Morale has been low on our campus for many years. We have gone with no or few raises for over a decade. Departments are shrinking, programs and entire colleges are being closed. At the same time we are facing a crisis of institutional governance and an acceleration in the erosion of faculty rights.
Some of the most egregious administrative actions are being carried out in secret. Under cover of Covid conditions, several key changes have been made secretly and unilaterally in the Collected Rules and Regulations (CRRs) that substantially reduce longstanding protections for faculty and cut faculty of all ranks and in all sectors. These changes are made to look like discrete developments in unconnected areas.
Other shifts have been more public. Taken together, these shifts comprise a major degradation of the principles of shared governance that have regulated faculty relations with the MU administration since the 1970s, if not earlier. Trust and good faith are being shattered.
The most egregious and consequential of these changes and actions are the following:
- Secretly changing the UM CRRs.
- Substantial changes to the promotion and tenure processes.
- Changes to the workload policy.
- A salary reduction policy for tenure faculty.
- Disregard for public health, particularly around the lapse of the mask mandate.
- The “restructuring” of the campus social justice centers.
- Threats of punishment or retaliation for dissent.
- Violation of established processes of tenure and promotion.
- Closing the College of Human and Environmental Sciences.
- Denying Black Faculty & Staff Organization’s request to remove the Jefferson statue.