Senate Votes To Begin Tenure-Track Hiring
By Jason Cunningham
A resolution calling to put an end to the special appointment of faculty under emergency circumstances and to instead begin tenure-track hiring consumed the majority of Tuesday’s faculty senate meeting before being passed with 31 votes and 19 abstentions.
Serafin Mendez-Mendez, professor and chair of communication, put forth the resolution which instructs the CSU and CCSU administrations to cease and desist in the current use of special appointments as holding places for tenure-track faculty, which is in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Connecticut State University American Association of University Professors and the Board of Trustees for Connecticut State University System.
“The state is currently facing a financial crisis of almost unimaginable proportions. We have a $19 Billion state budget. We have a projected deficit next year in excess of three and a half billion. They anticipate a similar deficit for the next year and they make a two year budget, so we’re probably looking at close to somewhere between six and seven billion dollars of deficit to be overcome. We cannot, nobody has a clear understanding of how the state is going to begin to address this problem, but there’s no question that higher education is going to have to bare its share,” said Carl Lovitt, provost and vice president of academic affairs.
Each faculty senate member was limited to three-minute talking points with the possibility of extensions if deemed fit while discussing the resolution.
“We have about 15 percent of our faculty on emergency appointments right now, put that number in perspective. The only way we could meet that deficit is by not filling vacant positions,” said Lovitt.
Currently there are 59 faculty in special appointments, 27 of which are in their second year of two-year contracts and 32 that were hired as of August.
Mendez-Mendez made clear that this is an informational action, representing the voice and views of the senate. The resolution will be sent to CCSU President Jack Miller. Currently the resolution is not going to the CSU Board of Trustees, however the faculty senate might consider making a resolution to send it to them.
The first paragraph of the resolution discusses the significant amount of emergency hires that have left little room to search for tenor-track professors.
The second paragraph of the resolution discusses that currently the emergency appointments are being used as place holders in lieu of tenure-track appointments.
The third paragraph of the resolution lists the reasons this practice hurts CCSU and the CSU system overall by placing faculty in temporary positions that don’t allow them to engage in long-term planning or to develop many of the other beneficial practices and programs that tenure-track professors are able to.
The fourth paragraph of the resolution details the compromise to academic freedom and personally responsibility that is made by hiring a larger contingent of full-time faculty under short-term contracts.
The fifth paragraph of the resolution states that there is little savings to be had when hiring emergency appointments and that the only real benefit of emergency appointments is that the positions filled by them become easily expended. The resolution concludes with its request to have these special appointments hired under “emergency” circumstances to be replaced with tenure-track faculty in a timely fashion.
“Specifically, what I would like to see the administration do is respond to the second full paragraph, um, which suggests quite clearly that this is, which demonstrates quite clearly that, that using emergency appointments as place holders under 4.8.2 is an absolute violation of the contract. What good are, are, ah, ah contractual articles if you can violate them at will, um, when someone can say there’s a budget crisis? So what other aspects of the contract can be disregarded when there’s a budget [crisis],” asked Cindy White, a professor of communication.
A light amendment was voted on to switch paragraphs two and three of the resolution to make the intent of the resolution more clear in terms of priority. The vote had 46 faculty senators support the friendly amendment and had four abstentions.