Committee F on Membership and Dues
Every Conference should have a Committee F on Membership and Dues whose responsibility it is to recruit new members for the Association, to endeavor to keep existing members enrolled, to encourage them to pay their dues on time, and to help form new chapters and energize or re-activate dormant chapters. The chairperson of the committee should be dedicated to increase AAUP membership during each year of his or her tenure and, in consultation with the executive committee, should set realistic goals and work methodically throughout the academic year to meet them.
Utilizing techniques discussed above in the section on chapter membership recruiting, the conference committee F should target campuses where professors have expressed an interest in forming or rehabilitating a chapter, should hold organizational meetings on such campuses at times and places calculated to call forth the maximum possible attendance, and should afterwards keep in touch with chapter leaders to see that they receive regular encouragement and assistance.
Local issues debilitating to faculty morale, outraging to professional sensibilities, or injurious to individual incomes or benefits are usually what trigger expressions of interest in establishing an AAUP presence on campus. Assaults on tenure by a governing board, arbitrary decisions by administrators usurping faculty prerogatives or unnecessarily burdening or injuring individuals, or a sense of impending doom (such as financial crisis for the institution) are common reasons why state conferences are contacted for assistance. Enterprising committee F chairpersons will not await such approaches, however, but will develop contacts on campuses which do not have AAUP chapters, in order to discover at the earliest possible moment whether the time is ripe for an organizational effort initiated by the conference.
Whether the first move is made by the conference or by a professor on the targeted campus, a successful organizational campaign requires certain essential ingredients. First, someone locally who has leadership ability must assume the responsibility for the initial impetus. That person should issue a campus wide call for attendance at a meeting with state conference representatives. Such a gathering should be held in comfortable surroundings at a time when all interested faculty members can attend it. The local organizers should follow the initial announcement of the meeting with suitable reminders of time, place and purpose.
The state conference recruiting team which attends such a gathering will consist, ideally, of the state conference president or a designated representative, the chairperson of committee F, and perhaps a member of committee A, if the visit is to a private school, or a member of committee R and/or the conference lobbyist, if a public institution is involved. National Council members, if available, are useful adjuncts to such efforts.
The recruiting team should familiarize itself in advance with the local situation. Helpful in accomplishing this are copies of relevant correspondence dealing with current campus issues of concern to professors, copies of catalogs, faculty handbooks, and other repositories of institutional policies, and pertinent press clippings, if any exist.
AAUP literature, including sample copies of the Redbook, Academe, Footnotes, the AAUP Legislative News, newsletters from the state conference, and other pertinent publications should be laid out for perusal, and membership brochures should be distributed to all non-members who attend the meeting. After introductions are accomplished and a sign-up sheet on which to write names, addresses, phone numbers, and disciplines is distributed, the principal spokesperson for the conference should briefly discuss the history, purposes, accomplishments, and services of the AAUP; the same or a second speaker should do the same regarding the state conference; and the committee F representative should succinctly state the advantages of having a local chapter, what it might be able to accomplish (particularly in regard to current problems on the local campus), the degree of commitment needed to form and maintain a viable chapter, and how,, specifically, to do it. One-on-one recruitment of colleagues into the Association should be stressed. Conference representatives should not only describe the many kinds of assistance and support obtainable from the national and state organizations, but should also emphasize the necessity of local contributions of time and resources, if significant benefits are to be obtained.
A question period normally follows the AAUP organizational presentation. From the intensity and variety of the questions, conference representatives can usually discern the degree of interest in and urgency about forming a local chapter and identify those apt actively to participate. Making sure that one of the local professors is committed to take charge of the organizational movement from that point onward, and seeing that he or she possesses a copy of this handbook (or at least a copy of the section on chapters), as well as a Redbook and additional membership brochures, the visiting team departs, taking with them a copy of the meeting sign-up sheet and copies of campus directories, faculty handbooks, catalogs, and other documents the possession of which will facilitate future communication between the conference and the local campus. In the weeks that follow, the conference president and the chairperson of committee F will stay in touch with the leaders of the new chapter, trying to help it through the vital early months of existence. The Washington office should, of course be notified of what has been done, so that staff members there can conduct their own followup efforts.
In the case of existing chapters requiring renovation, somewhat the same procedure may be followed, exercising tact in dealing with inefficient or irresponsible current officers.
Recruitment of individual members is normally best left to local chapters or to the national office of the AAUP. But the state conference committee F should always be ready to lend membership assistance to efforts from these quarters and should be particularly assiduous in maintaining contact with and in responding to requests from those AAUP stalwarts who are located on campuses with fewer than enough members to form chapters, for it is much more difficult to secure a beachhead for the AAUP on a campus with no members than at an institution where a few solitary souls are known to identify with and can be used as contact persons for the Association.
Assisting Chapters in Recruiting New Members
Conference committee F chairpersons should be familiar with the section of this handbook entitled "Membership Development for Chapters" and with the contents of the national AAUP Membership Development Handbook. They should keep in touch with chapter presidents (or membership chairpersons, if separate) and should encourage not only chapter recruitment efforts but also the kind of constructive activity that will give the chapter visibility and respect on campus. They should help chapter officers acquire membership materials; assist them in obtaining payroll deduction for members; and put professors inquiring about the AAUP in touch with their local chapters or with the national office. And they should themselves maintain close contact with that office, whose services they should readily call upon whenever needed.
Assisting Chapters in Retaining Members
Conference visibility via a newsletter sent to AAUP members in the state, or at least (in cases where budgetary constraints dictate a smaller expenditure for postage) sent to chapter presidents for local duplication and distribution, is an important asset to organizing and service activities. Newsletters should contain evidence of conference accomplishments on behalf of the professorate, information about the current work of the Association at the national level, news of the activities of other conferences (obtained through newsletter exchanges), and the achievements of various chapters and perhaps of individual AAUP members throughout the state. Funds can be saved over time by the acquisition of a third class mailing permit for newsletters. Consult the Washington office on this.
Visits to chapters by conference representatives are also helpful in maintaining awareness of the importance of the Association in academia. Such visits can be used as occasions for discussing local problems, soliciting new members, and explaining what the AAUP is currently doing elsewhere in the state. "Cluster meetings" of several chapters located within or near a particular city or town can be productive. Individual members unaffiliated with any chapter who reside nearby should be invited to attend such gatherings. Finally, credibility of a local chapter can sometimes be enhanced and administrative opposition to its existence muted if the state conference holds a well publicized spring or fall meeting on the campus in question.
Committee R on Government Relations
State conferences need an adequately functioning Committee R on Government Relations. The unprecedented expansion of public institutions during the past forty years, proliferation of statewide governing boards and commissions, passage of a multitude of state laws regulating public higher education, close interest taken in educational expenditures, priorities, policies, and even curricular matters by political office-holders, and imposition on campuses of complicated and detailed regulations adopted at the state level have created problems and created issues for professors which cannot usually be dealt with as effectively either by the AAUP's Washington office or by local chapters. It is therefore essential for state conferences to devote time and resources to "government relations," a term embracing much more than mere legislative lobbying.
If possible, a state conference ought to employ a full-time lobbyist during each legislative session. Astute and active lobbyists are expensive, but they pay for their keep, and the onerous things that can happen to faculty members in public institutions who are unprotected by a capable state conference government relations program are well worth averting by a lobbyist. Expenses can be controlled by utilizing services of retired professors living in or near the state capital, or by sharing the services of experienced lobbyists for other non-partisan organizations, as the American Association of Retired Persons, Common Cause, or the League of Women Voters, where conflicts of interest or loyalty are unlikely. Sometimes the services of a politically minded professor on a part-time basis are satisfactory.
State conference lobbyists should be registered, if state law requires it. All should be familiar with the world of higher education and the special place in it of professors. All should know or quickly get to know the state officials and their staff members responsible for higher education. They should know the laws and state policies relevant to their responsibilities and how the legislative process works. They should be diligent and reliable and, above all, visible. Although they may have to assume the responsibility for procuring the passage of legislation authored or favored by the AAUP state conference (especially bills involving the economic benefits for professors and their institutions), their most important function is to act as sentinel to identify at the earliest possible moment potential threats, in the form of proposed legislation, to academic tenure, faculty governance, and existing forms of compensation. Often this can be done by checking lists of bills filed by legislators against a compendium of code numbers of other standard numerical designations for state laws which provide for tenure, curricular offerings, or faculty compensation. Since proposed changes in laws may sometimes be worded in such a way that neither the meaning nor the subject matter is easy to discern without reference to the original act, it is best to start from the latter rather than from the bill being filed. Once the lobbyist has discovered an obnoxious bill and reports it to the chairperson of the state conference committee R, the legislative network may be able to kill the bill in the committee, which involves dealing with only a handful of legislators, rather than awaiting a time when the bill has picked up momentum and endorsements and must be opposed on the floor of one or both branches of the legislature.
There is much to be said on this subject. Most of it has been expressed in the AAUP's Handbook on Lobbying at the State Capitol, copies of which should be in the possession of state conference officers, lobbyists, and committee R members.
State conference committee R work should not be confined only to legislative lobbying. Good relations with the governor or his assistants who specialize in higher education matters are always desirable. Personal contact should be maintained between AAUP representatives and these officials, with members of the Association who have personal or political ties with state office holders utilized to keep lines of communication open and AAUP viewpoints known.
Similar considerations apply to statewide governing boards and higher education commissions, whose meetings should be routinely attended by AAUP representatives (usually conference officers and/or the executive secretary or the lobbyist). These representatives should become personally acquainted with system presidents, chancellors, board members, and other such authorities, and should establish themselves at the state level as credible representatives of the Association. At such meetings available documents, including school publications such as catalogs, handbooks, and campus directories of the host institution, should be collected for the files of the state conference, and written and/or oral testimony should be offered in relation to matters on which the conference or its executive committee has reached agreement and desires formally to convey it views.
Although committees A, F and R are centerposts to most state conferences, other committees can also perform services which are both useful to members and valuable in enhancing the effectiveness of the individual conference. For example, by focusing on faculty responsibility and the ethics of the profession, a conference committee B can support the work of the state committee A by demonstrating both the value and the need for academic freedom and tenure. By surveying the faculty handbooks, institutional policies, and governance structure on individual campuses, and disseminating the results of such studies, a conference committee T can enhance the work of its membership committee, as well as support the labors of the committee A. An active committee W, devoted to addressing the special problems of women professors can have a strong impact on the results obtained by conference committees A and F. And a conference committee Z, by keeping up with compensation date and publishing timely comparative studies benefits, can effectively reinforce the efforts of committee R to obtain approval of such measures from legislative bodies and governing boards.
State Conference Meetings and Programs
State conferences should convene at times and places most convenient for the largest attendance of chapter delegates. Usually there are no two Saturday meetings, one in the fall during or near October, and a second one in the spring during March or April. The Washington office should be informed of the times and places of state conference meetings. In large states such gathering may be held on a campus near the geographic center of the state and then rotated; in more compact states location is less of a problem. Meeting arrangements should be announced well in advance and a map and description of the available facilities, including overnight housing, if needed should accompany the notice. Not later than one week beforehand a proposed agenda, the texts of any resolutions that will be voted upon, and copies of any materials to be discussed should be forwarded to those who will attend the conference meeting, either via a conference newsletter or by means of a mailing addressed to chapter presidents and/or secretaries.
A social hour, followed by a dinner and a featured speaker, may be scheduled for Friday evening (which is also a good time for the conference executive committee and other committees to meet). Then, on Saturday morning it is customary to have a continental breakfast or at least coffee and tea set up for the delegates to enjoy before the meeting. Do not begin before 9:30 or 10:00 a.m., for delegates who do not leave home before Saturday morning need ample travel time. Have a table near the entrance to the assembly room to distribute name tags and meeting materials, collect registration fees and have inscribed on a signup sheet the names, addresses, home and office telephone numbers, institutional and departmental affiliations, and AAUP offices, if any, of the arriving delegates. Such sheets should be duplicated and used to expand data bases for conference officers for reference purposes.
The conference president's gavel should hit the lectern promptly at the announced starting time. A copy of Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised, should be available to consult, along with copies of the conference constitution and the AAUP Redbook. The conference president may at the outset of the meeting designated a parliamentarian. After statements of welcome, among which may be one from a local campus official, and the recognition of visitors, the agenda is formally adopted; the minutes of the previous meeting (a draft of which should have been mailed out to the members in advance) are approved; a treasurer's report is also submitted for information and approval; the president makes announcements and presents special action items of which notice has already been given; committee chairpersons report; the lobbyist and/or executive secretary also reports; old carryover business and new business consisting of last minute unannounced items are acted upon; and a guest speaker may be introduced for whatever part of the program he or she is to occupy. Panel discussions of pending issues may be scheduled. If time permits, chapter delegates may describe conditions on their campuses, and the meeting should not be adjourned without expressions of appreciation to those hosting the affair.
At spring conference meetings, presidents should provide for the election, by secret ballot, of four such representatives to the June ASC meeting and two delegates to the Annual Meeting. All action taken by a state conference at any meeting, along with brief summaries of the discussion relating to them, and the names and affiliations of those present, should be recorded by the secretary, and these minutes should thereafter be supplied to the other officers in time for actions voted at the meetings to be taken in a timely manner.
The Association President, Council members representing the district in which the state conference is located, and other national officers residing in that state, are ex officio members of the conference and should be invited to its meetings, and sent its newsletters. They should be given time on the program to address matters of mutual interest and respond to questions.
Other guest speakers may include representatives of state government with responsibilities for higher education; experts in such fields as compensation, health care, retirement, and certain technical areas like the uses of computers of academic life; and people well-versed in the knowledge of trends and movements in higher education, such as assessment and evaluation techniques and methods of management. Delegates at state conference meetings can learn what is happening on other campuses; what they may adopt for their own use; what dangers lie ahead; and what comparisons may be useful in pursuing AAUP objectives at their own institutions.
The Assembly of State Conferences
The Council of the State and Regional Conferences, as it was originally designated, was formed at a caucus of conference representatives attending the 1959 Annual Meeting. Fourteen of twenty-seven existing conferences created an ad hoc committee to compose a constitution for the new organization, the AAUP constitution was amended to designate the Chair of the Assembly of State Conference as it came to be called by the 1970's as an ex officio member of both the Council and its Executive Committee and the immediate past Chair of the ASC as an ex officio member of the Council. Formal recommendations from ASC meetings were to "go to the Council for consideration and possible transmission to [Annual] Meetings of the Association."
Currently, the purpose of the ASC is "to facilitate cooperation, and to provide for the dissemination of pertinent information, among the officers and members of the various state conferences, as well as to promote the general objectives of the AAUP. The ASC meets once yearly during the Annual Meeting week in June, usually for a two-hour period on Wednesday evening following Legislative Relations (or Capitol Hill) Day, and a second two-hour session on Thursday. The ASC's members are the state conferences, each of which is entitled to select by secret ballot up to four representatives to vote at the June ASC meeting. The organization's executive committee is composed of a Chair, a Vice Chair, a Secretary, a Treasurer, the immediate past Chair, and one at-large member. The Secretary and Treasurer are elected by a majority vote of the conference representatives present at June meetings in even-numbered years; the Chair, Vice-Chair, and at-large member of the Executive Committee are similarly elected in odd-numbered years. At least two candidates for each of the above-mentioned offices, except the at-large position, must be presented by a nominating committee, with candidates recommended by delegates from three or more state conferences automatically included among the nominees. Nominations may also be made from the floor, a practice used in recent years to select the at-large member of the ASC executive committee from between the two unsuccessful candidates for Chair and Vice-Chair. Short resumes of past AAUP and related service are distributed, and time has usually been set aside for the candidates to speak.
Among the duties of the ASC Chair are to (1) call meetings of the Executive Committee and special meetings of the Assembly; (2) preside at such meetings and also regular June ASC meetings and meetings of the Conference Grants Committee; (3) appoint a nominating committee early enough in the year for it to submit a slate of candidates for ASC offices not later than six weeks before the June meetings of the assemble; (4) communicate with the conferences by means of a publication known as Assembly Call to inform them in timely fashion of the time and place and tentative agenda for the June ASC meeting and about deadlines for sending in conference grant applications and names of conference representatives at ASC meetings; (5) arrange visits to conferences by ASC leaders; and (6) represent the state conferences and the ASC on both the AAUP's national Council and its Executive Committee.
ASC Meetings
The time available for the June ASC meetings is so limited that they must be conducted in a very businesslike fashion. The typical format includes adopting an agenda mailed out in advance, approving the minutes of the previous meeting, hearing a treasurer's report, listening to the Chair relate the "state of the conferences" and the activities of the Assembly officers acting on resolutions forwarded from member conferences, acting on requests for approval of comprehensive dues supplied by Committee F, and holding elections of ASC officers. The ASC Chair will incorporate into his or her presentation to the Council and the Annual Meeting thereafter not only what was reported to the ASC but also what was done by the ASC.
In 1969 and again in 1970 the ASC sponsored two well-attended National Leadership Institutes for conference officers, and in 1976 it conducted a highly praised Faculty-Administrator-Legislator seminar in Arlie, Virginia. Attendance at such programs, as well as attendance at annual ASC meetings, was supported by special travel agents for participants, a practice which lapsed during the 1980's in an era of stringent economies for the Association.
Capitol Hill Day, when the Annual Meeting is in Washington, D.C., is an important occasion for state conference representatives attending ASC meetings. Conference presidents should consult with AAUP members who plan to go to Washington from their state and then contact their U.S. senators and congressmen well in advance to set up appointments on Capitol Hill Day to discuss higher education matters. Assistance in doing this is available at the Washington office. (See the discussion on the work of Committee R earlier in this handbook for further guidance.)
EMPLOYMENT ISSUES
From time to time the Association has published guidelines dealing with various aspects of employment. Some of these are summarized or reference below.
Workloads
The Redbook contains (on pp. 163-166) a "Statement on Faculty Workload" which stipulates that teaching loads at the undergraduate level should not exceed twelve hours per week, "with no more than six separate course preparations during the academic year," while at the graduate level the load should be no more than nine hours weekly. The preferred pattern, however, would be nine and six hours, respectively. Workload policy should be determined only with full faculty involvement. The statement details many factors that should be considered in determining faculty workloads. (For background on the three-year evolution of this statement, see the AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1966, pp. 385-386, and March 1970, pp. 30-32.)
Outsiders to academia, including public officials and members of governing boards, frequently misunderstand what is meant by teaching loads. A California administrator once put the matter in perspective in an address to a group of legislators. "The whole concept of teaching hours," he said, "... as a measure of faculty productivity is terribly misleading.... To use such simplistic measures gives the impression that teaching in the classroom is all a professor does.... If we to apply the same narrow definition of workload to other fields we could assume that all a surgeon does is operate, or all that a policeman does is make arrests. The average National Football League player is engaged in actual combat only about an hour and a half in an entire fourteen-game season. Is this the only facet of his job to be considered?" (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, pp. 302-303.)
Entering and Leaving Employment
Standards for recruitment and resignations of faculty members are contained on pages 81-82 of the Redbook. Negotiations should not be kept secret from current employers; resignations should not take place after May 15 or thirty days after receiving notification of the term of employment for the following year, "whichever date occurs later;" and an offer of employment should not be tenured after May 1.
Credit for Previous Service
In 1987 Committee A reaffirmed a nine-year-old AAUP statement "On Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere as Part of the Probationary Period" (for which see Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, p. 52 and AAUP Bulletin, Sept. 1978, pp. 274-275), which reiterated the admonition in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure that "the precise terms and conditions of every appointment should be stated in writing and be in the possession of both institution and teacher before the appointment is consummated," and added that the amount of previous service to be credited "should be determined and set forth in writing at the time of the initial appointment." Difficult questions, such as how to treat service which took place "many years in the past," or "in a distinctly different area," should be referred to a faculty committee. Credit should normally be given for up to three years or appropriate "probationary service in one or more institutions" on a seven-year tenure track appointment.
Job Interviews
As part of the hiring process departments may wish to incorporate into the campus visits of applicants a sample lecture, in order to gain some first-hand indication of teaching ability. Indeed, some schools ask for two such presentations, one in the form of "a lesson of thirty to fifty minutes," and the second in the guise of a scholarly discourse based on work in the candidate's research field. In the former instance, usually targeted at undergraduate audiences, the applicant may choose his or her method (lecture, question and answer, discussion, etc.); may distribute written handouts; may use audiovisual materials. The second mode of presentation usually calls for the equivalent of a paper delivered before a scholarly meeting or to an advanced graduate seminar. (For further guidance see the AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1974, pp. 379-382.)
Ideology and Employment
The employment process necessarily involves value judgments regarding ideology and competence. Committee A has published observations on this subject (for which see Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1986, pp. 1a-2a). Although "the principles of academic freedom do not assume that every tributary and rivulet from a disciplinary stream has per se a right to be represented within a given department," and despite the fact that they do not excuse or protect "mendacity, plagiarism, intentional mismanagement of experiments, scholarly slovenliness and the like, "new ideas and approaches should be welcome; "so that students are enabled to make informed choices among them." In the end, "good faith judgments ... wisely made" are the best guarantee that the selection process will not exclude otherwise competent candidates merely because of conflict "between their ideas and those which constitute or issue from some contemporary orthodoxy."
First Amendment Rights
The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure upholds the right of professors to exercise their freedom of speech as citizens but calls for restraint, respect for the opinions of others, accuracy, and disclaimers of being an institutional spokesperson. Should a faculty member fail to observe the above limitations, an administration may institute dismissal proceedings. Such proceedings, Committee A has declared, should include a hearing before an elected faculty committee and should "take into account the faculty member's entire record as a teacher and scholar." Opinions expressed by professors in their capacity as citizens "cannot constitute grounds for dismissal" unless they clearly demonstrate "the faculty member's unfitness for his position," and the burden of proof is on those making the charges. Hence extramural utterances should rarely lead to dismissal. (See the Redbook, p. 32, and the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1965, p. 29.)
Political Participation
The Association has taken a strong position on the right of professors as citizens to engage in political activity, so far as such activity is consistent with their primary obligations as teachers and scholars. Policies allowing leaves of absence "incident to political activity" are encouraged, as are reductions of workload, "accompanied by equitable adjustment of compensation when necessary." (See Redbook, pp. 33-34.)
The Status of Librarians
In 1973 the AAUP joined the Association of College and Research Libraries in approving a "Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians," the "essential criterion" for which was stipulated as "the function of the librarian as a participant in the processes of teaching and research." Librarians with faculty status should have the same rights and responsibilities as other members of the faculty and "should have a voice in the development of the institution's educational policy." All professors "should take an active interest in the operation and development of the library," and the determination of library policies that affect academic programs and "the general interests of the institution" should be shared by the governing board, the library faculty, and "representatives of the general faculty." (Redbook, pp. 134-135.) For a critique on "The Mismanagement of College Libraries" and a rejoinder, both of which contain insights into academic library operations, see the AAUP Bulletin, March 1966, pp. 46-51 and Sept. 1966, pp. 283-289.
Departmental and School Administration
Department chairpersons have always been viewed by the AAUP as part of the faculty and not as "managerial" personnel. They should therefore not be excluded from faculty bargaining units. As long ago as 1916, the Association's second president expressed a desire to abolish "the department-head system," one "suitable for a cotton-factory, not for a university.... The executive duties of a university-department can be amply performed by a chairman, or other competent drudge." (AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1973, pp. 20-21 and fall 1970, p. 301.)
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