OtherWise Philosophy

Sixteen months after WMU’s No Confidence Vote: Have things gotten better at Western?

A message from WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey and Vice President Whitney DeCamp

It has now been sixteen months since the Board-appointed faculty at Western Michigan University overwhelmingly voted to approve a vote of no confidence in WMU’s President. Despite this clear message demanding change, and ample additional evidence of a morale crisis as demonstrated by a Faculty Senate survey and the administration’s employee engagement survey, the president remains in his position. Further, with the exception of a new provost, the cast of supporting characters — including most of the vice presidents, associate provosts, and deans — also remains largely unchanged. As another academic year winds to a close, this is a good time to take stock of where we’ve come over the past year and half or so.

Although the perspectives of individual faculty, staff, and students will obviously vary, from our point of view, many of the concerns expressed by the no confidence vote remain largely unresolved. A few are especially worrisome because they represent not merely discrete problems that might be addressed through targeted policy changes, but an ongoing corrosion of the foundation of Western’s campus culture. For example, leadership’s “failure to respond appropriately to feedback and concerns” and the “unprecedented narrowing of the practice of shared governance” are higher order, systemic deficits that make more specific problems — for example, enrollment challenges — much harder to address. Moreover, leadership failures that continue to damage WMU’s status as a “great place to learn and work,” create a vicious cycle of campus dissatisfaction, making our university less attractive to new talent and energy that might help to renew and reinvigorate it.

Despite some modest improvements in some areas of enrollment data last year, cause for concern has remained steady or grown in other important areas, including:

– After the precipitous layoff of numerous key employees a few years ago, chronic under-staffing and problematic hiring delays.

– Further violations by WMU of shared governance and due process in its pursuit of rapid restructuring and in other decision-making.

– The administration’s refusal to take basic steps to assure impartiality in the grievance process, further undermining confidence that faculty concerns will be fairly considered.

– A lack of transparency, for example, about challenges regarding the new student center.

– Unacknowledged implications of the new “competitive” budget model on the curriculum and the research mission.

– A failure by WMU to accept the Chapter’s repeated invitations to initiate discussion about the possibility of adding Juneteenth as an official holiday to the university calendar in response to state and federal recognition and student requests.

– An over-reliance on the formal disciplinary process to address concerns about faculty job performance and a failure to properly adhere to the process, for example, to provide evidence for allegations of misconduct.

– A squandered opportunity to more fairly and rationally address salary equity adjustments through WMU’s failure to collaborate effectively with faculty in the negotiated “salary equity committee” last year, and in its ongoing failure to accept overtures to continue that committee work.

– Ongoing enthusiasm by WMU to rely upon attorneys to handle employee concerns and to escalate issues unnecessarily, for example, the summer preference grievance that was decided in the Chapter’s favor through a time-consuming and expensive arbitration process.

As we noted in message of March 3, 2022: “Obviously, WMU’s current employee morale problem can’t be resolved through a single action or in an instant. However, there are any number of things that WMU leadership could do, if, indeed, they were willing to admit that this problem exists and at increasingly alarming proportions.” Although the WMU administration has made some welcome gestures toward reconciliation with employees over the past 16 months, it seems like they’ve just given up when it comes to some of the most substantive concerns. Also, as we have noted previously, at some point, ongoing listening and data collection seem like an excuse for failing to act when information has already been repeatedly provided.

Further, to be clear, in addition to the input faculty and staff have provided through numerous forums and surveys, the WMU-AAUP leadership has continued to convey faculty concerns to the administration. Far too often, however, the response is one that seems calibrated to highlight the administration’s managerial prerogatives over employees rather than its service and leadership responsibilities to them. It’s an unproductive scenario in which the elected leaders of Western’s faculty, teaching assistants and part-time instructors are likely to receive rebuttals rather than understanding from WMU administrators when we share our colleagues’ concerns.

It was, of course, disappointing that, after the faculty’s historic resolution of no confidence, the WMU Board of Trustees’ response was, at least publicly, to double-down on its support for the president and the status quo. This included approval of presidential raises and bonuses that, to some campus employees seemed not just exorbitant, but insulting. After all, the Board took these actions even as faculty and staff were being lectured by the administration about the ongoing need for belt-tightening. Still, things might have unfolded differently. The resolution might have been received by the administration as a wake up call, an invitation to reflect unflinchingly on its record and to embrace every opportunity to restore campus confidence.

As dramatic as the December 2021 faculty resolution itself was, then, what is almost more noteworthy than that event itself is the administration’s ongoing failure to provide healing and responsive leadership since then. It is a sobering fact that two of the most frequent questions we have received this semester are: “How much notice do I have to provide when I resign?” and “How long will my benefits continue once I resign?” It seems that not only has our campus morale not been improving, it may actually be getting worse as time passes and hope fades.

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU’s growing reliance on attorneys to deflect employee concerns

A message from WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey and WMU-AAUP Vice President Whitney DeCamp

There is nothing new or especially problematic about universities calling upon legal experts, especially in limited contexts where it may be necessary to protect institutional interests from external threats. But there is a meaningful difference between the occasional use of legal counsel to safeguard the institution and the increasingly common use of attorneys by Western Michigan University in an ever-expanding scope of internally-directed functions. Not incidentally, some of these are functions that, until recently, have been more commonly performed by administrators with faculty rank, not by lawyers.

An example about which the WMU-AAUP has repeatedly expressed concern is the university’s hiring of the aggressive, anti-union law firm Dykema Gossett to represent management interests in various matters, including in contract negotiations. Indeed, one of most noteworthy points about WMU’s recent labor negotiations was the administration’s decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to intimidate employees, in part, into accepting lowball salary offers. Not incidentally, WMU’s chosen Dykema attorney has been characterized by Michigan AFT president David Hecker as notoriously aggressive and anti-labor. “Any university who hires this guy,” says Hecker, “is sending a very clear and deliberate message to its employees.”

In addition, Western also employed this same attorney last year for an arbitration battle with the WMU-AAUP that the university decisively lost this past November. You can review the dressing down that the Western administration received by the arbitrator here. Although faculty rights to summer pay were ultimately protected as a result of the Chapter’s staunch advocacy, this is a good example of yet another unnecessary, lawyer-laden escalation by the university. The ultimate result of the university’s handling of this contract dispute? Tens of thousands of dollars diverted by Western to private attorneys even as campus employees were being lectured about the need for ongoing belt-tightening. In addition, there was a hit to morale from this administrative effort to deprioritize faculty in teaching, purportedly to offset SRM budget pressures (the stated reason for the attempted changes).

Yet another novel use of attorneys occurred last spring when WMU hired a Grand Rapids attorney to investigate unspecified accusations of wrongdoing by faculty members across two colleges rather than following the negotiated, contractual process for addressing such concerns. Although these faculty were directed by the former interim provost to meet with this attorney — and the Chapter president is among these individuals — few faculty chose to participate (consistent with advice provided by WMU-AAUP legal counsel). Nonetheless, the university administration has continued to appeal to this outside attorney’s report as justification for its adverse treatment of faculty, both in its informal communications to the Chapter and in official responses.

Until last summer, WMU’s Director Academic Labor Relations — a pivotal office for dealing with the concerns of faculty, teaching assistants, and part-time instructors — had always been appointed from among the WMU faculty. This was not accidental, but a recognition of the university’s desire to facilitate diplomatic solutions among folks who were more or less on an equal plane and who had shared understandings of academic goals and values. Appointing faculty members to this critical administrative role had been an imperfect, but generally effective means of avoiding the stress, rancor, and expense of unnecessary escalations and conflict when employee concerns and complaints arose. Now when the Chapter raises concerns about the impact an action will have on faculty morale, working conditions, or faculty/administrator relations, we are met, not with the understanding of a colleague but with legalistic responses, for example, a demand that we cite relevant caselaw that would require the administration to respond to such concerns. Anyone who’s been on the receiving end of such messages from attorneys — and emails from this office are now identified as coming from an attorney —can confirm that they often seem deliberately designed to intimidate.

It’s also worth noting that, while Western has long kept in-house attorneys on its payroll to represent the university’s interests in various matters, in recent years, these attorneys too have been pressed into service in novel ways. A few years ago, for example, the university determined that its in-house lawyers could now be construed as “administrators” who could directly participate in the hearing of grievances. Instead of the chairs, associate deans, or deans who would normally have been assigned to hear an employee or Chapter concern on behalf of the administration, then, faculty members might be confronted with a university attorney in that role. Although the Chapter successfully beat back this practice in 2021 by negotiating additional contract language, WMU’s determination to insert lawyers into the grievance process like this confirms a troubling trend.

It is puzzling to us that, even as WMU leaders insist they are sincerely trying to address the campus morale crisis, they are paying attorneys to respond to some of our university’s most human problems and concerns. Increasingly, when faculty, staff, and student employees reach out to our leaders, seeking understanding, compromise, and resolution, we’re being directed to sort it out with attorneys. This is, perhaps, not surprising since a layer of attorneys can serve as a smokescreen behind which administrators attempt to avoid responsibility. But such a wall of paid legal technocrats also keeps members of the university community from meaningful connection with our leaders about some of the issues that matter most. While the attorneys who are profiting from this arrangement may have cause for celebration, it’s a terrible loss for just about everyone else. Does anyone really believe that adding more lawyers to the mix is the best way to restore campus morale and Western’s status as a great place to work and learn?

OtherWise Philosophy

Arbitration Victory: WMU Faculty Summer Teaching Rights Protected

A message from WMU-AAUP President Bailey and Vice President DeCamp

We’re pleased to share good news about the arbitration regarding summer preference that we filed earlier this year in response to contractual violations by WMU. In brief, Arbitrator Thomas J. Barnes agreed with the WMU-AAUP that faculty have the right to preference for summer teaching in the amount of 6 credit hours per session (12 credit hours total) rather than the 6 credit hours per summer that the administration had recently begun to claim.

As a reminder, and as we reported to you in the spring, the WMU administration announced a novel plan to: a) limit preference for summer courses for academic-year faculty to six credit hours per year, b) only pay the summer teaching rate for the first six credit hours per summer for academic year faculty, and subsequently pay only the overload rate, and c) apply both of these limits by the fiscal year rather than calendar summer. The WMU-AAUP recognized that each of these changes was a violation of the 2021-2026 WMU-AAUP Agreement.

Further, our analyses indicated that such unilateral changes could result in a loss of faculty compensation of up to one million dollars annually. In short, this was an attempt by the administration to deny rightful, negotiated income to faculty, and the WMU-AAUP resolved to take the legal actions necessary to address these violations. The violations regarding the limited use of the summer salary rate and use of the fiscal year were reversed as a result of a grievance filed by the Chapter. With this week’s arbitration decision, the summer preference issue has now also been resolved in favor of the faculty. In short, all three of the unilateral changes recently imposed by the administration have now been reversed.

It’s worth noting that the opinion of the arbitrator shows careful consideration of the arguments made by both sides, decisively concluding that the WMU-AAUP compellingly fulfilled the burden of proof. Here are the key findings in Arbitrator Barnes’s conclusion:

“[T]he Union produced evidence beyond the past practice of harmonizing the provision at issue here with other sections of the CBA. While none of them standing alone are conclusive by any means, taken together they support a construction that is consistent with the parties’ 38-year practice. […] The Employer’s assertions in its post hearing brief would lead me to believe that the University voluntarily paid out summer salaries as the Union demands perhaps on the basis of its goodwill and currying favor with the faculty. That is just not how collective bargaining works and there was no evidence to that effect. Small favors and minor economic emoluments do not amount to any binding commitments as many arbitrators have held; payment of wages over 38 years now challenged by the University would amount to an acknowledgment that over that time period it was not managing and husbanding its economic resources prudently. When the University now says that it had the right all along, for nearly four decades, to do what it proposes is to acknowledge that it paid out monies that it never owed, thus undercutting its responsibilities to the students and to the taxing authorities. Unfortunately in this case, the realities of collective bargaining and of the obligations of the parties can lead to no other conclusion than that the University faithfully carried out its financial obligations under the CBA until the current situation arose. […] The grievance is granted prospectively beginning with the summer of 2023.”

This decision is binding and requires the university to respect the multi-decade (negotiated) tradition of providing faculty preference in teaching assignments.

In closing, we would like to acknowledge all who contributed to this success, including former officers and legal counsel. Moreover, several faculty were present to provide testimony before the arbitrator, and this outcome is a direct result of their willingness to stand in solidarity against contract violations.

If you learn of any instances of these WMU-AAUP contractual rights being violated, or communications from the administration that suggest they will not be honored, please contact us at staff@wmuaaup.net. Likewise, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.

In solidarity,

Cathryn Bailey, President of the WMU-AAUP

Whitney DeCamp, Vice President of the WMU-AAUP

 

OtherWise Philosophy

The Michigan Senate’s Spurious Rejection of WMU Trustee Jon Hoadley

A message from WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey and WMU-AAUP Vice President Whitney DeCamp

We are deeply troubled by the Michigan Senate’s vote 20-18 yesterday to reject Gov. Whitmer’s appointment of Jon Hoadley to Western Michigan University’s Board of Trustees, a position Hoadley was sworn into on March 17. Although some senators pointed to a conflict of interest as their justification (Hoadley is taking graduate classes at WMU), they did so in defiance of a 1999 Attorney General opinion clearly stating that “a student at a state institution of higher education granting baccalaureate degrees, by simultaneously serving as a member of that institution’s governing board, does not violate Const 1963, art 4, § 10, or the state officer’s conflict of interest act.”

Given both the spurious nature of the rationale for rejecting him as disqualified, and considering current anti-LGBTQ political trends, it would be irresponsible to ignore Hoadley’s status as an openly gay political leader. As Sen. Jeremey Moss (D-Southfield) said yesterday on the Senate floor: “I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the fact that this is the second appointee of the governor to a university board of an openly gay person who is being rejected. Two now. Back-to-back.”

Erin Knott, the Executive Director of Equality Michigan, echos this concern, arguing that this is a “ruse to deny the appointment, simply because Jon is an openly gay man.” Knott also observed: “What’s even more egregious is the fact that many of these Senators served with Jon during his tenure in the Michigan Legislature and can attest to his ability to serve.”

We share the view that Hoadley has distinguished himself as a courageous and effective leader in multiple contexts and that he has also been a friend to higher education. In fact, it is consistent with his outstanding qualities that Hoadley has characterized the vote to eject him, without even being included in the deliberations, as “counter to the spirit of open debate and study that is a hallmark for higher education institutions.”

The Michigan Senate’s summary rejection of Jon Hoadley is in defiance of Michigan’s explicit conflict-of-interest policy regarding such matters and adds to a growing wave of noxious anti-LGBTQ backlash that threatens to take our country backward. This rejection is not only an insult to Hoadley, but to all of us at Western Michigan University who value fair play, respect, and the inclusion of diverse views and perspectives in higher education leadership.It is with all this in mind that we encourage you to contact Michigan Senators and urge them to reconsider the rejection of Jon Hoadley and all that he stands for.

above photo is from a recent MLive story

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU’s latest budget model: New jargon to rationalize old spending priorities?

By Dr. Cathryn Bailey, President of the WMU-AAUP

Faculty concerns about the direction WMU is taking have tended to prioritize shared governance, enrollment management, and campus morale. Less featured in recent discussions that led to a No Confidence Vote by the faculty, but often adjacent to faculty concern and dissatisfaction, is WMU’s adoption of a new budget model. As it is explained on Western’s own website:


“Strategic Resource Management is a philosophy and model, not a budget. It’s a means to achieve the University’s strategic goals, but it does not determine those goals. SRM aims to create transparency and clarity in the process of resource allocation, and it is most effectively applied in an atmosphere of shared commitment and engagement from the campus community. SRM is expected to provide an incentive-based and transparent budget system that is linked to WMU’s strategic plan, decentralize decision-making and align resources and accountability to University units.”


What WMU now refers to as SRM seems to be based on the so-called Responsibility Center Management (RCM) approach, which is meant to decentralize spending authority, ideally providing more flexibility and autonomy to the colleges and other divisions. This model is also supposed to incentivize the various units to increase efficiencies, cut waste, and encourage “investment” in areas most likely to generate revenue. Besides endeavoring to cover their own costs with their own revenues, individual colleges and other university “units” may be charged by the institution to cover shared expenses, such as overarching administrative and logistical support. Expenses that administration deems crucial may receive “subvention,” i.e., a subsidy, in an effort to protect less “profitable” but purportedly necessary programs and initiatives.

When this model is enacted in a higher learning context, some of the philosophical and practical challenges are pretty obvious. For example: In a national climate that increasingly treats teaching and learning as mere commodities, will market considerations and upper administrative priorities drive decisions about curricula? We are already witnessing unhealthy competition as colleges, and even departments, feel pitted against one another in a bid to secure their narrowly defined “profitable” futures, even if this seems likely to damage the university as a whole. Will a model that aims to reward entrepreneurialism and innovation instead jeopardize long term and historically valuable commitments, such as the institution’s longstanding identity, its liberal arts core, and employee morale and job security? We can probably all agree that efficiency and productivity are important considerations for any organization, but is this model really suitable for a complex, diverse, socially-responsible public university?

While defining and preparing to implement the new budget model, SRM-speak has already become well entrenched in WMU’s culture, including in how administrators propagate its associated aspirations and excuses.This includes both rationales for further belt-tightening as well as promises about potential rewards in some fantasy future. For example, loss of staff colleagues supposedly generates staffing “efficiency.” Raising faculty workloads — despite the implications on students and faculty research — has a net positive impact on a department’s bottom line. By contrast, equity adjustments to faculty and staff salaries would fail to match with SRM priorities. The unprecedented uncertainty of the recent past, administrators suggest, will transform into certainty once SRM is fully adopted and calibrated; like an invisible hand, its internal logic and sense will ultimately prevail. Meanwhile, if faculty, staff, and mid-level administrators are hardworking, innovative, and patient enough, it is implied, we will reap the rewards while less enterprising units will ensure their obsolescence.

This scenario would be bad enough if it were actually plausible that the SRM model is what now compels the institution toward budget austerity. But given that the scarcity and belt-tightening mindset has dominated WMU’s climate for years — with, for example, faculty and staff conceived primarily as a financial liability rather than as a resource — the “new budget model” sounds more like the latest rationalization for ongoing, endless austerity, even in the wake of an incredible $550 million donation. Further, for many faculty, staff, and administrators who’ve been around for a while it’s pretty hard to believe that the administration will begin rewarding units for their sacrifices and contributions, invocations of “SRM” notwithstanding, when such hard work and productivity has rarely been rewarded in the past. Indeed, it’s impossible to miss the fact that there always seem to be administrative rationalizations available for why some areas of campus deserve funding and others do not.

Despite Western’s insistence that SRM is a method, not a vision, this model has quickly taken on a life and identity of its own. It has already become a smokescreen behind which administrators need no longer take responsibility for the values driving their own budgetary decisions, and which discourages questions from faculty and staff. But dressing up promises and threats in SRM garb does not change the fact that it is individuals — including administrators and members of the Board of Trustees — who decide what is worth investment at Western Michigan University and what is not. When, for example, our staff colleagues were summarily eliminated in 2020, that was because WMU administrators, including both high level administrators and deans, made the decision to do so. Euphemistically referring to this as a RIF (Reduction in Force), as such acronyms often do, deflects responsibility from the actual individuals who made and rationalized the decisions.

The fact remains, however one labels the university’s budget model or its employee eliminations, that each and every decision about what deserves to be preserved and invested in, and what is superfluous, will be fundamentally human and values-driven. And the sheer fact that there will be arbitrariness in the “system” is evidenced by WMU’s repeated reassurance of subsidies for items which WMU leaders deem most worthy. Although SRM is a signature innovation under the president’s leadership, it is already functioning to provide the same kind of cover we’ve seen under past administrations: rationalizations for unnecessary and unwise budget cuts to essential services and personnel, and justifications for pet projects and potential short-term revenue streams. Whether SRM goes down in WMU’s history as yet another formula for university “executives” to point to while they spend and cut as they see fit will depend on us. How willing are we to challenge the ascendency of SRM jargon and demand accountability from the actual people behind each momentous budgetary decision?

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU’s Employee Morale Crisis: Another Clear Sign that Change is Needed

A message from WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey and Vice President Whitney DeCamp

Although concerns about low morale helped drive the recent vote of No Confidence in WMU’s President, employee frustration and alienation have not received enough attention, the current “employee engagement” survey notwithstanding. The low profile of the morale problem is most likely due to the fact that, unlike some other serious concerns – for example, plummeting enrollment numbers and high administrative salaries – morale problems can be harder to quantify. Nonetheless, we see that low employee morale is a problem now impacting many aspects of campus life, including student experience. In addition, the burnout associated with it damages individual careers and impacts the well-being of our entire university.

From our point of view, the qualitative evidence of the problem couldn’t be more explicit. In fact, we frequently remark to one another that nearly every message or interaction we have with our faculty and staff colleagues seems to include some expressions of sadness and concern about the direction WMU is headed and their place in the campus community. To take just a few examples, we often hear from:

-Colleagues so overburdened by teaching, service, or other work reassigned to them from hastily fired staff (or staff reduced to part-time), that they have begun to feel estranged from their scholarly work and disconnected from WMU’s core mission;

-Faculty who feel they must remain vigilant for new administrative incursions, such as unit restructuring and unilateral changes to workplace safety policies enacted without consulting the WMU-AAUP;

-Faculty on the lookout for attacks on contractual rights, for instance, the current attempt to pay faculty teaching during summer at a lower than contractual rate; and

-Staff and faculty seeking new jobs or counting the days until retirement because they find it harder and harder to recognize themselves in WMU’s ethos, including its cutthroat new “SRM” budget model and its rebranding initiative.

To be clear, the morale problem has been on the WMU-AAUP’s radar for a while and was even raised as a serious concern by our negotiation team last summer. Not only was there no constructive response from WMU, the dynamics during negotiations often functioned to illustrate and exacerbate the problem. To the degree that morale problems were acknowledged, they tended to be attributed to the pandemic, in defiance of the fact that faculty had identified problems much earlier. Further, the administration’s pandemic excuse overlooked the fact that it has been WMU’s frequently failed responses to the pandemic – including the early and unnecessary elimination of many critical staff colleagues – that has been a major factor rather than the pandemic per se.

Obviously, WMU’s current employee morale problem can’t be resolved through a single action or in an instant. However, there are any number of things that WMU leadership could do, if, indeed, they were willing to admit that this problem exists and at increasingly alarming proportions. The recent vote of No Confidence clearly expressed one critically desired change in its blunt conclusion that WMU’s captain has repeatedly and egregiously failed both crew and passengers. But, in addition, there are a number of steps that the WMU administration must take to begin restoring employee confidence, including an immediate investment in all employees – faculty and staff – who are responsible for realizing WMU’s core mission. In addition, WMU must work to rebuild its labor relations, including demanding greater accountability from its Office of Academic Labor Relations, so that once again contractual questions and disputes will be handled in a spirit of mutual respect, optimism, and shared purpose. Without question, the road to healing will require that WMU’s leaders reestablish critical campus partnerships, including with staff employees, dedicated administrators, student groups and, yes, the WMU-AAUP.

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU-AAUP files summer teaching grievance

Last week, the WMU-AAUP, under authorization by the Executive Committee, filed a grievance over a new policy that the administration intends to implement effective July 1, 2022. As you may have heard, the administration is planning to: a) limit preference for summer courses for academic-year faculty to six credits per year, b) only pay the summer teaching rate for the first six credits per summer for academic year faculty, and subsequently pay only the overload rate, and c) apply both of these limits by the fiscal year (e.g., treat Summer II 2022 and Summer I 2023 as part of the same year). The WMU-AAUP considers each of these changes to be a violation of the WMU/WMU-AAUP 2021-2026 Agreement, including but not limited to violations of Articles 31 and 41.

Although we are still waiting for more data to further examine, our preliminary analyses suggest that this unilateral policy change may result in up to one million dollars in compensation decreases annually. The combined decrease in salary to faculty would likely be equivalent to or in excess of half of the negotiated raise for 2021-2022, for each year that this policy is in effect. This attempt to claw back salary from faculty is simply unacceptable. The officers of the WMU-AAUP, with the support of legal counsel, are prepared to take any and all legal actions necessary to have this policy rescinded, beginning with the grievance filed today.

We have already heard from some faculty who indicated that they are either reconsidering or have already changed their course requests for Summer II 2022 as a result of this policy because teaching in Summer II this year might affect preference and/or salary in Summer I 2023. Although we are not in a position to advise faculty to take or not take any specific actions regarding course requests, we do want to make sure that you are advised that this policy is in dispute. Academic-year faculty should consider this dispute, along with other personal and professional factors, as they make decisions for summer teaching opportunities.

We will keep the faculty updated on all significant developments as this case moves forward. In you have concerns or questions about this new policy or our response to it, please reach out at any time. Grievance Officer Eric Archer (earcher@wmuaaup.net) and Vice President Whitney DeCamp (wdecamp@wmuaaup.net) are the primary points of contact for this issue, though faculty are, of course, welcome to contact any officer, staff, and/or representative with any questions or comments.

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU Leaders’ Response to the No-Confidence Vote: “We know better than you.”

A message from Cathryn Bailey and Whitney DeCamp, WMU-AAUP President and Vice President

If you attend Western Michigan University Board of Trustees public meetings, you may have noticed that these seem intended to create an aura of optimism about all things Bronco. To step into this meeting space can sometimes feel like entering an alternate universe. And at the Jan. 20th Board meeting, the air of unreality was especially dramatic, with nearly all agenda items focused on institutional self-congratulation. As the meeting entered its second hour, there was even a lengthy “WMU-in-the-news” retrospective, a narrated highlight reel of 2021 that somehow managed to overlook the previous year’s headlines about Western’s heavy-handed negotiation tactics with its own employees, its stunning enrollment declines, and the historic No-Confidence Vote in its president.

Such paint-it-pink and put-a-bow-on-it tactics are also consistent with WMU’s handling of President Montgomery’s performance reviews. Despite repeated calls that these documents be shared, including separate Freedom of Information Act requests presented to WMU from the Western Herald and Mlive, Western is keeping these documents under wraps. The facts surrounding the president’s job performance, whom our university compensates like an elite corporate CEO, are obscured behind a painstakingly constructed public performance featuring smiley faces and rainbows.

While there is surely much to celebrate at WMU — our students, colleagues, and community partners deserve to be applauded — at the Jan. 20th Board meeting, only the speakers relegated to the tail end of the meeting — the “public comments” section — reflected on Western’s problems, some of which are glaringly obvious. And among those speakers tacked on to the meeting’s end were WMU’s three academic labor leaders, the presidents of the Teaching Assistants’ Union (TAU), the Professional Instructors Organization (PIO), and the WMU-AAUP, with the PIO and TAU presidents also having also spoken up at the Board’s previous meeting. The very fact that the groups that make WMU an academic institution have been pushed to the meeting’s tail end, and with strict time limits of just a few minutes each, speaks volumes about the purpose of these meetings.

In addition, the responses of President Montgomery and the Board Chair to the feedback presented to them at this meeting were also telling: Those critical of Western’s leaders are naive and resistant to change, unable to comprehend the profound impact of the pandemic on contemporary higher education. WMU’s leaders, however, have the requisite wisdom, experience, and business acumen to forge ahead even in the face of vocal popular resistance. Of course, the reality is that constituents’ objections are not to thoughtful and necessary change, but to top-down decrees and stony silence instead of collaboration and understanding.

It’s important to recall that one of the specific critiques expressed in the historic Vote of No Confidence is this president’s “unwillingness to engage with or consult with faculty in meaningful ways and respond appropriately to feedback and concerns.” It is bad enough, then, that leadership has had over a month to consider this stunning Resolution, and the damning Faculty Senate evaluation that preceded it, yet continues to marginalize campus and community concerns. But to wave away thoughtful feedback as a symptom of ignorance, naivety, and resistance to change is an especially callous silencing tactic. Western students, faculty, staff, and community members have both the right and responsibility to continue to demand and expect better.

Some possibilities for remaining involved as this situation continues to unfold:

– Reach out personally to colleagues and community members to make sure they are fully informed about the No-Confidence Vote, including the process that led to it, the facts surrounding it, and the commitment it demonstrates to our students and university.

– Follow the WMU-AAUP blog and actively share items about the No-Confidence Resolution on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Consider directing your posts by using the @WesternMichU, @AAUP, @mlive, etc.

– Submit a comment to the Board of Trustees through their website respectfully sharing your questions and concerns.

– To the degree that it is feasible for you, initiate dialogue with chairs, deans, and other administrators to help them understand your concern for our students and university, and the nature and implications of the No-Confidence Resolution.

– Share news stories related to the No-Confidence Resolution with colleagues and on social media and consider submitting comments or letters to the editor at, for example, letters@kalmazoogazette.com or kznews@mlive.com or to the Western Herald).

– Consider meeting with President Montgomery during his office hours to engage in respectful dialogue about your concerns; appointments available here. There are a limited number of these 20-minute appointments (five per week), so you may need to book a week or two in advance.

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU professor urges Trustees to prevent “potential super-spreader event”

A message from political science professor Dr. Jacinda Swanson

Dear Members of the Western Michigan University Board of Trustees:

I’m writing to implore you to switch this Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting to a fully-virtual format to prevent it from potentially becoming a super-spreader event.

For several weeks, I had been planning to attend the meeting in-person to show support for WMU-AAUP President Cathryn Bailey, when she addresses the board concerning the faculty’s 78% vote of No Confidence in President Edward Montgomery’s leadership, which was announced one day after the board sadly made the decision to award President Montgomery a $75,000 bonus and a 1.5% retroactive pay raise. Strangely, the board made this decision despite the WMU-AAUP No Confidence vote underway at the time and the dismal results of the Faculty Senate’s November appraisal of the President, in which 74% of faculty respondents disagreed that the President is an effective leader.

On Friday, former head of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, estimated that “nearly one in 10 people in the country today may have Covid.” If there are 100-200 people attending Thursday’s board meeting in-person, there could be 10-20 people there infected with Covid. Now that Omicron is the predominant variant in most parts of the country, in-person, indoor gatherings are particularly dangerous since Omicron is able to partly evade vaccines, is extremely contagious, and can be spread before or without being symptomatic.

A large in-person, indoor gathering is especially dangerous at WMU, given that there is no free, readily available testing for non-symptomatic vaccinated students, staff, and faculty; vaccinations and boosters are not required on campus; many individuals have not yet received boosters; unvaccinated individuals are only required to test once a week; to what extent and in which buildings the ventilation has been upgraded to prevent transmission is very unclear; and many people at the meeting will probably be wearing less effective cloth and surgical masks that are not tightly fitting.

Based on what I witnessed when I attended the December board meeting to support those speakers opposing the President’s proposed raise and bonus, there was almost no social distancing, and most, if not all, of the speakers took their (usually cloth) masks off when they addressed the meeting. I was distressed to see speakers do this in December when Michigan was experiencing a massive surge in Delta cases and the highest rates of Covid hospitalizations in the last year. Because virus particles spread further when individuals are speaking, this is precisely when masks are needed. Moreover, faculty and students attending in-person classes, as well as staff working on campus, certainly do not take off their masks when they speak in class or in campus buildings.

I very much hope that the board will switch Thursday’s board meeting to be entirely virtual. Particularly because I live with someone who works in a hospital and someone with a compromised immune system, I am extremely concerned about Michigan’s overburdened hospitals (and health care workers) and the dangers of this unprecedented surge in cases, which is resulting in far too many hospitalizations, deaths, and long-term disabilities arising from long Covid.

In addition, I hope of course that the board will seriously consider the grave concerns WMU faculty have with President Montgomery’s leadership, as well as the concerns expressed by Teaching Assistants Union President Thomas Fisher and Professional Instructors Organization President Jasmine LaBine during the December board meeting. Faculty, who typically devote decades of their careers and lives to WMU, are deeply invested in the future of our university and the wellbeing of our students and the staff who make the university run on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Jacinda Swanson
Associate Professor
Dept. of Political Science

OtherWise Philosophy

WMU Faculty Have Spoken: No Confidence in President Montgomery

A message from WMU-AAUP President, Dr. Cathryn Bailey

Last Friday, at a special all-member Chapter meeting mandated by the Association Council (WMU-AAUP department representatives), faculty voted to hold an official No-Confidence Vote in President Edward Montgomery. Since then, members have had the opportunity to vote electronically on the resolution and the results have now been certified: In decisive numbers – 78% of respondents in support — faculty from across Western Michigan University have expressed No Confidence in the leadership of President Edward Montgomery. These results are all the more striking given the short response time for the poll – just one week – and the fact that an impressive majority of the faculty (439) chose to participate.

To be clear, WMU professors have taken this historically rare step only after much research, robust discussion, and somber reflection. In fact, it is largely because of this president’s jarring lack of responsiveness to urgent constituent concerns and his consistently weak presence in our campus community that faculty have felt the need to take such action. In short, the Western Michigan University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors issues this Resolution of No-Confidence in President Edward Montgomery because we believe this president has thus far shown himself unwilling to address the challenges WMU faces.

The process that has led us here has been patient and painstaking. Specifically, at WMU-AAUP meetings held over the past several months (of both the full Chapter and the Association Council), a volunteer faculty working group that has included members from all but one of WMU’s academic colleges has presented documented concerns relevant to the university’s ongoing viability, for example:

– continuing dramatic drops in enrollment even as some similar Michigan institutions have begun to boast impressive enrollment increases

-a significant decline in WMU’s national rankings that coincides with the current president’s time in office, a decline much worse than that of similar Michigan institutions

-a precipitous decline in faculty and staff morale at least partly attributable to unjustifiable and irresponsible staffing shortages and unreasonable faculty workloads

-an expensive top-down rebranding initiative that has brought negative national attention to WMU, further eroding Western’s reputation and endangering the value of students’ degrees

– failure to properly prioritize and resource WMU’s academic mission and infrastructure

All the while, President Montgomery has remained largely unresponsive to such urgent concerns, and has, instead, engaged in vigorous public defenses of his job performance. Stunningly, even in the wake of dramatically low approval ratings on a recent evaluation conducted by the Faculty Senate (see image below), the president has continued to suggest that faculty are misguided in their feedback on his performance.

It is important to convey that faculty have undertaken consideration of a Resolution of No-Confidence in President Edward Montgomery with extraordinary seriousness, care, and conscientiousness. Nonetheless, at their meeting just yesterday, WMU’s Board of Trustees seemed to dismiss the faculty initiative, stating that the Board was “well aware” of the No-Confidence Vote, and insisting that, regardless, they “stand behind our president.” Despite the rising tide of evidence-based criticisms from across campus, the Board also authorized a $75,000 “merit bonus” and a $7,290 raise to his annual base salary retroactive to July 1. Make no mistake, though, this sort of trivialization and dismissal of faculty, student, and staff voices only strengthens our resolve to speak publicly about this president’s failed leadership.

At the many meetings and discussions leading to this grave moment in WMU history, faculty have been utterly clear both about our love for our students, our university, and our community, and about our frustration and grief about the path WMU is on. If Western continues on this downward spiral, what will our beloved university look like in three, five, or ten years? WMU faculty know that, with dedicated, self-reflective, academically-focused leaders, WMU might once again become a point of pride for Kalamazoo and Western Michigan, renewing the trust students and their families have placed in this institution. This Resolution of No-Confidence is a call for an urgent course correction, one informed by the intelligence, heart, and experience of the students, faculty, and staff for whom this great university is so much more than a job or a line on their resume.