Speaking truth to power: FAM members address the Miami BOT

When was the last time you cried?

For me, it was yesterday, in my history capstone presentations. Some of the smartest, most creative, and deeply engaged students presented moving handmade projects that connected their study of the past, and of those who are often not registered in the historical record, with their study of craft. They studied and replicated the conditions involved in making the handmade objects that surround us, that we inherit, that we buy, that we see at the antique store, that we drape over our beds. They researched in the archives, they read in physical books, they discussed ideas in a circle, and they also learned to sew, and carve, and collaborate. They became thinkers, and makers. They will take both sets of skills with them into their next stage. They did it without the aid of any assistive or generative technology. In sum, they experienced the sheer humanity of being human. I love this job, and I cried because of how beautiful and earnest the students were, and how hard it has become to create these human-centered learning environments for them.

When was the last time you visited a college classroom?

Students in my Ancient Aztec and Maya Worlds history class were bemused to watch me struggle every class session, all semester long, to get an appropriate whiteboard in my classroom for our basic pedagogical needs: I need to write down terms in Nahuatl as I teach.  Each class I updated them on my failed efforts to procure one—a long list of requests that ran up and down a long chain of command, ultimately with an offer from Facilities Management for me to send an invoice and measurement specifications so that they could bill me, personally, for a custom-made whiteboard to be delivered in about six weeks.  Needless to say, I declined the offer to purchase my own mobile whiteboard.  On the last day of the semester, my students cheered as I wheeled in a borrowed whiteboard panel that I found in a classroom in Upham slated for renovation.  That one day, the last day, we had the instructional equipment necessary for in-person learning.  Students noticed the jarring disconnect between the announcement of a nearly $300 million arena project at a university where their professor could not get a chalkboard.

When was the last time you spoke to a Miami student?

We regularly hear that the painful changes that we are going through—the pivot toward polytechnic and vocational education, the restructuring of academic units, the full-throttle embrace of AI—is stewardship, and that it is simply a response to demonstrated student demand.  That may be, but that’s not what I hear. I teach history majors, but I also teach intro-level classes that have students from every major across campus.  Not one of them wants Miami to prioritize an arena over education.

What was your favorite class in college?

Mine was art history. I did not go on to become an art historian, but it fundamentally improved my experience as I move through the world, and it informs my life in ways I could have never foretold. One of my students, excited to register for professional writing classes next semester, came to me crestfallen when she noticed that the course had been changed to “Professional Writing with AI.”  She has been actively seeking out classes, like my “Crafting the Historical Narrative” capstone that I opened with, that allow her to immerse herself in the rich human tradition of knowledge production. My students in that class implored me to help them protect educational spaces from the encroaching mandate to engage with AI. For that class, I applied and requested everywhere for funding for materials, and found that at every turn, no finances were available for the sewing supplies, linoleum blocks, and ink. I eventually secured $300 from the Center for Teaching Excellence, which did not come close to covering materials for the 19 students, but I am resourceful. But in the CTE’s weekly newsletters, we are showered with funded opportunities to learn AI, to adapt our courses to AI. A glance at our course list shows an undifferentiated swath of AI-oriented classes, no different from offerings at any online degree program across the country crowding out the unique learning experiences that students have come to expect.

This is a description of the situation from the students’ vantage point, in my graduating senior student Marlow’s words:

“A redhawk reaches around to bite off its own wing. Each fallen feather represents a Humanities major, department or program that Miami has cut in the belief that they are not profitable enough.  In doing so, Miami sheds its identity as a liberal arts institution, and its desires to impart the wealth of human knowledge and understanding upon its students. The result is a permanent injury to itself; without the humanities supporting and defining it, the redhawk becomes lost and unable to fly.”

My students have asked me to convey to you the following things:

They have noticed Miami’s leadership divesting from its liberal arts programs, disproportionately its humanities.

They know Miami’s history. Literally, they have scoured University Archives and Special Collections, back issues of The Miami Student, and oral history testimonies from alumni, some of them in their own families. They know what kind of education Miami built its centuries-old reputation on, and they are scrambling to find it here.

They want smaller class sizes, not larger.

They want you to invest in human intelligence.

That means investing in the humans.

That means investing in faculty and librarians, the humans delivering these bespoke educational experiences that distinguish Miami graduates from their peers.

That means bargaining in good faith.

The Union has asked the University to accept a memorandum of understanding that affirms that we will be evaluated by all-human processes, and the University will not accept that premise.

The University’s compensation package is insultingly low, especially considering the lasting, unique, and utterly human value that we generate in our classrooms. Last week we received a notice urging us to sign up for a Faculty Learning Community about engaging with AI, and it comes with a $1000 professional development fund. $1000 might not be a lot of money for you, but for our lowest-paid faculty members, that represents almost 2% of their annual salary.

The University refuses to even offer a 2% wage increase to compensate faculty for the demonstrated excellence that has given Miami national distinction in undergraduate teaching—the latest University offer is an average of 1.8% over ten years—but it will readily throw over 2% to faculty to siphon their time and expertise away from their work to devote it to chase an untested, and by all evidence perilously risky, new tech bubble.

Invest in the human. It’s a far safer return on your investment, and the product has been proven.

At negotiations, time and time again, management has also made it clear that rather than lift everyone up, their goal is to push everyone down, and force us to beg for fair wages and working conditions.  But that’s not why we unionized.  We fought for a union to benefit everyone including our students.  We’re going to keep showing up to fight for the university and workplace we want and our students deserve.

Good morning.

I’m here because I care about Miami University — its students, its reputation, and its future. I’ve been on the faculty since 2001. In that time I’ve served on Senate, directed a Ph.D. program for over a decade, and helped guide the merger that created one of the university’s strongest
departments. Both of my kids graduated from Miami. I’m not here as an outsider. I’m here as someone who has spent 25 years building this place.

And I want to talk about what it takes to keep building it.

Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. When faculty have the time and resources to mentor students, develop cutting edge courses, and pursue the research that drives our reputation, Miami thrives. When we’re stretched too thin, students pay the price first.

Over two decades, faculty and librarians have absorbed merger after merger, growing responsibilities, and shrinking resources — much of it willingly, because we believe in this institution. Most recently, our teaching loads have increased. That means less time mentoring students, less time on the research that drives Miami’s reputation, and less time for the service
that keeps this university running. Biology is about to merge with Microbiology, and I welcome those colleagues — but hours in the day and goodwill are not inexhaustible.

Higher education is under real pressure right now. The institutions that come through stronger will be the ones that invested in their people rather than hollowing them out.

That’s why faculty and librarians chose collective bargaining — not out of hostility, but because we needed a structured way to solve problems together. I’m on the negotiating team, and what we want is what you want: fair compensation to recruit and retain excellent faculty, genuine shared governance, and a university that works the way it’s supposed to.

Solutions are within reach, but they require partnership. So I’m asking you to be advocates — for fair wages and benefits, for meaningful faculty consultation, and for the principle that a strong faculty is not a cost to be managed but the foundation everything else rests on.

Help us build a Miami where everyone can flourish.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Ken Irwin – I’ve been a Web Services Librarian at Miami for the past six and a half years. I’m here this morning to speak on behalf of the librarians who are currently engaged in collective bargaining with an administration that consistently “thanks” us and offers us “appreciation” while rejecting our well-reasoned proposals with little to no engagement with the substance. The university’s spree of rejections at the bargaining table has been substantial; for brevity I will only talk about two issues today: academic freedom and compensation.

At a time when university employees’ work faces challenges from the legislature, it is more important than ever to know that the university respects our academic freedom and has our backs. One excellent librarian who recently left Miami told us that part of their motivation to leave was Miami’s weak commitment to upholding academic freedom for librarians and uncertainty whether their research would make them politically vulnerable. University administrators have asserted that librarians are protected by the existing academic freedom policy, but they have been unwilling to put it in writing in our contract. Rather than finding common ground, the university has repeatedly rejected our proposals without offering an alternative. The response we need is for the university to meaningfully engage with our proposals, discuss the challenges, and seek constructive solutions. 

Academic freedom is one of many areas in which librarians face a double standard at Miami. Librarians here have a rank, promotion, and continuing contract system that is explicitly modeled on faculty tenure. Although we are not designated as faculty, the expectations for our work, scholarship, and professional leadership are as high or higher than our librarian colleagues around the state who do hold faculty status. But Miami librarians are compensated at a lower rate than unionized faculty librarians, and Miami excuses this because “we aren’t faculty”. 

We can live without the designation, but the great disparity in pay for the exact same work is untenable. Miami benefits from the accomplishments of our talented librarians who are leaders in our field at the state and national levels. But at the bargaining table we are offered one or two percent raises at the same time the university promises three percent to non-unionized workers; Miami’s lawyer frames these lower-than-everyone-else raises as “very generous” and “big movement” in negotiations. It is hard to read this as anything other than punishment and contempt. 

A healthy negotiation is about building trust, and the administration’s outright rejections have been shattering our trust in the university.  We unionized because we could envision a better Miami University: one that would value our work and protect our scholarship. The university has met our efforts with foot-dragging, low-balling, and gaslighting. Every day, those tactics further demoralize your employees. 

Librarians’ work makes our academic mission possible, and we will not give up until we have the fair pay and contract we deserve.