Sam Morris’ Opening Statement and FAM’s Commitment to Miami’s Academic Future

Here’s the opening statement that FAM’s Lead Negotiator for the faculty unit, Sam Morris, delivered on the second day of bargaining.

My name is Sam Morris and I am serving as the Lead Negotiator for the faculty unit of FAM. This is my 13^th year as a faculty member at Miami but I came to Oxford as a second grader at Kramer Elementary. For the next 10-years I lived at 110 Island Lake Drive, Hamilton, Ohio, 45013. I’ll be surprised if anyone knows what that means… it’s the McGonigle trailer-park… that’s where I spent my whole childhood.

A woman named Carolyn Muncy recruited me to Miami. She was an administrative assistant in Psychology and the grandmother of one of my high school teammates. She told me to get my mom’s tax returns and bring them to her so she could fill out FAFSA. I didn’t know what that was. A few months later I turned up at Miami as an undergraduate with more money than I had ever imagined, and the letters PELL written all over my Bursar statements. I did moderately well as an undergrad (despite my sophomore year). I got a Graduate Assistantship to stay at Miami and then another one to pay for a PhD at Ohio State. 

A conversation over pancakes with an administrative assistant in Psychology turned into three college degrees, two of them from Miami, zero debt, and a job as a professor back at my alma mater, all in the span of 10 years. Miami University took a dirt-poor boy from the trailer-park and made him into a real-life Horatio Alger novel. For all that, I feel incredibly lucky and I hope that every Miami employee who hears it is instilled with pride.

That’s the first 30 years of my life in three paragraphs. What does it have to do with these negotiations? I want you to know who you’re talking to. You’re talking to the 800+ members of our newly-formed union. You’re talking to a faculty that voted at more than a two-thirds majority to unionize. You’re talking to the people who you count on most to actually deliver on our promises. And you’re talking to a body that has grown increasingly dissatisfied with the terms and conditions of their employment; so much so that they have run a bureaucratic gauntlet to get to this table. And you’re talking to them through me – a person who practically owes his life to this University; a person who knows Love & Honor like a child knows their mother. 

“Our class-sizes are swelling, our faculty lines are stagnant or shrinking or increasingly precarious, we are constantly being asked to do more with less and so many of us just find the fire to get it done because we love our students, we love our colleagues, we love our jobs, we love our University and we can’t bear the thought of letting them down. But the harder you fan a fire the quicker you exhaust the fuel.”

–Sam Morris, September 12, 2023

I didn’t want to do this. I had to be talked into it. I sought out people whom I thought would talk me out of it and they all encouraged me to say YES. The FAM leadership team voted me into this role; they want me in this seat. And I hope I can say this humbly… I think you want me in this seat too. I hope I’m right about that. It would mean we already agree on something.

My service record includes a lot of highly effective shared governance. I’m now in my sixth year as a member of the Faculty Welfare Committee and my third year as Chair. Perhaps more than any other Senate committee, we have built a reputation for getting things done; for finding a way to YES, for reasonable compromise, mutual betterment, and tangible outcomes, codified in the Policy Manual or otherwise committed to in formal Resolutions approved by the Board of Trustees. 

I like to think that I know where to locate myself on the Dunning-Kruger Curve. I have learned a LOT about the mechanics of this university in the past six years. I’ve learned enough to know that there is a whole lot that I don’t know. We – me, you, FAM, Administration – have to get to common ground. YOU are going to have to shine a light on our blind-spots with clarity, honesty, transparency, integrity, and good faith, and we will do the same favor for you.

As we work through these negotiations we’re going to have hard conversations. I’m sure you know that this is about issues like 

• pay, 
• and benefits,
• and workload, 
• and making substantive commitments on diversity, equity, and inclusion, 
• and academic freedom, 
• and real and substantive shared governance; 
• and due process; 
• and codifying and enforcing clear and objective standards on promotion and tenure; 

and above all, safe-guarding [our] the core of the Miami brand, which is a “student-centered” university with “an unwavering commitment to liberal arts undergraduate education” and with the intent of “empower[ing our] students, faculty, and staff to become engaged citizens who use their knowledge and skills with integrity and compassion to improve the future of our global society.” I’m reading right from the Mission Statement.

The faculty are the engine that drives that mission. Our class-sizes are swelling, our faculty lines are stagnant or shrinking or increasingly precarious, we are constantly being asked to do more with less and so many of us just find the fire to get it done because we love our students, we love our colleagues, we love our jobs, we love our University and we can’t bear the thought of letting them down. But the harder you fan a fire the quicker you exhaust the fuel. 

I think this moment, right now, is the product of a sort of passive neglect and a sort of general ethos that appeasement is enough. It’s like a bridge that is driven over every day while we contemplate the news of the week, wrestle with our worries, think about the future, aspire, dream, or just keep our eyes on the road right in front of us. But bridges can’t just be driven over forever. Without enough attention and care and tangible appreciation for their marvel, rust will replace trust. 

It seems like this bridge (between the faculty and administration) has just gotten rusty and a critical mass of the faculty no longer trust it enough to just keep going. We’re grinding down the faculty and that makes the university weaker, not stronger.

We need to shake up our priorities and think together about how we’re going to go forward. For much longer than I’ve been here that kind of decision (how to go forward) has been made from the top down, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t better ways of leading. 

Our bridge has gotten rusty; it makes more noises now and some of us even swear we can feel it shifting under the weight of change. It’s like the faculty have been riding in the back seat, all too anxious about what they see out the front window. But on May 17^th we moved to the passenger seat, legally. And we have a role to play now, as co-pilots, legally. 

I have colleagues and friends who don’t like that, and I’m sure some of you here today don’t like that. And I hear you. We hear you. But that is the reality of our moment. Like it or not, we are a unionized faculty now. That’s how we’re going forward. We’re going to get this done. And because it’s going to take compromise, no one is going to skip out of the room with an ear-to-ear grin. But this is a big-picture moment. We need to go through this process and adapt to change; we do this all the time, and quite well. We are an excellent University as we will continue to be. Unionizing the faculty will not tarnish that. And when we get this right, it will make us even better.

It will change our priorities. We’ve been fanning the flames and burning hot for too long now and this union is like a flashing red light on the dashboard. There are holes you can patch and troubles you can delay but the reality is, we’ve got a big problem under the hood – this critical mass of faculty who have been signaling for a long time now that this is not sustainable. 

I love this place. But this really isn’t about me. I’m less than 1-800^th of the equation. But I am the conduit. Just by circumstance. A person with experience and success stories to tell about working Provost’s Mullenix, Osborn, and Callihan; and working well with many Associate-Provosts like Dana Cox and Jeff Wanko, and the General Council’s office with Robin Parker, whom we on Faculty Welfare worked closely with, and I have a nascent relationship with Amy Shoemaker, whom I greatly respect and admire. We worked well with Dr. Creamer on several matters, including Senate Resolution 22-32, which I wrote to increase parity between TCPL and Tenure-line faculty at the promotion points. This isn’t acrimonious. It’s shared governance. It’s just that there needs to be more sharing now. 

What you will get from me, as Lead Negotiator, is good faith, honesty, transparency, a commitment to fairness, an open and reasonable ear, someone who is comfortable admitting when he’s wrong and changing course, a person who wants to keep the temperature down and morale up and above all whose life course – whose FULL curriculum vitae – is a story of personal ascendence that cannot be forgotten and is owed in no small part to this place. I am in Miami’s debt. And I would love to reconcile that by playing my part to help broker this deal.

We want to address an aching faculty. We have to substantively care for our people. We need to reassess our priorities and synchronize our work. We need to get our attention and resources back to our mission, which is educating our students and advancing our shared goals. We’re full up on great and beautiful things. Let’s talk about how we can better care for the people who use them to deliver our mission.