Letters to Notice: In-Residence Memorial; Senate Deliberations

The In-Residence Memorial

To the Editor:

The proposed Memorial to the Regents on the question of whether or not In-Residence faculty facing termination should have the right to a hearing has become so fraught with controversy that we risk losing sight of the central issue. As someone who was opposed from the outset to the Memorial as a political process, I want to explain why I intend nevertheless to vote in favor of it.

1. Standing Order of the Regents 103.9 guarantees the opportunity for a hearing in the event of any proposal to terminate the appointment of a tenured member of the faculty or of any other faculty member before the expiration of his or her contract. In-Residence faculty members are not tenured. They have appointments which either carry fixed terms or can be converted to fixed terms by administrative fiat. Therefore, they are not protected by SOR 103.9 against possible abuse of administrative authority.

2. Faculty members with fixed-term appointments who are not members of the Academic Senate have the right to a hearing in case of proposed non-reappointment under the terms of collective bargaining agreements. Since they are members of the Academic Senate, In-Residence faculty members are not protected by these collective bargaining agreements.

3. The Senate Committee on Academic Personnel has proposed that all In-Residence faculty at full or associate rank should be given indefinite appointments. The Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction has expressed its view that such appointments are covered by SOR 103.9 and that any proposal to end an indefinite appointment or to convert it to a fixed-term appointment guarantees the opportunity for a hearing.

4. It is far from certain that the President and the Regents will accept either UCAP's proposal for indefinite appointment or UCRJ's opinion that such appointments are covered under SOR 103.9.

5. A Memorial to the Regents is authorized by Standing Order 105.2.e, which explicitly gives the Senate the right to "lay before the Board its views on any matter pertaining to the conduct and welfare of the University." It is especially appropriate for the Senate to petition the Regents on this particular issue, because it is the Regents themselves who have guaranteed the opportunity for a hearing in cases of proposed early termination.

The question now before us should not be not whether we support the Memorial as a political process, but whether we support granting to a significant subset of our own membership a fundamental right that virtually all other employees of the University enjoy. The Memorial is a means for the Academic Senate as a whole to express our strong support for the recommendations of UCAP and the interpretations of UCRJ. For the Senate to defeat the Memorial or to adopt it by only a slim majority would be a disaster. All members of the Academic Senate, whether or not they agree that a Memorial on the issue should have been initiated, should cast their ballots in the affirmative.

--Professor Alden A. Mosshammer, UCSD

Systemwide Consideration of Issues

The November Notice reported on a letter written by me and a colleague, John Ellis (Emeritus, German Literature) under the headline "Affirmative Action: Two UCSC Faculty Question the Breadth of Faculty Support." In December, Notice reported further on the Santa Cruz Division's vote of 74-0-4 to oppose the Regents' decisions, at a special meeting called in response to our letter. These stories neither convey an accurate picture of our letter, which was centrally concerned with Senate procedures, nor tell readers that the Division incorporated similar procedural concerns in its affirmative action resolution.

Our letter said nothing about the substance of the Regents' decisions or the depth of faculty support for affirmative action. We took the view that in issuing a press release before all the Divisions had an opportunity for discussion and vote, the Senate leadership did not properly consult with colleagues. We had in mind earlier instances of the same sort involving the leadership's initial agreement with the administration on amending Senate Bylaw 335 to exclude a formal Privilege and Tenure hearing in certain dismissal cases, and on the question of whether to continue managing the DOE laboratories.

On November 29, the Santa Cruz Division adopted a resolution similar to those previously agreed to at Berkeley, Davis and Santa Barbara. The UCSC resolution was distinguished, however, by the incorporation of language proposed by Karen McNally (Earth Sciences): "[Resolved:] It is the sense of the Senate that, at all levels, The Board of Regents, the Academic Council, and individual campuses, the process by which the new Regental policies on hiring and admissions were reached did not allow the faculty, the Chancellors, the President, and the Regents adequately to discuss the questions at hand and come to a well considered conclusion."

Though our view is consistent with this thoughtful statement, I am disappointed. For no one discussed the substance of the Regents' decisions before the vote. Now, with many one-sided votes behind us, the UC faculty may have missed an important opportunity for general education. We have not seriously discussed whether affirmative action policies have led to a faculty with broader interests and deeper insight, or added to the ever present pressures to allow personal characteristics and politics to outweigh intellect and accomplishment.

Discussion is in order whether the large social and political question, Which racial groups merit special admissions? is a matter of academic standards exclusively reserved to the faculty under traditional shared governance. There are also open questions why the response to the Regents has not differed among campuses, given the vast differences in enrollment pressures across the system, and whether the racial data on which affirmative action goals are based are meaningful. In any case, the interpretation of the lopsided campus votes is an open question given the subtle picture suggested by the new Roper survey, in which a majority of faculty opposed the Regents' decisions but a plurality also opposed preferential treatment by race. Perhaps the lesson here is simple: the constructive way to deal with such loaded issues is a slower process ending in a systemwide mail ballot in which all the arguments can be aired.

--Professor Joel Yellin, UCSC