With the announcement of the new process for evaluating administrators, the fog surrounding the suspension of the Administrator Evaluation Committee has finally cleared.
Management’s new process makes clear that the reason given for suspending the old process — that it risks direct dealing — was never the actual reason. (“Direct dealing” is when a boss negotiates directly with an individual employee on wages or working conditions without union involvement.)
The new process puts individual employees in a room to speak with a committee that includes administrators. By contrast, the old process involved an anonymous, mainly quantitative survey that resulted in a summary report. If the goal was to avoid direct dealing, this new process makes zero sense.
| Should you participate in this flawed process for gathering feedback? If you feel comfortable and have something to say, go for it — but FAM encourages you to create a paper trail that’s public record by emailing your feedback to the Provost or the new committee. Or FAM can submit your feedback anonymously. Send it to info@famiami.org or drop it at the FAM office. We will keep your identity confidential. |
The real reason for the new process is obviously to avoid a paper trail that could create reputational damage for administrators and for Miami (and perhaps to deter honest criticism). It’s nothing to do with “status quo” (the contract bargaining phase).
The administration could have explained their concerns to the committee and to Senate and worked collaboratively to amend the process without making a sham of it.
Let’s face it: if the paper trail feels like a risk to administrators, it is equally a risk for the students and faculty whose evaluations and feedback are part of university records. Why should administrators enjoy special protections? Isn’t it special enough that they’ve been receiving raises three times larger than faculty’s?
What is most clear is that management did not need to smash shared governance and pretend that it was about the union.
What is saddest is the chilling effect of the new process. Likely only those few who feel quite secure will give feedback in person. The new committee will not have rich quantitative and qualitative feedback data to work from. That’s a disservice to the administrators being evaluated, and it’s a disservice to the university.
But management does not care. Though 86% of Faculty Assembly voted in support of reinstating the suspended policy, the Board of Trustees refused even to consider the resolution.
On the bright side, if faculty & librarians hadn’t pushed back at Faculty Assembly about the committee suspension, we probably would not have had the opportunity to submit feedback at all. That’s a win.
And we should keep trying. FAM has a proposal about administrator evaluation and would be wide open to working on it with the administration. Together we can pressure them in a better direction. Become a member now. There’s sunshine (and a contract) ahead!
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