During OU's long between-quarters break there was some newspaper chatter about a faculty union at Ohio University.
As an emeritus engineering professor who served for several years in the Faculty Senate and on its executive committee in the mid 1970s, I sense a distorted perspective in a bit of this faculty union dialogue - something that needs some sunshine airing.
A group of ten who call themselves The Committee for an Independent Faculty [CIF], a group apparently not in favor of a faculty union, describe themselves as a grassroots effort dedicated to maintaining 'shared governance
quality and faculty independence' at Ohio University.
In a late November email to OU's faculty, CIF argued that the AAUP's union card drive was a bit deceptive. In my opinion, AAUP supporters nicely challenged this CIF perturbation.
An early December newspaper report cited one member of the CIF group as suggesting that a faculty union might reduce the Faculty Senate's clout with the university from what it had enjoyed during Charles Ping's 1975-1994 presidency. This view distorts some OU history.
Please contemplate that shared governance quality
and faculty independence when, in 1978, the Ping administration finessed the Faculty Senate out of one of its most meaningful bits of clout - namely the right of faculty in OU's colleges to remove deans by democratic vote if they perceived their dean to be not properly serving college needs. A faculty removal vote required the president and provost to comply with the faculty's wishes. This right was exercised a couple of times in my early years at OU.
This healthy democratic vote was replaced in 1978 with the present somewhat alienating bureaucratic dean evaluation procedure with its low participation rates - while also transferring the faculty's right to remove deans to the provost and president.
Please see the 1975 Faculty Handbook, Section VII, E.2, page 35 in the Faculty Senate office or in Alden Archives for what there was before.
Chuck Overby is a professor emeritus of engineering.
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Opinion
