AAUP-WC Platform
Written and endorsed in 2020
The Washington College Chapter of the AAUP has developed a platform to guide our advocacy work during the 2020-2021 Academic Year and beyond. Our platform serves as a direct response to the historical and systemic issues that have damaged the College’s financial stability and undermined working conditions for our faculty. Our most pressing advocacy items relate to 1) the state of shared governance at Washington College, and 2) our working conditions, terms of employment, compensation, and capacity to fulfill the mission of our College. While there is clear overlap between these areas, we present our platform in two parts. As new times, new successes, and new challenges emerge, we will revisit our platform and adjust it as needed.
The AAUP-WC platform has been developed based on broad input from our faculty, and co-crafted with members of the Union Working Group, members of the AAUP-WC Co-Governance Advocacy Committee, members of the AAUP-WC Executive Committee, and informed by AAUP guidelines and best practices. We believe that this platform, which represents the interests of our entire faculty body, will be best implemented if we all work together in solidarity to achieve our shared goals. Our strategies for pursuing the demands will involve working both inside and outside of the existing faculty committee structure, and will evolve in accordance with responses from administration and the Board of Visitors of Governors. Furthermore, the second part of our platform will be best achieved through collective bargaining and the legal support and protection it provides. However, given the immediacy of looming cuts to faculty jobs, AAUP-WC will begin advocating for those demands now as the faculty continue to consider unionization. And we will advance those demands whether or not we become a collective bargaining unit.
We believe that the interests of our faculty and the interests of our institution converge around a deep regard for our students, the promise of a liberal arts education, and the mission and vision of Washington College. It is in this spirit -- of preserving, improving, and fulfilling the possibilities of our College -- that we offer and advocate for the demands outlined below.
PART I. Shared Governance: Tradition & Aspiration
Shared Governance Aspirations at WC. Talk of “co-governance” has been a feature of the everyday language of faculty at Washington College for many years. Yet the rights and responsibilities that it entails have not always been clear. In 2010–11, the faculty of Washington College approved a new, robust system of co-governance. Reforms to the previous structure—in which the President ran faculty meetings, the Provost and Dean chaired most standing committees, and committees themselves were largely advisory to the Administration—strengthened the voice of the faculty. The reforms created the position of Faculty Moderator to run faculty meetings, made committee chairs elected positions, and established a Faculty Council as the principal organ of faculty governance and interface between faculty and Administration. In 2016, faculty also gained a seat at the meetings of the President’s Senior Staff.
These changes to the governance of Washington College have helped the College take essential steps toward the ideals of shared governance first enunciated in the Association of American University Professors’ “Statement on the Government of Universities and Colleges” (1966) and later in the Association of Governing Boards’ “White Paper on Shared Governance” (2017).
Despite such progress, however, true shared governance remains an aspiration for Washington College. Yes, more channels for the Board and Administration to hear faculty concerns have opened. But the current budget crisis and stresses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have made clear that, although we have channels through which to express our views, faculty are not full partners in the management of Washington College.
Principles of Shared Governance. “Shared” governance means that the various constituents of the institution—faculty, staff, students, Board, and Administration—contribute to decision-making. Shared governance should not be seen as competition for power but instead as a mechanism by which decisions are made and implemented. While not every constituent has an equal stake in every decision, successful governance requires that they all have a means by which to participate in the process when it is clear that the decisions made will affect them directly.
Washington College’s system of standing committees provides those means, but the committees can only be effective if they afford relevant constituencies appropriate representation, if they meet regularly, if they are allowed to address the areas of their purview, and if their decisions and recommendations are taken seriously. We have seen the increasing proliferation of ad hoc groupings for decision making. This suggests that existing committees are being circumvented and, as a consequence, our mechanisms of shared governance are being undermined.
“Consultation” involves mutual exchange and respectful consideration of alternative views. It is not a mere informing of one party by another of a decision that has already been made.
Our Record of Shared Governance at WC. Our active participation in the full scope of College governance has been restricted not only amid the crises of 2019–20, but a review of strategic decision-making since 2011 makes clear a record by the Board and Administration of ignoring potential faculty contributions or disregarding the work they have already done.
In September 2012, for example, President Reiss unilaterally redirected the work of the Planning Committee and turned the institution’s strategic focus decidedly in the direction of environmental studies across the curriculum. Regardless of whether this was the right choice for the College, the Planning Committee’s extensive work was largely dismissed. Although there has been interest among incoming students in these fields, the expenses incurred by expanding programs and facilities following from that decision have yet to be offset by increases in enrollment.
In 2016, members of the Board of Visitors and Governors and Senior Staff met at Mount Vernon to chart a path forward for the College. Although the Strategic Plan approved in Spring 2013 technically remained in effect, the Board and Administration, under the relatively new leadership of Sheila Bair, agreed on a set of eight new principles (MV8) that shifted our focus away from those articulated in the Plan toward tuition affordability initiatives. As laudable as these steps were in their intention, they fell short of achieving the necessary increases in enrollment and contributed substantially to our current budgetary deficits. Moreover, no faculty were present at the Mount Vernon meeting when this new direction was charted, nor did they participate meaningfully in its devising.
Perhaps most important, Washington College has just hired its fifth president in nine years. Citing the need by the “best” candidates for confidentiality, the Board has consistently held faculty participation in presidential hires at arm’s length, relegating it to appointees instead of elected representatives and curtailing opportunities for faculty as a whole to meet with candidates and express their views.
We are reminded that the president “serves at the pleasure of the Board of Visitors and Governors.” Yet the relationship between the Board and the presidents in recent years has been so turbulent that faculty and staff have struggled to function normally beneath the chaos perpetuated from the top. As a result, we have also had to endure a revolving door in Senior Staff positions. Whereas faculty have often had some role in the hiring for these critical posts, they are rarely consulted in discussions of dismissals. In addition, faculty have not been included when efforts are made to retain these colleagues, decisions are made regarding how offices might be restructured, or what effects the changes might have on our work.
WC FACULTY DEMANDS
For the reasons enumerated here, and others, Washington College faculty demand that we, who dedicate our professional lives to this single institution and the students for whom it exists, be accorded treatment as genuine partners in its critical decision-making processes.
WC FACULTY ENDORSE THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS:
Washington College functions best when the Board of Visitors and Governors, Administration, Faculty, Staff, and students work together as partners to solve its many challenges.
The guidance provided by the AAUP in “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities” (1966) and subsequent publications provide an appropriate foundation for shared governance at Washington College.
Partnership in shared governance requires frequent communication and maximum transparency among all interested constituents of the institution.
Participation in shared governance constitutes work and must be recognized as such for purposes of tenure, promotion, and remuneration.
THEREFORE, WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY DEMAND:
The Board of Visitors and Governors and Administration must recognize the faculty-elected standing committees as the preferred channel for shared governance. Although the Board regularly informs Faculty Council of its decisions, we demand that the Board consult with all appropriate standing committees.
All major strategic decisions affecting the educational function of the College, including long-range planning, the distribution of physical resources, curriculum development, and hiring and firing of senior administrators, must be made with the consent of the appropriate, faculty-elected, standing committee.
Our faculty representative or designee must be invited to attend and participate fully in all board meetings, including committee meetings and retreats. In addition, the faculty representative will not be asked to sign any non-disclosure agreements.
The work, resolutions, and other decisions of standing committees shall not be reversed or disregarded without consent of the members of the standing committees that created them.
Faculty work, including teaching, research, or College governance, must be adequately supported by administrative assistance.
Initiatives from the Board or Administration, even if fully funded, must be vetted through relevant standing committees, as identified through consultation with the faculty council, to ensure that they align with the liberal arts mission and profile of the College and do not present unanticipated curricular or financial burdens once implemented. Initiatives brought forward by the Board or Administration must receive consent by all relevant faculty standing committees, as defined in the Faculty Handbook.
PART II. Preserving Our Mission: Equitable Employment & Financial Transparency
WE’VE LOST STABILITY IN FULFILLING OUR EDUCATIONAL MISSION.
Faculty Losses. In 2020 the College lost, via contract non-renewal or line non-replacement, approximately 14 faculty FTE. To eliminate its continuing deficits, the Board is demanding 20 more faculty FTE be cut from the College by January 2021 to save $1.7 million in compensation costs by FY 2022. These positions will be terminated without observing mutually agreed-upon procedures and will not be replaced. If enrollment continues to fall, this will likely be only the first round of firings. The Board claims Washington College has too many faculty, despite maintaining a similar faculty-student ratio as our peer and aspirant institutions. The Board’ justifies its call for cuts by referring to our “historic” 12:1 student to faculty ratio. There is no academic justification for a 12:1 ratio, nor has one been presented. The College’s competitors offer a 10.5:1 ratio; a 12:1 ratio not only makes us less competitive in an already tight market, it significantly erodes our ability to provide the breadth and depth of expertise required to deliver anything approaching a world-class collegiate education in the liberal arts.
The Administrative Revolving Door. In 2020 the Board of Visitors and Governors refused to rehire the President, and the Provost and Dean subsequently resigned. Washington College now has its 6th president in eleven years, including its second Interim President in the past six years. From 2010 to 2018 there have been nine Vice Presidents of Advancement* and six different directors of admissions.* For an institution that depends on admissions and charitable dollars to survive, this routine turnover has economically and reputationally damaged us. During a pandemic and a severe financial crisis, the Board of Visitors and Governors has left Washington College with an absolute vacuum in senior administration. We also stand to lose $2 million dollars in MICUA funding from a lack of permanent leadership. Additional impacts of our continued leadership instability include:
Monies expended for recruiters and consultants.
A learning curve for hired administrators that outlasts the appointee’s tenure at the College.
A growing disconnect between the College and its community of students, alumni, donors, members, as all constituencies adjust to leadership changes.
Narratives for the institution that are ever-changing in unproductive ways: we don’t have consistent messaging or branding, nor do we have a real story of ourselves.
Donor cultivation efforts--time, money, relationship building--that have a tendency to expire as soon as new leadership is moved in.
A revolving slate of new initiatives (including affordability and Center initiatives) started by senior leadership under the guise of data-driven decision-making whose impacts, due to rapid administrative turnover, are not tracked or shared, so there is no sense of these programs’ return on investment. Additionally, many programs disappear with the administrators, despite the significant faculty and economic resources dedicated to them.
*including interim office holders
WE’VE LOST A SENSE OF OUR FINANCES.
Fiscal Stewardship. The College is facing a severe budget crisis facilitated by the Board of Visitors and Governors’ speculative capital construction projects (particularly on the waterfront) and un- or underfunded affordability programs. In addition, enrollment dropped 14% between 2017 and 2019, following catastrophic turnover of admissions directors and resulting disarray in that office in the immediately preceding years. The consequences of this mismanagement have been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the Board refuses to utilize a portion of the endowment to stabilize the College, or to take on the data-driven suggestions for cuts and revenue generation proposed by the faculty members of the Budget Task Force. Endowments are funds that serve many purposes, including supplementing necessary income during existential threats, which we are currently facing. Yet rather than draw on the resource meant to alleviate severe financial trouble, the Board is instead choosing to destabilize Washington College by firing faculty, staff, and increasing costs for students.
Transparency and Accountability. We are in a budget crisis, but we do not have fiscal transparency. College administration and the Board have continually shared financial statements and budget documents with errors and insufficient detail, that change capriciously, and which often do not reconcile. In one instance a budget document provided to the Budget Task Force was off by $3 million. No stakeholder in the College’s future should be comfortable with platitudes and partial, muddied data. The College purports to make data-driven decisions, but even the Board has admitted that we have no common agreement on which data is accurate.
WE’VE LOST EQUITABLE AND HUMANE COMPENSATION.
Cost of Living Adjustments. In 2017 Washington College administration cut the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) salary increases to faculty. Home and rental prices, groceries, utilities, commuting costs and more have increased every year since 2017. Nationally, the Consumer Pricing Index (CPI-U) increased 1.9% in 2018 and 2.3% in 2019, but faculty salaries do not reflect that reality. This is a pay cut. For example, the Route 301 bypass has increased commuting costs for faculty who live northeast of Kent County by 75% to over $1,200 a year. Chestertown property taxes increased by 12% in 2018. No COL adjustments means these changes lower overall faculty compensation. These are but two examples of the myriad of ways Washington College creates financial precarity among its faculty.
Equitable Salaries. Faculty salaries have not only declined relative to inflation, they have also not kept pace with the wage growth of the average American professor. Take as an example a Washington College faculty member who was hired in August of 2008 as an assistant professor at a starting salary of $60,000. Given the salary increases we have experienced at WC since 2008, that professor would have earned only $68,422 in August of 2019, far less than the $70,262 they would have earned had our salaries kept pace with inflation and not even close to the $83,407 they would have earned had our salaries kept pace with the increases in the wages of the average American assistant professor over the same period. Whether you measure our salaries relative to the cost of living or relative to those of our peers, this is a pay cut.
Retirement Income and Future Stability. In 2020 Washington College Board of Visitors and Governors’ unilaterally cut all College contributions to retirement accounts. This is a pay cut, and a regressive one. Even if the 7.5% cut were only effective for one calendar year, the impact of the decision to attack our retirement is further compounded by the inability for that money to grow in our TIAA-CREF investment accounts. Considering the potential for the money to grow at an historical annual rate of 7%, an Assistant Professor at an average age of 35 will lose $35,589 from this cut by the time they retire. An Associate Professor at an average age of 45 will lose $21,400 from this cut by the time they retire. A Full Professor at an average age of 55 will lose $12,988 from this cut by the time they retire. There is no plan to reinstate these contributions. For each year these cuts are extended, the losses above will increase accordingly. This cut is an unconscionable material reduction in compensation and is aimed at destabilizing young professors, who are the future of Washington College.
Compensation for Labor. In 2019 the College reduced stipends for the extra work done by Department and Program chairs. In 2020 they cut Chair stipends, SCE advising stipends, and First Year advising stipends entirely. This is a pay cut. For example, a Chair of a small department takes on the extra responsibilities of administering her department and is advising eight SCE projects. In the past, faculty were able to choose between a stipend or a course release as compensation for this additional, and intensive, work. When there are no stipends, many faculty in small departments aren’t able to take course releases: there simply isn’t anyone else to teach their classes. Now the College requires her to do $4,500 of free labor in one semester alone.
Affordable Health Insurance. In 2018 the College changed how it offered health insurance and increased the amount of out-of-pocket money for medical services and the monthly cost of insurance in general for employees. The College balanced this by providing employees with Health Savings Account (HSA) deposits of $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for families. They immediately cut this by 50% in 2019 and 2020, while costs for all aspects of employee health insurance continue to rise. This is a pay cut.
WC FACULTY DEMANDS
Below are Washington College faculty’s short term demands for addressing our financial crisis while ensuring equitable employment, pedagogical success, and ethical working conditions. While these demands come at a time of fiscal hardship, they are both reasonable and achievable. Faculty will not suffer the consequences for the poor decisions made in the recent past by the Board of Visitors and Governors and College administration.
We will not be satisfied by prosaic statements of gratitude and support. We demand change, and we demand it with the full-throated voice of a united faculty body.
I. PRESERVING WASHINGTON COLLEGE’S MISSION.
WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY ENDORSE THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS:
Washington College’s 125 tenured, tenure-track, and contingent faculty are its single greatest resource;
Our diverse collections of major, minors, concentrations, and other academic programs are essential to maintaining the College as a high-quality educational institution of the liberal arts;
All existing financial resources should be marshalled to secure the College;
Complete and accurate information about the College’s financial position has been withheld; and
The Board has undermined the College’s financial position through a series of poor decisions with respect to the hiring and firing of senior staff, setting unrealistic enrollment targets, and the launching of capital construction and affordability initiatives that were not fully funded.
THEREFORE, WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY DEMAND:
Financial transparency in the form of an independent audit of the College’s financial positions, the findings of which will be made available to all faculty.
An independent and thorough analysis of the endowment, particularly the roughly $70 million in the temporarily restricted portion, to identify funds that can be redesignated as unrestricted. The findings of the analysis will be made available to the faculty.
A one-time endowment withdrawal sufficient to balance the budget during the unprecedented crisis that is the pandemic, including, if necessary, from the Board’s $9 million discretionary fund.
A public commitment to, and actionable plan for, ensuring stable leadership and equitable faculty participation in leadership searches and dismissals with corresponding vote power.
The preservation of all current faculty positions, departments, and programs through at least two calendar years past the end of the pandemic, unless reductions, such as attrition through retirements and buyouts, are approved by the faculty.
II. COMPENSATION.
WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY ENDORSE THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS:
The American Association of University Professors’ Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession defines compensation as benefits as well as base salary;
Washington’s College Administration and its Board of Visitors and Governors have steadily cut faculty compensation since 2017, including health insurance, retirement benefits, and stipends;
Faculty salaries have declined relative to inflation and have fallen even more dramatically relative to the wages of American professors, drastically increasing salary compression and undermining any competitive hiring advantage; and
Washington College faculty are increasingly required to provide the school with free labor, despite being paid for only nine months of teaching, research, and service.
THEREFORE, WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY DEMAND:
College administration and the Board immediately stem faculty salary erosion and bindingly commit to reinstalling salary losses--including COLA, retirement, and adjustments to salary compression--on a progressive timeline developed by the Faculty Council.
III. EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS AND INTELLECTUAL EMANCIPATION.
WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY ENDORSE THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS:
College administration and the Board regularly bypass Faculty Handbook policies and procedures;
Tenure track faculty are not provided with regularly updated terms of employment; and
There is no consistency in contingent contracts and positions.
THEREFORE, WASHINGTON COLLEGE FACULTY DEMAND:
A Faculty Labor Management Committee to oversee all levels of contracts, ensure appropriate working conditions, course overload compensation, and protect contingent labor and to which the Board and administration will be responsible. The Faculty Labor Management Committee will work in lateral cooperation with the Committee for Tenure and Promotion.
An express collaboration between College administration and a faculty-led committee to develop specific financial benchmarks and deadlines for reestablishing back-filled sabbaticals, faculty travel, and faculty research funds.