When the University of Vermont announced earlier this month that it would resume in-person operations this fall, the UVM Strong Fall 2020 Advisory Committee — the group tasked with planning campus reopening — said it found “nearly universal consensus” that the school should reopen.
But at least one group of stakeholders say they have been largely absent from fall planning discussions: faculty.
Numerous UVM professors say they are concerned about the health risks of the planned fall return, and that they haven’t been included in decision-making processes. As frustrations grow, United Academics — UVM’s faculty union — is preparing to file an unfair labor practice complaint against the university, UA President Julie Roberts told VTDigger Saturday.
Roberts, a linguistics professor, said UVM administrators have refused to communicate or engage in bargaining with the union regarding decisions about the fall.
“I think it’s somewhat of a drastic step, but it’s taken because we absolutely have not been heard,” she said.
Since the university announced two weeks ago that it would reopen its campus, few hard details about what course instruction will look like have been announced. In a message to faculty on June 19, UVM Provost Patricia Prelock wrote that the school expects “most courses will need to be delivered in a mixed mode, where only a subset of students attend each class meeting” and others watch virtually.
“Fully online, fully remote, and fully in-person instruction will also need to be part of our overall plans,” Prelock wrote. She also said that all courses will be taught remotely following Thanksgiving break.
Roberts said the university must engage in bargaining with the union before such changes are made. She said the union doesn’t have steadfast demands about course instruction, but that “there should be a consultation process.”
“The university is making all these plans for the fall with really small consultation by any faculty at all, and no consultation by the union,” she said.
UA lawyers sent a letter to UVM last week asking that the school engage in bargaining. The university hasn’t responded, according to Roberts, leading the union to begin preparing to file a complaint.
The union has also filed a separate pair of grievances alleging that UVM violated its collective bargaining agreement by reducing some non-tenure-track faculty to 75% of full-time employment and by deferring some previously approved sabbaticals.
In an emailed statement to VTDigger, UVM spokesperson Enrique Corredera wrote that the university “meticulously” follows the collective bargaining agreement.
“The university does not litigate hypothetical claims in the press,” he wrote. “We carefully and meticulously follow the collective bargaining agreement. The work we are engaged in to guide our return to campus this fall is no exception. If and when a claim is filed with the Vermont Labor Relations Board we will respond appropriately.”
Faculty frustration
The threat of a labor complaint comes amid growing calls from faculty members for more say in the fall planning process.
“I understand this is a huge balancing act,” said Paul Bierman, a geology professor who has taught at UVM for 27 years. “It’s the university trying to stay afloat, it’s students craving that in-person experience again. But I think that the bulk of these decisions were made by committees where faculty were not represented, or not represented deeply. And we are the ones on the front lines who are going to be with students.”
In a letter sent to Prelock and UVM President Suresh Garimella on Friday, the school’s faculty senate president, Thomas Chittenden, called for greater faculty representation on the UVM Strong committees tasked with planning for the fall. The letter also asked administrators and the UVM Strong committees to incorporate a set of principles for instruction that were endorsed by the faculty senate’s executive council.
Garimella established the UVM Strong Fall 2020 Advisory Committee to plan for campus reopening just over three weeks after the university asked students to vacate campus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The original committee, chaired by UVM Vice President for Operations and Public Safety Gary Derr, included no current faculty members or students.
Roughly a month later, the university established four subcommittees to plan different aspects of the reopening. The subgroups include a handful of full-time appointed faculty, including Chittenden, who serves on the faculty and academic affairs committee.
“I believe there might have been a misstep originally with the original composition of the UVM Strong committee,” Chittenden said in an interview with VTDigger. “I believe it’s been corrected with all good intentions to try to do so.”
“I feel that everyone is operating with good faith, on both the administration’s side and the faculty side,” Chittenden added.
But as Chittenden acknowledged in his letter to administrators, concerns about representation persist among many faculty.
“The administration of the university is basically assuming that they can just tell faculty what to do and don’t need to really, truly consult us or involve us in formulating the policy,” said Jacques Bailly, an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the classics department.
Bailly said he would like to see more full-time current faculty members on the UVM Strong committees.
“I’m not talking about just having a seat — because faculty are a lot more than just a stakeholder in the university,” he said. “We should be partners in this — full-on partners with the administration — and we’re nothing like that.”
Kenneth Allen, a senior lecturer in the biomedical and health sciences department, said the faculty representation on the UVM Strong committees is “completely inadequate.” Allen added that he thinks the faculty should have a role in approving the recommendations put forward by the committees.
“Even if that committee’s representation looked more like the campus community — even if it had lots of people like me that are teachers on it — it still misses the point that once that recommendation is made, that recommendation should be able to be assessed by the faculty prior to the decision-making happening at the level of the provost,” he said.
In a statement to VTDigger, Corredera, the UVM spokesperson, wrote that faculty “are fully represented, and are active participants” in the UVM Strong committee’s work.
“Both the president and vice president of the Faculty Senate are members of the working groups conducting the planning, along with six other Faculty Senate representatives,” he wrote. “These members are in a good position to identify any proposed strategies that may necessitate Faculty Senate action.”
Chittenden said the administration “has made a good-faith effort” to involve perspectives from across campus.
“I am comfortable with the intent of the decision-making,” he said. “But no decision-making is perfect and I definitely see opportunities for more faculty involvement.”
The frustration over fall planning, though, has led some faculty members to raise the possibility of a no-confidence vote in administrators.
“What I’ve said to them is, ‘that is a last resort,’” Chittenden said. “You ring that bell, you can’t unring it. And if you ring it too often, people tune it out.”
Teaching flexibility?
Several faculty members expressed concern regarding the potential public health risks of bringing all 10,700 undergraduates back to Burlington.
Bierman, who lives in a community where students reside in off-campus housing, said he thinks it is “unrealistic” to believe that undergrads will social distance “no matter what we ask our students to sign, no matter what we ask them to do, no matter how many singles they have in the dorms.”
“These are late adolescents,” he said. “The joke in our community here is: How many beer pong tables did we see today?”
Bierman said he has seen non-socially distanced parties of up to 40 students since students living off campus have begun to move back to Burlington.
Given concerns about the virus’ potential spread, faculty members said that a central question remaining about the fall is the modality of their course instruction — whether it’s in-person, online or a hybrid. Some other colleges in Vermont have indicated they will offer flexibility around in-person and remote teaching.
The principles backed by the UVM faculty senate call for instructors to be able to opt out, without penalty, of teaching in-person “if they have any concerns over their personal health or the health of close relations.”
“What I’d really like is a very flexible policy to accommodate the many, many different situations that are represented by various families,” Bailly said.
Roberts said the union also supports allowing faculty to choose if they teach in-person or not based on health concerns.
Corredera said that the university will closely follow public health guidelines when students arrive in the fall, and will work with faculty in the meantime on plans.
“We are confident that all the strategies that will be in place by the time students return in the fall—including mask-wearing requirements, density and distancing measures and multiple instruction modalities—will enable UVM to offer a high-quality education and a productive work setting for faculty and staff in an environment that is informed by advice from medical and public health experts, and fully compliant with state and federal regulations,” Corredera wrote.
“We are committed to continuing to engage with faculty members throughout the summer to ensure that they have the most up-to-date information about the planning work, and to continue to address concerns that may arise,” he added.
Faculty have been surveyed about their preferences for course modality. But with much up in the air and just nine weeks remaining before the first day of classes, some instructors say they are preparing for multiple scenarios.
“Honestly, I love UVM, I’m dedicated to UVM,” Bierman said. “My life and my family’s lives are not worth it.”
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