Miami-Dade is placed on the AAUP sanctions list

Delegates to the annual meeting of the American Association of University Professors voted on June 9 to add Miami-Dade Community College to its list of sanctioned institutions. The AAUP sanctions list, which currently has only four institutions on it, serves to inform the AAUP membership, the profession at large and the public that "unsatisfactory conditions of academic government exist at the institutions in question," the association's press release explains. The AAUP's sanctions list is different from its censure list, which identifies institutions that have violated an individual's academic freedom. Determining governance infringements is a more difficult process, says Iris Molotsky, AAUP director of public information. It requires investigators to examine patterns of practice within a broader institutional structure. While the AAUP censure list might be better known to faculty, the sanctions list is growing, she notes. "There's no question that governance violations are increasing as a result of the corporatization of the university."

Faculty at MDCC asked the AAUP to investigate after the college administration took numerous actions against the faculty in the wake of its 1998 vote to be represented by the United Faculty of MDCC/AFT for collective bargaining. Within days of the election, the MDCC president locked the doors of the faculty senate offices, confiscated computer disks and abolished the former system of academic governance at the college and replaced it with his own.

In the judgment of the AAUP's Committee T, which deals with governance questions, the college "has moved from an institution with a mature, well-developed system of participatory governance to one that is heavily dominated by the administration," the committee report states. "Miami-Dade Community College has been in a state of crisis in administration-faculty relations as a result of actions taken by the current administration that are inimical to association-supported standards of shared academic governance as set forth in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities."

Pam Singer, vice president of the United Faculty, says that faculty are disturbed that their college has been sanctioned, but feel vindicated. "Another group outside ourselves looked at this situation and said, 'you're right.' There has been a total break in collegiality."

Miami-Dade's administration has not commented on the sanction, says Mark Richard, president of the United Faculty. "They are acting as if it does not exist. This is but an example of violation of academic freedom. [The administrators] are vandals of higher ed's most precious commodity--intellectual freedom. Our local is not dissuaded. We are fighting on."

The report of the team investigating MDCC can be read at www.aaup.org/ MJ00MDCC.htm. It also is reprinted in the May/June 2000 issue of Academe.

Illinois court says grad students are employees

The Graduate Employees Organization/AFT won a significant victory against the University of Illinois this summer, when the Illinois Court of Appeals reversed a labor board ruling that had defined the workers only as students. The earlier ruling, handed down by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board in 1998, had found that teaching and research assistants at the University of Illinois were students--and not employees of the university--because they received financial aid. The aid came in the form of their assistantships, the board had said. Under the state's labor law, students are expressly denied the right to organize for collective bargaining.

A panel of the Illinois Appellate Court delved more deeply into the definition of student, however, and by a unanimous vote found that the board had erroneously applied the statute too broadly. Although some teaching assistants teach in the area of their study, many do not. Such is the case with research assistants as well, the court found. It ruled that the labor board needed to set a more significant "connection" test to determine whether the students' paid labor was directly connected to either their degree requirement or their dissertation study. The court sent the case back to the IELRB for another ruling "not inconsistent with this opinion," said the panel.

The GEO is preparing for the university to appeal, say its leaders. There are 9,000 graduate students at the University of Illinois. The GEO represents a unit of approximately 5,300 graduate, teaching and research assistants that has filed for a collective bargaining election and has been trying to secure recognition for the past three years.

"It is a great victory to have the courts say we are employees," exclaims Kate Bullard, who is a co-president of GEO. "Yet we've always known that. The university will use any delaying tactic it can, so we plan to keep the pressure on," she adds.

The union is planning job actions for the fall if the university appeals the decision. "The labor board is set up to keep peace," Bullard points out. If through job actions and strikes, "the peace is not being kept, the board may move more quickly."