Faculty at the University of Arizona, fearful of losing their jobs during an ongoing financial crisis, vented at a meeting Thursday and heard from a state lawmaker who said one threat to faculty governance powers may be over for now.
More than 600 people attended the all-faculty meeting online, where faculty leaders introduced referendums that include demanding delays to employee layoffs and reducing central and senior administrative positions.
General faculty will have a week to vote on the proposals.
Leila Hudson, the UA Faculty Senate chair and associate professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, introduced the meeting, calling on faculty colleagues “to leverage our relations to power to reclaim and re-envision a university for all of us.”
With the meeting, Hudson said, they also hope to send a message.
“We’re also here to let our administration, the board of regents and our governor know that we’re bearing witness to the mismanagement,” Hudson said. “That we will not go down without speaking back as a collective to protect the jobs and programs that serve our students and our communities.”
Faculty leaders demanded the resignation of John Arnold, who is on a leave of absence from his job as executive director of the Arizona Board of Regents while working as the UA’s interim chief financial officer. They even suggested withholding grades until Arnold is out.
The school is reckoning with a financial crisis first discovered last November which revealed the school had a problem with overspending and had been pulling from its reserves to compensate.
Since then, UA officials and the Arizona Board of Regents have made it increasingly clear that to rectify the school’s financial situation, layoffs will be necessary.
“Disrespected, shoved aside and not listened to”
UA leaders and the board of regents made controversial spending decisions, like the acquisition of the University of Arizona Global Campus, against faculty and staff input.
Faculty, staff and students have been demanding a say in the school’s fate under the principle of shared governance — the collaboration in decision making between faculty, staff and students with highest level university leaders — especially since their jobs are now on the line.
State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, a Democrat representing District 18 in Tucson, attended the meeting, speaking in solidarity with faculty and in defense of their role in shared governance.
“I know that you all have been just disrespected, shoved aside and not listened to,” she said.
Gutierrez has been one of the few legislators who have spoken out against a bill, House Bill 2735, that strips language in the current statutes to weaken the governing power of faculty representatives at Arizona’s public universities. At the meeting, she revealed the bill is likely dead.
“The governor adamantly spoke out against this and it has been stalled in the Senate since March,” she said at the meeting. “Nothing’s done dead until sine die. But I want to tell you that that is good news.”
Gutierrez said the governor and all state university presidents, except UA President Robert Robbins, were against the bill and that its passing is improbable.
Mark Stegeman, who is a member of the faculty senate and the UA presidential search advisory committee and an associate professor of economics, spoke about shared governance. He said, despite the bill’s likely defeat, the role of shared governance in Arizona universities is not necessarily secure.
“I think shared governance is under, maybe not imminent threat this month, but is under some sort of chronic threat, at least in the near term,” he said.
Stegeman said Arizona actually has weaker shared governance policies than other states and he takes issue with the premise of HB 2735.
“One of the arguments of the legislature was that this isn’t how university governance is supposed to work, it’s supposed to work like a corporation, and be top down,” he said. “In fact, from states all over the country — red and blue states — that is not how it works. Faculty does have a significant role in governance.”
He added that the bill’s proponents misframed the role of the faculty senate in running the university.
“The senate is not in the decision chain on any of those problem areas and certainly not in the decision chain on the budget,” he said. “So this bill is addressing a problem in search of a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Attendees asked faculty senate members why the faculty senate is the focus of shared governance discourse if participation is low.
Hudson responded, saying they strive to encourage participation and that, although democracy is a “messy system subject to the apathy of the masses,” it’s better than other systems.
“It’s not the shark, it’s the water.”
The virtual meeting was fraught with indignation as attendees flooded the chat with concerns about impending layoffs and the school’s future.
S Mae Smith, a faculty senate member and associate professor emerita in the College of Education, said she thinks the school has solutions but higher ups aren’t listening.
“I don’t think our problem is finding solutions that work. I think our problem is the powers that be that won’t let us do that,” she said. “So I think our issue here is how do we confront those people who are unwilling to listen to reason and who are unwilling to even consider workable solutions?”
Marv Waterstone, professor emeritus in the school of Geography, Development and Environment, said he’s been an employee through eight presidencies and he has noticed changes including an increase in low-paid employment and unnecessary outsourcing.
“They don’t tell us how they’re doing it or where the money is going or how they decide what about who gets money and how they judge who succeeds with that money,” he said.
He said the school should reorient its priorities toward its core missions, not just money.
“It cannot function without those who teach, do the research, do the service, do the outcome, do the outreach,” Waterstone said.
In response to Waterstone’s presentation, professor and interim department head in the College of Science Christopher Castro, wrote “it’s not the shark, it’s the water.”
That phrase, often used when talking about racism, is used to draw attention to the systemic issues surrounding a problem.
Gary Rhoades, a UA professor of higher education and leader of a faculty committee helping with the university’s financial plans, said he’s involved in making personnel decisions for his department and the school is working at a pace detrimental to its employees.
“We’re being asked to make decisions within the next two or three weeks with insufficient information that affects, fundamentally, the lives of staff and career-track faculty and that’s just not right. It’s also irrational,” Rhoades said.
As Rhoades gave an overview on the financial situation, UA officials and the board of regents announced new departmental budgets and listening tours for the UA’s presidential search during the faculty meeting.
“You’ll notice. for those of you who are multitasking, John Arnold sent out the budget cuts almost at the start of this meeting,” Rhoades said with a chuckle. “I’m sure that’s just a coincidence in timing.”
The board of regents announced “listening tours before graduation to solicit feedback from a broad array of campus constituencies, organizations and groups on the characteristics and qualities of the next president of the University of Arizona” during the all faculty meeting, according to a press release Thursday.
Despite the narrative that colleges and divisions had too many staff, Rhoades said his department experienced the opposite.
“I don’t know if you all have been experiencing it, but in our college, we were told we had too many staff, when quite the opposite is actually the case to do the work that is before us,” Rhoades said.
“They are willing to sacrifice us”
Danny Clifford, a senior lecturer at the UA, advocated for contingent, or non-tenured faculty who hold contractual jobs with little stability, at the meeting.
“Over half of faculty at the university are contingent workers,” Clifford said at the meeting. “That is nearly 1,900 of our colleagues who do not have job security beyond short-term contracts, unlike our tenured colleagues.”
He said contracted faculty teach the majority of the university’s classes and bolster student retention while being underpaid and overworked. Despite this, he said, they feel disposable and undervalued by higher-level university officials.
During the meeting, Clifford asked for solidarity from tenured and tenure-track faculty, students, parents and the community at the meeting as non-tenured faculty face a heightened possibility of losing their jobs.
“They are willing to sacrifice us for their mismanagement and lack of leadership,” Clifford told Arizona Luminaria after the meeting.
He said the tone of fear that’s permeating his department has been set by UA administrators and leaders but today’s meeting and his colleagues’ response have given him hope.
“After today’s meeting there is a sense of forward momentum, there is a sense of unity and I hope that spreads throughout the whole campus,” he said.
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