The controversy regarding the department changes and the resulting position cuts has been ongoing since last year. By no means have these debates come to a close, as faculty members from affected departments recently filed appeals and grievances against the University’s decisions.

In April, a group of lecture-track faculty filed an appeal over the terminations of their contracts, but the Lecture Track Faculty Promotion Committee rejected the appeal, saying it is comfortable with the University’s decisions. Then, the lecture-track faculty filed a petition to appeal that decision, gaining more than 25 signatures, which should have brought the appeal to a faculty vote. But the College Governance Committee (GovCom) declined to bring the matter to a College faculty vote at the Sept. 25 meeting, citing a bylaw that says the Lecture Track Faculty Promotion Committee only handles matters dealing with promotion, not employment terminations.

But what has caught the attention of many faculty members is that both GovCom and the Promotion Committee based their decisions, in part, on a policy provision in the document that governs faculty employment – titled “Appointment and Review of Lecture-Track Faculty” (ARLTF) – that was added to the document in summer 2012. The provision takes the decision of whether to renew the faculty members’ employment out of the hands of a person’s department or program and gives it to the College. The lecture-track faculty, in addition to seven petitioners, have responded to GovComs rejection, alleging that the provision was added in secret without a faculty vote.

The administration, however, has said that the provision did not require a faculty vote and was simply added to clarify existing policies and practices, used, for instance, in 2010 when faculty in the Department of Physical Education and Health had their contracts terminated.

The policy at the heart of the controversy reads: “The department or program will be asked by the College early in the fall of the reappointment year whether the position should continue to be supported. If the answer is affirmative, and if the College plans to continue supporting the position, the review of the faculty member proceeds over the academic year, concluding by or near April 1.”

The faculty say the phrase “and if the College plans to continue supporting the position” was not in the ARLTF document at the time the lecture-track faculty signed their employment contracts in 2010, nor when the department changes were decided on.

The clause is essentially serving as the basis for the decision about why these faculty members will be forced to find jobs elsewhere. But we at the Wheel feel that such an important policy – one that is determining the future of lecture-track faculty members’ jobs – should have been changed in the actual document itself as soon as it was decided on. Members of the administration and former members of the Lecture Track Faculty Promotion Committee say that they are not sure of why the clause was not added immediately back in 2011. And Michael Elliott, the senior associate dean of faculty, told the Wheel that such documents are sometimes updated after multiple changes, as opposed to individual ones.

It all boils down to transparency.

Why wait so long to make an important change to a document, when the alteration in question directly impacts people’s livelihoods? The discrepancy makes it seem as if the administration is making decisions behind closed doors. Even up until the department changes were announced last September, GovCom and the LTFPC played a very small public role in the affairs of the University. All of a sudden, though, there is so much partisanship in faculty governance – some may even call it a mess, and this could possibly have been prevented.

In general, the University should have effectively prepared for the backlash it is currently facing, not just in terms of updating that specific document, but informing the University beforehand of the bylaws and governing principles to which they claim to be adhering. In short, we at the Wheel feel that given the secretive nature of the process that led to the cuts, the amount of backlash the administration is facing is not surprising.

Overall, there is clearly a disconnect between the administration and the rest of the Emory community. While the buzzword “transparency” gets thrown around a lot, it might be the only solution for this problem.

In an April 23 Wheel article, Sheila Cavanagh, a professor of English and the chair of the Grievance Committee, told the Wheel that “the work of the Grievance Committee is confidential.” She had also written in an email to the Wheel that the Grievance Committee provided a copy of its decision “as a courtesy to the petitioners” but was not required to do so. This is another example of leaving faculty in the dark about decisions that affect their employment.

That’s why we believe the University should show the public precisely why these layoffs are legitimate and not in violation of the bylaws, if that is indeed the case. It seems cruel to without such information under the banner of “confidentiality.”

This situation sheds light on the question of the distinction between running a university like a community or a corporation. In a corporation, people losing their jobs do not need to be told why. Cuts are made without regard to a set of bylaws. In a community, any downsizing decisions should be made with regard to shared accountability and agreed-upon rules.

From what we have been able to understand and from the information we have been provided, it seems to us that the process leading to the cuts was sloppy. Faculty deserve to know, in detail, the reasoning that led to the termination of their jobs, and it should not be left up to the faculty to sort through the muddle themselves. We would really like to trust that the University has made the right choices – those that benefit the community at large – but there’s something about this situation that is disconcerting.

Rather than limiting the conversation about the department changes to faculty meetings, the University should answer the questions that have been raised in a public manner, perhaps by releasing a statement. We also invite GovCom and the Grievance Committee to write an editorial that explains and justifies their actions.

The above staff editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel‘s editorial board. For our opinion on Swoop’s Week, see emorywheel.com.

Emory Wheel
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The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.

The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.