BY SUE RAMLO
On July 15th, 2020, our worlds turned upside down. Fear filled discussions about a faculty cut list had been circulating for more than a few months. It seemed as if every faculty member assumed that they were on that list of faculty to be laid off. Faculty were brooding, panicking, and anxious, as if living in the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic was not stressful enough already. Our understanding was that a set of faculty would be fired regardless of rank or tenure. The University of Akron (UA) had declared force majeure (FM) mid-May stating that the current financial crisis at the university was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite at least a decade of questionable fiduciary practices by the Board of Trustees including the generation of a large amount of debt from a building boom.
Our current contract (which expires on December 31st, 2020) stipulates a process for financial exigency and negotiations which were activated once the university declared FM. A disagreement about the language of the contract regarding the process as a result of UA declaring FM led to the filing of a grievance by the Akron AAUP. The lack of proof for FM, to be provided to the union per our contract, was also part of this grievance. However, the UA administration moved forward, using their interpretation of the process to be used with FM. Their stated belief was that FM allowed the administration to select faculty for termination without due process. During negotiations, the Hit List was top secret. Akron AAUP’s negotiating team (NT) members had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to view the list. The union NT was not allowed to share this list with anyone, including their Executive Committee, until seventy-two hours after the list was approved by the UA Board of Trustees (BOT).
The university administration calls the faculty cut list the RIF (Reduction In Force) list. It is important to distinguish RIF from layoff. A layoff is a temporary, involuntary separation of employment. RIF represents the termination of employment that is permanent. We will call this RIF list the Hit List throughout this piece because, quite frankly, there seems to be a collective feeling among the faculty that Hit List faculty were targeted for various reasons including being outspoken.
Although some faculty chose retirement before the Hit List was voted on by the UA BOT on July 15th, the final list contains 96 bargaining unit faculty members (BUF). The ranks of those on the Hit List include Distinguished Full Professors as well as Professors of Practice (the highest rank of non-tenure track faculty, NTT) in the midst of five-year contracts with UA. The UA administration has not shared what criteria was used to select us for termination, despite numerous requests by the union’s NT. When one examines the demographics of the Hit List, it is easy to begin to question what exactly the criteria could have been.
But who are those faculty on this Hit List? Are they really the dead wood of the university as some contend? Well, a quick review of publications and CVs (available on the university’s website at https://works.bepress.com/experts/university-of-akron/), demonstrates that the faculty on this Hit List are important members of the university. These faculty have published, received teaching awards, are fellows of professional societies, have been journal editors, have been postdocs at well-known institutions, advise graduate students, run grant funded research, received distinguished awards and have served as presidents of international societies. In some cases, an entire academic program had every full-time faculty member removed via the Hit List. Some departments have homogeneous faculty as a result of the Hit List.
This graph provides a visual representation of the Hit List based on faculty rank / title. The majority (70 percent) are tenured faculty members. Note that 62 percent of BUF are tenured at UA. Those on the Hit List who are non-tenure track (NTT) are at their highest rank which is accompanied by five-year contracts and rules for contract renewal in the chapter’s current contract.
The majority of those on the Hit List are women (51 percent) even though, according to data provided to Akron AAUP, only 41 percent of BUF are women.
At this point, while we continue to collect data about those on the Hit List, it seems clear that many of those on the Hit List have previously filed grievances, been outspoken, challenged UA leadership in various capacities. Additionally, it is important to stress that the Hit List results in broken contracts of NTT faculty as well as rejection of the basic tenets of tenure. We have been given no way to fight this situation other than arbitration, which requires that the current best offer from the university not be ratified by the BUF. In the meantime, the administration has created videos and sent emails to BUF and students pushing for ratification of the contract.
The world is watching what is happening in Akron, Ohio, USA.
Thus, at UA, as we consider ratification of a “last best offer” from our university administration, which includes the Hit List, it is imperative for all to understand the implications of what is at stake in Akron, OH: academic freedom, freedom of speech, gender equity, and justice.
Guest blogger Sue Ramlo is professor of general technology in the department of engineering and science technology at the University of Akron.
I will be willing to challenge the notion of “dead wood” to describe those in the Hit List in any open court or arbitration and I will be ready to make my record public, if it is going to help show the lack of process, choosing people who filed for grievances earlier, being a woman of color from a different country of origin. Please let me know.
In our department, they fired 4 full time faculty: 3 women and 1 man. Going by the list on the website, women were only about 30% of the full-time faculty, yet they are 75% of those who were fired. On top of that, the 3 women who they fired were the 3 oldest full time women in the department. Now the women comprise only about 22% of the full time faculty. The statistics are much more dire when looking at the tenure track faculty. They fired 2 of the 3 tenure track women and 1 of the 13 tenure track men. Women have dropped from comprising about 18.8% of the tenure track faculty to a mere 6.6% of the faculty. The did not fire any of the white males. They have not provided us with the list of criteria for deciding who would be fired, even though they have been asked repeatedly to provide it.
I wanted to make a correction, the 6.6% should have been 7.7%.
Why is this being turned into a gender issue? The simple explanation is that women are more likely to be in the “hit list” groups than men. Let’s remain unted and fight for the rights of all faculty rather than turning everything into a men vs. women issue.
In the senate meeting last Thursday, the provost said the criteria were different for different departments. Since they will not share that criteria with us, I thought that sharing information about who they fired from the Math Department might indicate the criteria that was used in the Math Department.
They need to be sued on every conceivable theory. This is outrageous.
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A few thoughts in response to the point that Jim raised:
— There could still be gender-based discrimination on top of or instead of women being more likely to be in the “hit list” groups. It seems like many of us are struggling to make sense of the limited information at hand, so I wouldn’t rule out discrimination based on gender given how much is unknown.
— There is the possibility of disparate impact discrimination, which is action or actions that adversely affect one group more than others even if there was no intentional or explicit discrimination behind the decision-making that led to those actions. Given this, I believe it’s important to look at the impact and highlight what has happened to women specifically.
— I agree that all of us concerned about these issues should remain united, but to do that, I think we need to acknowledge that different groups are being affected differently. Without doing that analysis, we don’t have the full picture.
I’m a woman and have a disability. Having the highest teaching evals and always full classes doesn’t overcome my disability. I know 100% my disability put me on the list. No doubt. People with very low teaching evals who have no real world experience are still teaching.
The most disturbing part of this is the fact that there is no clear criteria as to why people were selected to be released. Imagine being let go – not because you are new or in an area of low enrollment- but just because. This cannot be allowed and is completely unacceptable.
Now imagine continuing to work at a place that did this once to your colleagues. Do you really think it stops there?
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looks like 10 of the 96 are retired too. the list is actually shorter.