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By Donald Wagner. Reprinted from the AAUP Chapter/Conference Newsletter, November-December 1990, p. 1. Always be courteous, professional, helpful to the extent you can ... listen and ask questions, do not argue. Take your time. Never allow yourself to be rushed. Make no commitments before checking with the Washington staff. (Jordan Kurland, Robert Kreiser, Jonathan Knight, Lesley Francis, 1-800-424-2973). Do not assume that the faculty member is always right. Do not assume that AAUP can always help faculty members who have been mistreated. Remember that AAUP defends policies and principles, not individuals. Individual cases matter to AAUP only insofar as they implicate the policies we recommend. Our policies do not cover all conceivable circumstances. For your own protection say at some point in the conversation, "I am not an attorney and what advice I may give you is not legal advice." Keep a record of your telephone conversations, correspondence, etc., on each complaint. Advise any faculty member who calls you to develop and maintain a chronological account of what happened to him/her. The account should include as much detail as possible, e.g., all relevant correspondence, telephone calls, meetings, witnesses, etc. Advise the person to document to the extent possible his/her complaint/grievance. Has the person exhausted remedies of redress at the campus? Do they accord with what AAUP recommends? Find out. Ask for copies of institutional regulations. If you are too busy to attend to the faculty member's concerns, or are the least bit uncertain about the issues, have the faculty member call the 800 number and let the Washington staff handle them. Maintain a list of attorneys in your state who are familiar with higher education law. (It will not be a long list. Be sure to indicate that these are referrals, not recommendations, since you may not be personally acquainted with all the lawyers whose names are in your files.) Find law school faculty who might help in legal matters. Finally, remember that we at the [chapter and] conference level can assist the Washington staff; we must keep in mind, however, that they speak for the Association. Do not hesitate to question them if you do not understand or have doubt about what they say. In my experience they have invariably been able to defend the positions they take regarding AAUP policies. To offer suggestions or comments about this web site, please click here.