UT: THE EYES OF TFA ARE UPON YOU!

UPDATE ON TODAY'S RIF APPEAL HEARING

Officially scheduled for two hours, the hearing for a past chair of the UTMB Faculty Senate went from 9 AM to noon and recessed until 3 PM, at which time it will reconvene. 

The Blogmeister testified concerning the RIF process and the purported exigency by telephone this morning.  The chair of the hearing panel tried to shut me down when I began discussing the many departures from policy and accepted procedure administration took along the way to cutting 127 faculty.  He said that it had nothing to do with the two criteria for appealing: (1) that financial exigency wasn't the reason the faculty member was cut, or (2) that he was treated differently than others in his specialty or discipline, making his RIF'ing arbitrary and unreasonable. I pointed out that all these departures, particularly allowing chairs and directors to make the cuts rather than a viable RIF committee (UTMB's secret committee had only 7-8 minutes per career, on average, and no documentation unless they asked for a CV) amounted to arbitrary and unreasonable termination precisely because they led to abuses such as that suffered by Dr. Charles Lui, who was RIF'd because of a legitimate disagreement with his chair, not because of performance or any stated criteria his department claimed. The hearing panel chair then went on to tell me that this wasn't about Chuck Lui.  I agreed and went on to discuss one of the agendas (there was at least one other agenda I didn't discuss) I believe today's appellant fell victim to: administrators' desire to oust viable Faculty Senate leaders, something that wouldn't have happened if an objective RIF committee had been formed early on and been allowed to do its job in accordance with Regents Rule 31003.  I had a heckuva time fighting thru the hearing panel chair's objections, but I said what needed saying and got it on the record. 

As for the exigency, in so many words I said that I did not believe there was one in that UT sat on top of billions and did nothing, even though it said it could through a Moody Investments report THAT UT STAFFERS EDITED BEFORE PUBLICATION.  Furthermore, I said that even if there had been an exigency, there sure as heck isn't one now with all the money being thrown at UTMB by the state, which increased UTMB's appropriation by $109 million, easily swallowing the adjusted operating margin deficits administrators have claimed--and again, I emphasize the word "claimed." 

We'll see how things wind up today after they reconvene at 3:00 PM.

UTMB FACULTY SENATE PAST CHAIR RIF APPEAL HEARING TODAY

The RIF appeal hearing for one of the three RIF'd UTMB faculty senate chairs is scheduled for 9:00 AM today in the Main Administration Building on campus.  As previously discussed on this blog, three of the last five were RIF'd, and both the Blogmeister and the UTMB faculty noticed that those three chairs were the ones who actually tried to participate in shared governance in a meaningful way rather than simply take orders from administration. 

Avoiding the RIF:

A chair who avoided the RIF was told by President Stobo in 2006 not to discuss the proposed compensation plan at a faculty senate meeting.  He went back and actually told the senate that they were forbidden to debate the plan and, to the consternation of the senators present, did his best to obey orders.  He's the same one who threw softball questions, screening the tough ones submitted by faculty, at a question-and-answer faculty gathering with high-level administrators. Ultimately, administrators strong-armed the controversial plan down faculty throats with the predictable result that individual faculty salaries could be expanded and contracted almost at will by administration, depending on whether or not a faculty member was perceived as a "team player."  The faculty senate chair during the time the compensation plan was being peddled to faculty may have done a disservice to his colleagues, but he sure kept his job, eh? Not coincidentally, the past chair trying to salvage his career at today's hearing was one of the voices who tried to speak reason to President Stobo and his administrators. 

The Blogmeister figures that today's hearing will run for four or five hours, although it is scheduled for only two.  The past chair has gathered an impressive array of witnesses and a stack of documentation that will take some time to go through.  I'm afraid it will all fall on deaf ears, and if it doesn't, President Callender gets the last say anyhow.  They want a cowed faculty senate that will do what it's told, mere window dressing that they can point to when SACS or other academic accrediting agencies come to town.  With the public execution of three careers, they'll most likely get what they want. The Blogmeister hears that the new chair, due to take office on September 1st, isn't exactly known for courage.

 Today's hearing will last only a few hours, but its effects will last for years.