortunately, instead of being a listening ear, the Provost is merely a hatchet. Provosts under Shirley Jackson have lacked the independence to an extent I’ve never seen at another school. Most recently, the process by which the new Provost was selected was a charade. If the search committee’s recommendations were truly considered, Shirley Jackson would have gone with someone else. Those involved wanted anyone but Bob Palazzo, as they feared he would be controlled by Dr. Jackson.

Two years ago, a survey was circulated about this topic by the Faculty Senate. I don’t have the full text in front of me, but it essentially asked the faculty about such radical ideas as having the faculty elect a trustee (a practice Cornell allows) and forming a union. Shirley Jackson ordered then-Provost Bud Peterson to order the Faculty Senate to destroy the survey results, and being no more than a hired gun for Jackson, Peterson complied. We all agree this was an outrageous overstepping of boundaries, but the only way to prevent such actions from happening again is to improve the governance structure.

There have been plenty of other actions and practices by the Administration which have led to great concern amongst the faculty. When the graduate tuition system was changed several years ago, many of us lost good graduate students who we could no longer fund. Lacking an avenue to influence this policy, we watched countless students make the painful decision to abandon the pursuit of advanced degrees. At the same time, we’ve watched tens of millions of dollars being thrown into arts and sports complexes while the strength of the Administration’s commitment to science and engineering becomes increasingly subject to debate. Keep in mind that all of this is occurring as the Institute incurs a record amount of debt, of which Shirley Jackson personally assumes no liability whatsoever.

To conclude, I love RPI. I have given it many years, and I want nothing but the best for this school. As such, I believe we need to give the people who share that best interest–the faculty–a bigger say in where things are headed here. Before it’s too late.