UPCOMING EVENTS
- Friday, August 28, 3:00 pm: Chapter Meeting. RSVP for link: Facebook or miamiaaup@gmail.com
- Friday, September 4, 3:00 pm: Save Ohio Higher Ed III: Where Does Tuition Go? A student-focused forum on the financial crisis in higher education
- Tuesday, September 15, 3:30 pm: Forum on Non-Tenure-Track Issues (NTT-led)
- Friday, September 25, 3:00 pm: Chapter Meeting
NEWS
While summer in Oxford has never been quieter, AAUP has never been more active. Between historic health and economic crises and the related exacerbation of ongoing racial injustice, your local AAUP chapter as well as the Ohio Conference and national AAUP have been kept on our toes.
In spring, Miamians experienced the non-renewal of hundreds of VAPs, instructors and part-time colleagues—a terrible loss for our students and for remaining faculty (who lost colleagues and gained extra teaching and service responsibilities), and especially for the dedicated teacher-scholars who were cut adrift with no job, no health insurance, and no warning into the worst job market in decades.
Over 800 people signed an AAUP petition asking that Miami use shared governance to identify other solutions to the job losses, such as graduated pay-cuts. The administration did not respond, and still has not shared budget justifications for those non-renewals or for other cuts. More transparency is warranted, especially given Miami’s strong financial position and history of choosing to spend in ways that do not serve our educational mission—multimillion-dollar annual subsidies to cover deficits in athletics, high upper-administrator salaries, and executive hiring that is ongoing even in this crisis. An outraged faculty has been making its concerns known. While AAUP worked to support non-renewed faculty, attendance at AAUP meetings shot up, and over 600 faculty attended a spring administrative budget presentation—where we were given zero information about revenues, expenses, and cash flow projections that might justify nonrenewals and other cuts. AAUP membership at Miami has almost doubled since March.
Meanwhile, across Ohio and the nation, other universities are also firing faculty, even tenured professors. We need collective action now—at Miami and nationwide—to save our jobs and preserve our universities for the students of the future. Our chapter helped to found a new statewide student-faculty group, Save Ohio Higher Ed, which is working to change the narrative about higher education. Together, we can put pressure on the Ohio legislature to reverse decades of inequity-producing disinvestment in higher education and convince our universities to focus on our core educational mission, serving students before athletics, lavish building programs, special projects, and bloated administrations.
Safe return to campus has been a major concern for all of us. AAUP worked all summer to advocate for safe campus return that would not threaten MU employees, students, and community, especially Black & brown employees, students, and community members who are statistically more vulnerable. We used our social media outlets to correct inadequate and incomplete information on safe return that was being shared with faculty. We advocated for recognition for the many hours of unpaid service Miami faculty did over the summer. We put forward an amendment to a “Flexible & Prepared” resolution that would have allowed faculty, especially those with at-risk family members or caregiving needs, more agency in the decision to work on campus (ADA and FMLA do not sufficiently cover these faculty). The resolution has unfortunately been tabled. Nevertheless, we raised awareness about the problem with administration, advised faculty about their options, and successfully helped a number of faculty obtain online teaching.
Racialized injustice was another important focus for AAUP this summer. While we have been committed to antiracism as an organization since our founding and made it an explicit part of our mission in 2017, we have much work to do. We see our role as supporting and advocating for Black- and brown-led faculty and student activism, working to review and change Miami policies that enable structural racism, informing faculty about racialized and other inequities at Miami, and providing an avenue for collective action.
We welcome all faculty and students to join our Antiracist Working Group and other working groups. Over the summer, we created a number of them on everything from antiracism to budget issues to intellectual property to shared governance to workload. We are here for you, and Miami has never needed an organized voice for faculty more. If you’d like to get involved, join our Slack, where most AAUP work is happening these days. Write miamiaaup@gmail.com for an invitation.
Sincerely,
AAUP Steering Committee
Cathy Wagner, Daniel Prior, Deborah Lyons, Theresa Kulbaga
Leave a Reply