[Inside Higher Ed, July 20, 2020]
By Marjorie Valbrun
Is a budget plan adopted under financial duress and threat of layoffs truly collaborative if only one side sets the terms of engagement? At Radford University, it depends on one’s perspective.
A budget plan by Radford University that could cut the positions of longtime faculty and staff is being widely criticized for violating standard practices during a fiscal crisis and using the crisis as justification for ending long-held worker protections such as tenure.
Some faculty members at the public institution in Virginia, as well as state and national faculty associations, have denounced the plan adopted by Radford’s Board of Visitors authorizing the university president to undertake “reduction strategies that respond to the fiscal impact created by the response to the COVID-19 outbreak.”
Radford’s Board of Visitors passed a resolution on June 12 declaring established guidelines outlined in the Teaching and Research Faculty Handbook inapplicable. The decision effectively removed faculty members’ ability to file appeals and grievances. It also ended protections for tenured professors by allowing a reduction of the workforce “under fiscal exigency” and “due to program restructuring or discontinuance.”
The resolution took effect immediately and remains in effect until June 2022.
“There is an urgent need for the board to take quick and decisive action, and that need cannot be met while adhering to the fiscal exigency section of the Teaching and Research Faculty Handbook,” the resolution states. “The board wishes to maintain the current handbook process but cannot comply with that process and simultaneously ensure the long term financial health of the university during the current statewide fiscal crisis.”
The response from Radford’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors was swift.
The organization’s leaders wrote an open letter to the board, President Brian O. Hemphill and the faculty, “to express our grave concern that the utter disregard by the Board of Visitors and President Hemphill of the deep traditions of academies of higher learning regarding shared governance, faculty rights, and the sanctity of a Faculty Handbook.” Continue reading
