Union President writes to administration: this is "more than a little disturbing"

From: Lewis Long
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 2:52 PM
To: 'Glenn Roquemore'; 'Craig Justice'
Cc: 'Lisa Davis Allen'; Allison Camelot; 'Bill Hewitt (Bill Hewitt)'; Diane Bales (FA); 'Lee Haggerty (Lee Haggerty)'; 'Loma Hopkins; 'Paula Jacobs'
Subject: FW: Proposed Final Draft of ["Civility"] Report

[IVC President] Glenn [Roquemore] and [IVC VP of Instruction] Craig [Justice],

I have been reviewing the forwarded attachments and minutes from the Civility workgroup, which contains a so-called “final draft.” As I was working through the documents, I noticed that there were several faculty members participating in the workgroup. However, I respectfully suggest that this faculty representation has a rather serious omission, which makes the results of the process subject to questions and doubt: none of the faculty representatives were appointed by, or appear to represent, the designated bargaining agent responsible for the faculty’s working conditions, the Faculty Association.

IVC Prez, Glenn Roquemore

Even though this workgroup is a response to an accreditation report, I would suggest that “civility and mutual respect” are essential elements of the overall climate of the campus, and thus part of the working conditions of faculty, and thus within the domain of the Faculty Association. Since the discussion involves “acceptable” and “unacceptable” behavior, and asks what the campus can do when supposed “acts of incivility” do occur, it is obvious that evaluation of the behavior of members of the campus community, including faculty, are under discussion, and some form of remediation for violations is being considered (“training the recidivists” and “progressive discipline” are particularly disturbing phrases among the recommendations!). The following sentence appears among the final recommendations from the report, “Supervisors should call attention to uncivil behaviors of persons they supervise, and when necessary, note such behaviors within with the processes of evaluation or progressive discipline” (emphasis added). If violation of the policies developed by the workgroup results in any sort of reprimand, censure or negative evaluation, or even a stern talking to, for a faculty member, law would require that the Association be involved, and should have been involved from the beginning of the process.

That no one even thought to ask if the Association would be interested in participating is more than a little disturbing. Any time that a question comes up in which the welfare of the faculty is a consideration, the Faculty Association should be on the short list of contacts. However, at the end of the report, this sentence appears among recommendations: “Create a civility statement, obtain approvals from key entities (e.g., academic senate, classified senate), . . ..” Although the list is obviously not meant to be exhaustive, the omission of the Faculty Association as one of the “key” entities is obvious from the process.

Please be aware that the Association will be represented on the Board Policy and Administrative Regulation Committee which considers the recommendation of the working group, and will be presenting some very serious misgivings and reservations regarding the recommendation, which may have been easily avoided had we been included in the discussion from the beginning.

Thank you,
Lewis

Administration: team IVC (Roquemore, Plano, Justice)