Students For Academic Freedom

100 Faculty at Metro State Rally · 25 September 2003

by David Curtain, The Denver Post, 9/25

One hundred faculty members at Metropolitan State College who believe their tenure is at risk rallied Wednesday before national leaders of the American Federation of Teachers in a bid to be recognized for collective bargaining power.

It would be the first faculty labor union at a public four-year college in Colorado in at least 20 years.

Union supporters at Metro State have signed up 100 of the 140 full-time faculty sought by the Washington, D.C.-based AFT - a figure that would represent half of Metro's 280 tenured faculty.

The group, calling itself the Metro State Faculty Federation, also must elect officers and committee chairs before it can be recognized as a local, said Mark Belkin of the Colorado Federation of Teachers, the state offshoot of AFT.

"This is in response to the arbitrary, unilateral revocation of tenure, the curtailing of academic control of curriculum by the faculty, the omission of shared governance and the continued exploitation of adjunct (part-time) faculty," Belkin told the faculty members.

The central issue is the annual employment contracts faculty members were required to sign last summer that allows termination of tenured faculty before part-time faculty in a budget crunch.

The policy is detailed in a new faculty handbook created by a Board of Trustees appointed by Gov. Bill Owens after a new state law granted Metro State independence in July 2002.

Faculty members also feel threatened by a proposed bill of rights written by well-known California conservative activist David Horowitz calling for more conservative viewpoints in curriculum. Owens and Republican lawmakers have voiced support for the concept.

"We need a unified voice to fight the forces to derail Metro's destiny," said Rebecca Hunt, a history professor who joined the union at Wednesday's meeting. "I think this is a board unwilling to learn what higher education is, and I think it's an insidious conservative agenda trying to change American culture."

"If they wish to organize, let them," Metro State interim president Ray Kieft said in a recent interview. "But in terms of the issue leading to this - it's overblown. The board - living up to its public responsibility - has a reduction- in-force policy. But it's used only under the most serious financial circumstances, and it may never be triggered."

Metro recently laid off 31 staff and administrators and has left other positions unfilled as it absorbs a 16 percent state budget cut costing the school $7.4 million. Even that severe financial situation didn't require faculty layoffs, Kieft noted.

Kieft recently proposed an amendment to the policy yet to be voted on by the board that requires layoffs not be based on salary but purely on performance in the areas of teaching, advising, scholarship and service.

"If the tenured faculty member and non-tenured faculty member are equal, the non-tenured faculty member would be subject to reduction in force before the tenured faculty member," the amendment reads.

Faculty praised the olive branch, but Faculty Senate president Joan L. Foster said Wednesday it wouldn't have happened without the faculty organizing - an effort underway since June.

"As individuals, you are atomized, and that is the way the Board of Trustees would prefer to face you because it doesn't force the board to bargain with you collectively," CFT attorney Joe Goldhammer told faculty.

Trustees chairman Bruce Benson said Friday the board is trying to treat the faculty well. "We've had budget cuts. We haven't been able to give the pay raises we'd like. We're working on it," he said.

The AFT has 1.2 million members, including 135,000 in higher education, said Jack Nightingale, AFT national assistant director who attended the meeting.

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