It's an interesting bargaining strategy. First, Int. Provost Feser explained that we can gain shared governance through shared governance procedures to which we have no access. We are told that contractual negotiations are a flawed effort to bypass procedures to which we have no access. We should trust in existing policy documents and an administration that wants to work with us.
I blogged about that earlier today, in a post which I can't link because I'm writing on a phone with my thumbs, from a different administration building than the one I'm currently occupying.
Since then, Interim Provost Feser has left the negotiations, annoyed, it seems, by the flurry of phone calls coming into his office. He also got some nasty emails.
As one union negotiator characterized the scene and its aftermath, "Things are getting nasty here at the Fire Services Institute. I'm not used to getting yelled at by anyone above the age of 15." Asked to elaborate, the union member explained, "Fuming/hissing/ storming out: Interim Provost, Yelling: Associate Vice Chancellor Katherine Galvin (at [other union negotiators])."
So that's how that went. The admin team submitted an academic freedom proposal to the effect that we can have academic freedom, but we can't grieve violations of it.
And then this update from the negotiating team:
"11:33 Got admonished by Catherine Galvin [who took part in the GEO contract negotiations of 2009]. She asked if we wanted to make real progress today, and if we wanted to, we should ask people to stop asking for Ed Feser. Told Kay that she had the power to make them stop. She wants to see us send out a twitter message, and call on people to stop asking to meet with Ed Feser. Said that they would stop bargaining unless we did so."
UIUC: where freedom of all kinds comes to die?
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