How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
The Liberal Studies Program is poised to rewrite the grievance procedure for its teachers. Or, depending on who you ask, it's being written for the first time.
Grievance procedure is the process of appealing a decision by the dean of a contract professor's program to deny the renewal of his or her contract. At NYU, contract faculty are those instructors who are not tenured or tracked for tenure, but who are not adjunct (usually part time) faculty, either. The majority of instructors in LSP are contract faculty.
Formerly, the only rules for grievance procedures, according to a 1973 University Senate statute of the Faculty Handbook, said faculty members had the right to appeal a dean's ruling against reappointment to a committee comprised of tenured faculty members. After reviewing the facts of the case, this grievance committee would recommend to the university provost whether the faculty member in question should be reappointed.
But under a plan circulated to the faculty of LSP in September of this year, appeals instead would be reviewed by a committee of three, non-tenured contract faculty, who would issue a recommendation on the appropriateness of the dean's ruling.
Some LSP teachers have a problem with the new plan. They said having a committee of non-tenured contract faculty creates a conflict of interest: Those on a committee are put in a position of potentially criticizing the individual (most likely the dean) who ultimately has authority over whether the committee members' contracts are renewed.
"Under the original system, [the grievance committee members] are independent of one's own department, of one's own dean. They are protected by tenure," said Michael Shenefelt, a contract faculty member at LSP who is an outspoken opponent of changing grievance procedure. "As a matter of honor, they have every reason to give you a fair hearing and, most importantly, if you do have to go to court [for wrongful termination], they generate a report ... that can be part of your case."
Among several LSP faculty members, the assumption was that, based on the language of the handbook, contract faculty were covered by the same grievance procedure as tenure-track faculty.
But dean Fredric Schwarzbach of LSP said the grievance rules outlined in the 1973 handbook don't apply to today's contract faculty simply because they were written before the widespread use of non-tenure track contract faculty. As such, the university needs an update.
"The university has changed [while] the rules and regulations and bylaws have not changed," Schwarzbach said. "I think it would be in everyone's interest — in the interest of contract faculty, in the interest of the tenured faculty, in the interest of the administration — to review the handbook and make sure it addresses the needs of diverse faculty across the many, many units of the university."
The question of whether contract faculty are included in the 1973 grievance procedures was addressed in May 2008 by a committee of the Faculty Senators Council. They prepared a report which stated that "the NYU Faculty Handbook is for all faculty and most sections pertain to both tenured and non-tenured faculty alike," going on to say more specifically that "faculty grievance procedures ... apply to both groups."
But there are inconsistencies in the report. In an appendix, the committee seems to suggest that the grievance policy for contract faculty at the Faculty of Arts and Science, of which LSP is a part, is the same as that for tenure-track faculty. Schwarzbach attributed this to an error in reporting; he thinks the reference refers to contract faculty in all other parts of FAS.
"It was not meant to suggest that there was a policy in place," he said.
One LSP professor, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, was told "from the get-go that 'These rules don't apply to you, so make something different — make something lesser than the rules that already exist.' "
Technically, the faculty of LSP will design the new grievance procedure and submit the plan to the administration for approval. But like his colleague, Shenefelt said faculty members have been warned against proposing a strong system.
"What we've been told is that ... if we don't endorse a proposal acceptable to the provost, we will have no appeal," Shenefelt said.
When asked if he would support a grievance system with a committee composed of three tenured, full-time faculty members, like the system outlined in the 1973 statute, Schwarzbach said:
"I've said repeatedly, in various faculty gatherings and meetings on the record, that I would. I honestly don't understand why my faculty colleagues are still asking the question."
Schwarzbach added there is no timetable for the new grievance policy, but "I think all of us feel that the sooner, the better."
