The latest public statement from the Committee for an Independent Faculty (OUCIF) states that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an ineffectual organization. Faculty certainly need to determine the effectiveness of anyone they might choose as their representative, but OUCIF's charge, which casts doubt on whether OU faculty can trust the AAUP to represent them competently, is erroneous.
OUCIF's assertions refer to a 6/8/2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Robin Wilson, who reported that the 92nd meeting of the premier faculty association of the U.S. focused on the organization's financial and membership problems, and that the AAUP's role in collective bargaining remained controversial among non-union members. The AAUP challenged Wilson's portrait as rife with anonymous sources
misrepresentations and partial quotations that changed the meaning of what was actually both said and meant (www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2008/MJ/Feat/warr.htm), but the key point to note today is that regardless of whether Wilson's characterization was accurate in 2007, this snapshot in time is not accurate now. A year after the original story, on 6/27/2008, Wilson told Chronicle readers that AAUP had a restructuring plan in place that represented big steps on the path to organizational health. In addition, membership had risen 7 percent that year, and deficits were erased.
AAUP is the only organization in the U.S. to work exclusively on behalf of university faculty. Local chapters and state conferences supplement the national organization. In its 93-year history, AAUP has provided the foundational statements on academic freedom, shared governance and the host of professional standards that guide the academic mission. Its collective bargaining chapters, which are locally controlled, empower faculty to protect these standards through legally binding negotiation procedures. The OU Faculty Handbook is based on AAUP principles.
Ohio has a strong AAUP conference and extremely successful AAUP chapters, some of which serve as collective bargaining representatives. Even as the national AAUP grappled with its managerial challenges two years ago, the faculty at the University of Akron entered into their first ever collective bargaining agreement. Nationally, too, important work proceeded despite the bumpy road. For example, AAUP was instrumental to the successful outcome of the most important court case concerning tenure in recent years. Otero-Burgos v. Inter-American University was a significant victory and will have major implications for the future (www.aaup.org/AAUP/newsroom/Highlights/otero.htm).
AAUP-led collective bargaining offers OU faculty a proven, effective, professional alternative to the conditions we currently find ourselves in: salary freezes, shifts in health care costs to faculty, limitations on health care options by removing Holzer Clinic from the PPO network, attempts to redefine the provost position as strictly administrative, displacement of Faculty Senate committees by administratively appointed groups and the sundry other measures that have eroded real faculty influence at OU for more than a decade and a half. Is there another, better option that, like collective bargaining, gives faculty legal powers to protect its livelihood and authority in matters of shared governance? The answer is likely to be no, and so I urge all faculty to consider signing the AAUP cards we have received in our boxes (or print one out from www.aaup-ou.org/card.html). By doing so, we are requesting an election to determine whether or not we should form a collective bargaining unit under OU-AAUP auspices. Let's seriously explore all options, especially collective bargaining, which can give us the legal resources we currently lack.
Katherine Jellison is a professor of history at Ohio University. 4
Opinion
