POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

About a week ago, I posted Rudy Fichtenbaum’s speech rallying our chapter members at Wright State before we marched as a group across campus to an open forum being hosted by our university’s President, its chief Financial Officer, and the Chair of our board of Trustees. [See https://academeblog.org/2018/02/09/rudy-rallies-wright-state-faculty/.] What follows is a statement made by Noeleen Mcilvenna at that forum. Noeleen is our Contract Administration Officer and our chapter representative on the Board of the Ohio Conference. She has done an incredible job coordinating our extended contract campaign. From just the text of her statement, you will be able to tell just how effective she can be in getting people fired up.

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President Schrader, Chair Fecher, Mr. Branson, my Colleagues and our students,

I’m Prof. Noeleen McIlvenna, from the History Dept., better known round these parts as Dr. No. I teach Colonial American history, right up through the Revolution. One of the first measures the founding fathers passed, even before the Constitution, was the Land Ordinance that ruled there would free public schools in the new states of the Midwest, because public schools are the bedrock of the republic. Thomas Jefferson of course established one of the premier public universities in the country, the University of Virginia. I can tell you with some authority that were he here today, Jefferson would stand with us. The founding Generation actually respected intellectuals.

Faculty are here together today because of what you have had your attorney put on the negotiating table. Cuts to us that are a slap in the face to dedicated professionals. Cuts to our working conditions that constitute the learning conditions for the people who come to WSU. Job security for NTE faculty, increased workloads for everyone else, summer teaching taken from tenured professors and given to adjuncts—these mean fewer class offerings for students, more difficulty scheduling classes and bigger classes, so that they get less individualized teaching. I’m sure one of my colleagues in the College of Ed can speak to the best practices of teaching in case you don’t understand those.

So—We Fight—for the soul of WSU, for Public Higher Education. We fight for OUR students. And so that everyone in Raider Country, whether they go to college or not, can have the best-educated nurses and teachers and the best-educated scientists to keep their water clean, and MBAs to drive the local economy and the best-educated engineers to make our cars safer and the best-educated social workers and mental health and criminal justice professionals on the front lines of the opioid epidemic, and the best-educated journalists to keep our country free. All of these are trained by faculty. All are trained to analyze their data by our Math and Stats faculty; all are trained in ethics by the faculty in Religion, Philosophy and Classics. A University is not a business; it is a public good. But you have shown no understanding of or respect for that.

When you dismissed a prize-winning History professor like Chris Beck–voted Best History Teacher by our students 2 of the last 3 years–while you offered the equivalent of his salary in a country club membership and housing allowance perks to an unproven President already being paid $half a million, your choices demonstrated your priority. Not to get the best teachers for the students. Not to make our students the best trained people for our community.

What you have put on the table says that the people or positions who have fundamentally damaged this University with their negligence, incompetence and corruption are now demanding the power to damage it more royally.

Your proposals show there has been no learning, no remorse, no change, whatever your words today. You took absurd risks with the reserves of this University. And now you will take a completely unnecessary risk of provoking a strike from the people who fulfill the central mission of  the University and who generate all the revenue of the University–because none of your business enterprises have done anything but bring a loss. You risk this why? To try to give more power to those who have proven incompetent. You will do extraordinary damage, beyond what you have already done. So we must finally make a stand. You have one week to fix the latest colossal misjudgment. We faculty stand together. And if such proposals are not off the table on January 31, we will prepare to walk together. For our students. For our community. For our profession. For higher education. For Wright State University.

Folks, I want to introduce you to the Treasurer of AAUP-WSU, who has increased our reserves by 15% each year since he started. AAUP is in MUCH better financial shape than WSU. A mere biology professor has proven a more sensible manager of money than the professionals of the Administration.