<< Front page Commentary March 12, 2004

Clarification on faculty raise

To the Editors:

The Review’s story on the Board of Trustees’ refusal to meet with the faculty (“Faculty petition OC for higher raises,” March 5) utterly misconstrued its subject matter. It did so, moreover, in a one-sided way.

The General Faculty did not in any way, shape or form “petition...for higher raises.” It simply requested, in the words of my motion, a meeting “to discuss the budgetary crisis.” The faculty understands all too well that there are extraordinary budgetary pressures that mitigate against any raises this year above cost-of-living, and we have never asked for more than that. (Indeed, over a hundred faculty last year petitioned to have the College keep our proposed raises and use the funds to retain employees it was planning to fire.)

What we did want was a much clearer idea of how the Board plans to deal with the crisis this year and into the future. We also sought the confidence that the Board understood both the huge costs being borne by the faculty and their effect on the College’s ability to attract and retain the best teachers and scholars.

We needed all this for two reasons. First, we have been told conflicting stories. At the February College faculty meeting, we were told clearly that the Board viewed projected health care premium increases of around $3 million over the next three years as unsustainable for the College budget. The faculty’s Benefits Committee was told the same thing. Yet at the February general faculty meeting, we were told that there is no “cap” on the College’s health care budget. These statements appear to conflict; if they do not, they need serious clarification. Second, at the February College faculty meeting, a junior colleague had the temerity to share with one and all the fact that he did not see how he could make ends meet for his family in the face of stagnant real income and the rapidly rising health care costs being passed on to the faculty. He said with sadness that he might have to look for work elsewhere. Later he wondered how his message could get through to the Trustees, who he felt needed to hear it. It was his complaint that inspired my idea to invite the Board to meet with the faculty so they could hear such a shocking statement directly, in all its poignancy, rather than through intermediaries.

The Board did not respond directly to the faculty’s invitation to meet. Board Vice-Chair Robert Lemle wrote to President Dye, offering its view of the budgetary situation (which contained nothing we did not already know) and averring that existing channels for communication — through faculty representatives on Board committees — sufficed.

Subsequently, President Dye told the Review that the Board viewed such a meeting as inappropriate governance. These are quite different arguments — another example of the mixed messages the faculty have been getting.

There are, moreover, problems with each of these messages. First, when one party to a relationship asks to meet with the other for a discussion, there is, by definition, a need for communication in the relationship. When the other party refuses to meet, saying that they are already communicating fine, that position is simply incoherent, not to mention obstructionist.

Second, there is no governance issue here whatsoever. The faculty were proposing no policy and making no demands. Nor were we challenging the institutional structures within which decisions are made. We simply wanted to understand the thinking of those making the decisions and to have them understand ours. By construing the request as a challenge to governance, the Board engaged in some very questionable politics. Speaking as a professional political scientist as well as a concerned and critical citizen of Oberlin College, I argued at the general faculty meeting that scholarship in my field demonstrates clearly that crises are best managed through clear, open and direct communication. I might add that this same tendency to treat political problems formalistically and legalistically is precisely what soured relations between the College and the City Council recently.

I was also surprised to read in the Review that “some faculty” were critical of the general faculty motion. It passed unanimously at a well-attended meeting. My colleagues are, happily, not in the habit of speaking anonymously to the Review. One can only wonder how many of my colleagues held such a view and whether they are present or previous members of the administration. In any event, the Review should not have left the impression that the faculty was seriously divided on this issue.

Finally, faculty may be forgiven for wondering why the Board is quite happy to meet with students — as you reported in the same issue — but not with us. If it has something to do with us being employees, what precisely is the difference between us and students, who are fee-payers?

Where do we stand now? It is a real pity that the Board did not seize the opportunity to assuage faculty concerns and open simple dialogue. By failing to do so, it has plunged faculty morale, which was already considerably lower than even last year, to new depths. It has also opened a political chasm of mistrust and incomprehension between itself and the faculty. For a Board that has worked so hard and effectively to lift up the faculty and the College over recent years, that is a pity — all the more so since the current impasse was so very needless.

Marc Blecher
Professor
Politics and East Asian Studies


 
 
   

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