IT’S BACK WITH A VENGEANCE: ELIMINATION OF TENURE AT LSUD. Larry Crumbley, President |
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| Regrettably, an administrator-dominated committee of the Faculty Senate is being used as a tool by the administration to eliminate tenure at LSU via post-tenure review and a revision of PS-36. An early draft of the revised PS-36, dated March 10, was distributed at the Faculty Senate on March 12, 2003. Under this new plan, tenure will be reduced to four to five years, as a department head can give you two “unsatisfactory” evaluations, which will trigger an automatic two-year “remedial” period, after which you will be subjected to PM-104 (dismissal for cause), unless you have completely satisfied any and all demands by your department head. Hence, the revised PS-36 follows the new PM-35, which was imposed on LSU without faculty input or consent in May 2000, to the letter and basically eliminates tenure in principle and in spirit. A major assumption of this PS-36 committee, which is chaired by a former department head, is that the new PM-35 is legal. However, PM-35 has yet to be tested in court. The faculty that was hired before May 2000 came to LSU under a contract of tenure defined as “indefinite.” Tenure is a property right. The administration, hence, can eliminate tenure only for new faculty hired after May 2000 by writing up new contracts, but not for the faculty hired before May 2000 under the old contract. This means, that the administration cannot take away our tenure (i.e., property right) without paying damages. If the administration does not pay us for taking away our property, faculty members can go to court and sue for damages. However, if the administration can induce the Faculty Senate to vote for the revised PS-36 at its meeting in May, the faculty will have lost most of their legal rights to sue for damages in case of loss of tenure. Why would the Faculty Senate agree essentially to terminate faculty members’ property rights?
One of the major problems with PM-35 and the new PS-36 is that it is not needed to permit the dismissal of faculty members that are considered “dead wood.” This result is already possible under PS-104, which regulates dismissal for cause. Under PS-104, however, there are built-in safeguards against unfair loss of tenure. PS-104 requires the university to prove that a faculty member is unfit to hold tenure. Hence, a faculty member is considered competent, unless proven incompetent (in analogy to the legal fact that an accused person is considered innocent unless proven guilty). PM-35 and the new PS-36 turn this situation around and require faculty members to prove every year that they are fit to hold tenure through their annual reports and reviews. In other words, faculty members will be considered incompetent, unless they prove, year after year, that they are competent. Therefore, PM-35 is in clear violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Tenure is a means to ensure specifically the freedom of teaching and research and, just as importantly, a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to young people of ability, given that the salary incentives of the private sector are much greater.
Finally, with five of the nine members of the committee being administrators, one could guess that tenured administrators are a protected group in the new PS-36, because they will be reviewed under PS-35. Their status as tenured faculty will never be reviewed as long as they hold administrative posts. Conflict of interest? Why are there two classes of tenured faculty – faculty members who are active in teaching and research need to prove their competence year after year, while faculty members who are not teaching and doing research (i.e., administrators), will maintain their tenure indefinitely? Why does the new PS-36 not stipulate that all administrators who also hold tenured faculty positions (e.g., chairs, deans, directors, the Provost, the Chancellor) be reviewed annually, just like any other tenured faculty member? A two-tiered system with two classes of tenured faculty is unacceptable! What is good for the goose should be good for the gander! If administrators do not want to submit to annual reviews by the faculty of the departments in which they hold faculty status, they should give up their appointments as tenured faculty members! Voice Your OpinionDo not allow tenure to disappear on the Baton Rouge campus of LSU. We already have a strong document regulating dismissal for cause (PS-104). The Senate has already defeated post-tenure review. Let the administration use PS-104 to terminate incompetent faculty members without endangering tenure for those of us who are doing our jobs. What is needed is a document and process to eliminate incompetent tenured administrators. This should be the goal of our Faculty Senate - - not eliminating tenure for faculty as is envisaged in the new PS-36. Important Question:If PS-36 is so benign, why do tenured administrators not wish to be covered by the same procedure? |
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