The COVID Wars Continue at Penn State--A Tale of Two Senate Resolutions. . . and the Administration's Counternarrative

 

 

I have been following the sadly patched up disaster that has been the lurching progress toward what passes for policy at Penn State relating to the COVID pandemic (Pandemic and the University: "An Open Letter from Penn State faculty to the Penn State Administration and the Board of Trustees").  Not that any of this could be helped.  All of the actors in this drama have been prisoners (and happily so) of the logic of the positions they occupy since the start of this pandemic, and they frankly know no better than what they are are doing.  But a century from now that will be the epitaph of the first part of this century: here lies homo adminstratus incapable of agency other than to perpetuate the structures of power and culture into which they were willingly thrust. But administrators are not the only university actors trapped within the logic of the structures that they populate.  University faculty also perform to type. That is especially the case for the faculty representatives in its University Senate.  All people of good will--to be sure.  But also all necessarily trapped within the logic of their position and discourses of power and legitimacy which binds each to the other. Faculty also may merit an epitaph of their own: here lies homo complicitus who is trapped by the logic of Esau, famished and willing to sell his birthright to the administrator Jacob for a pot of stew (Gen 25-34).  

The Penn State Administration's choice to privilege the un-vaccinated using the discursive tropes of contemporary anti-discrimination for atmospherics, has produced something of a backlash. That backlash has been strengthened in part because Penn State leadership choices (unlike their usual cautious efforts to fall somewhere hidden in the middle of bench marked decision making) put them somewhere on the right side of the outlier curve. 

That has provided an opening for the University Senate, which to some extent has been formally marginally in the process of developing administratively "sound" policy, within the meaning universe of the university administrative community. The Senate has rushed through that opening.  It has called a special meeting of that body to vote on two resolutions, aptly named Resolution A and Resolution B--offering up of two related versions of a counter narrative, and plan of action, to that marketed by the university administration. 

Resolution A offers a counter approach to the administration's COVID planning for the Fall 20201 Semester. It calls for  an immediate vaccination mandate for eligible Penn State students, faculty, and staff and and demands that, until full vaccination can occur, that the university impose rules for universal mask mandates; twice weekly COVID-19 testing for individuals without proof of vaccination; and adherence to CDC recommendations.  

Resolution B serves the purpose of condemning the current administrative approach. It os based on the obvious--the faculty was cut out of the process of decision making. It then seeks an affirmative vote of NO CONFIDENCE  in the University’s COVID-19 Plan for Fall 2021. That s followed by a more meek request to be included in whatever revised decision making process might be triggered as a result of the vote.

That the university's leadership core takes this serious might be evidenced by a last minute appeal to the faculty in the form of an "open letter" signed by the University's president. It s a marvelous statement of its kind.  At the same time its discursive allegiance to the forms and sensibilities of the administrative milieu evidences both the increasing gap that is now apparent in the way that faculty and administration approach an issue, and as well the differences in the way that risk is valued by those who bear the risk but have no control over risk versus those who control the risk but effectively can avoid bearing the risk. 

The Presidents narrative is detached (though the words are meant to suggest caring, at least form a distance)  and Olympian.  It speaks from above conveying the sense of those burdened with the balancing of factors in a "greater game" of which the productive forces of the university (faculty, staff, buildings, services) play a role. The Senate narrative is risk based as well, but from the perspective of risk bearers the discursive form is more personal and more immediate. The Senate balances risk on their bodies; the administration bases its risk calculus on abstractions--important abstractions to be sure, but bloodless, ledger entries within ideological structures of compliance and accountability regimes.  That remoteness, of course, diminishes the micro risks of those who must bear responsibility for the operation of the ecologies of principles that the administration seeks to advance.  And it ignores the anger of a professional caste once central to the running of the university that increasingly is recast in hyper technical functionaries and transformed into live ingots that serve as one factor in the production of university welfare. 

But decide for yourselves. In the immediate term the issue is simple enough--what and how does the university value most among the factors the university administrators balance, ad whose voices count (and how) in that balancing. 

The text of the two Senate Resolutions. along with the text of the Presidential Open Letter follow.

The Transfiguration of University Faculty Senates in the Shadow of Pandemic

 





 Pix: Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter on the Via Labicana.

University Faculty Senates in the United States continue to struggle to define their role within universities that increasingly function like large public administrative agencies. This emerging "university new era" governance framework is grounded in the professionalization of an administrator class and the de-professionalization of faculty. That shift has had profound effects both on the governance of the university as an institution, and on the way in which the role of faculty is understood as workers on sometimes enormous (and in some cases enormously wealthy) learning latifundia (some might suggest modern and more benign forms of knowledge encomienda).

Where once faculty were more centered within the governance of the university (and certainly within its colleges and departments), now de-profesisonalized, they are run like administrative agencies by bevies of (former) faculty eager to rise within the administrative state that the university has become. University administrations have become engorged with assistant, associate and special case deans; they have become the sum of departments that now manage virtually every aspect of academic life (1) as an aid to, (2) for the convenience of, and (3) because of the need for specialized administrative skills and attention in connection with, the processing of students through degree programs and the management of faculty. The later, no longer capable of self management because we have now come to believe they lack the skills. . . and certainly the time given their teaching and research obligations in frenetic competition in peer prestige markets on which their internal and external status depends), become objects of management.

And yet, like the institutions of Republican Rome after the establishment of the the Principate (and then the Dominate after the crisis of the 3rd century AD), the university's ancient institutions of shared governance, and the muscle memory of the rituals of an earlier age remain long after their effectiveness has passed into oblivion. Like the Roman Senate during the Principate (after the victory of Augustus Ceasar) University Faculty Senates assumed a consultative and consensus producing role in the years after the start of this century.  Penn State provided a good example of this general evolution, one in which the institutions of the Senate were respected even as its authority was being evacuated in favor of better managed administrative led special committees in which the real business of "shared" (and well managed) governance was being undertaken. 

But the COVID-19 pandemic may well have produced the crisis that may precipitate fairly rapid change along the trajectories described above.  That is, in the shadow of COVID-19 and its threat to the income and function of the university,  the pace and character of changes in the relationship between (de professionalized) faculty and (a rising corps of professional) administrators may move shared governance from the more benign forms of a Principate to those of a crisis entrenched and  much more bureaucratized and hierarchical Dominate.

These are the thoughts that came to mind as, along with other members of the Penn State University Community, I  received this message from the Chair of its University Faculty Senate:

Faculty Senate Newsletter

September 29, 2020

 

The University Faculty Senate will meet remotely on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. via ZOOM (link below). 

                                                

The Faculty Senate remains deeply committed to representing our faculty and student body during these challenging times. Numerous questions and concerns were raised at our recent plenary meeting on September 15, 2020 that could not be fully addressed due to time constraints. Events have continued to evolve, and we would benefit from continued and open conversation with all members of our community. In that spirit, the meeting will begin with an extensive Forensic to support a conversation about how we can best continue to meet our shared mission of teaching, research, creative activity, service and outreach for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania across our campuses.   

The Senate will consider One Forensic Report entitled: The State of Penn State.

                                                                                   

Faculty Senate meetings are held via ZOOM. Please refer to the University Faculty Senate website for ZOOM connection instructions.

 

Members of the University community are welcome to attend this meeting.  Any member of the University community not a member of the Senate may request the privilege of the floor on any item of business already before the Senate.  Such a request must be made to the Chair, through the Executive Director, at least five calendar days before the meeting at which the individual wishes to speak. The Senate Agenda will be posted on the Senate website one week prior to each meeting and the Senate Record (minutes) will be posted approximately three weeks following each meeting. 

For information on submitting major, minor, option, or course proposals, view the Guide to Curricular Procedures. View The Senate Curriculum Report.

 

 Beth Seymour
Chair, University Faculty Senate

The message, and the meeting to come, may well illustrate more the changing face of faculty involvement in governance, than it might produce any sort of consensus or action that will have real effect on the way n which the university is governed in this emerging era.  It expresses not just a concern, but also an attempt, to preserve what is left of faculty authority against its erosion in the face of the imperatives of the consequences of crisis that may go to the viability of the ancient institution in contemporary times. It suggests as well, the forms of the rear guard actions that may well characterize the forms of retreat from authority that ay characterize the next several years in the new era of the university and its workers.  The form of the university faculty senate will certainly remain with us for some time to time.  What one makes of it, though, remains an import and open question.

The Senate Forensic document along with the "University Faculty Senate Resolution on Return to Work" follow below.

 

Faculty Complicity in Undermining Shared Governance--A Hypothetical For a Large Public University

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2015)

Faculty governance depends, in large part, on the willingness of administration and faculty to bear the burdens of cooperation, consultation and compromise in furthering the mission of the university. That, in turn, is based in part on a further burden--the burden of undertaking institutional governance. For faculty, especially that involves the burden of collective governance responding to and assessing administrative actions, as well as in the traditional domains of faculty governance--courses, curriculum, and faculty tenure and promotion. In other words, while administration is institutionally designed for efficient operation, through the institution of hierarchical chain-of-command based operation, faculty governance is institutionally designed for inclusion and engagement in a necessarily inefficient meeting of relative equals gathered for collaborative decision making, consultation, action, and calling administration to account (see, e.g., here and here). 

Those foundational differences in institutional organization and operation cause conflict in collaboration, consultation and accountability.  Administration is built for speed, faculty governance is not.  Most often, that produces incentives to end run faculty (on efficiency grounds) or to cabin its engagement to those matters with respect to which administration views as of little importance to its leadership and command role (discussed here).

But faculty have also been socialized to belief in a hierarchy of values in governance that place efficiency and command and control structures well above the value of collaboration, debate and the processes of holding administration publicly to account.  To the extent that faculty view the logic of its own organization and operation as inefficient, it contributes to the undermining of its role in effective faculty governance by conceding that faculty impede rather than enhance governance by the very logic of its operational modes. 

This post includes a hypothetical example of the sort of complicit undermining of robust faculty governance that results when individual faculty seek to undo the core methods and techniques that are central to faculty governance.  The method is simple--importing values of efficiency and chain-of-command to faculty governance. The tragedy is that this may be done without thinking through implications or rather perhaps unconscious of their socialization into administrative cultures,or it may suggest the sort of systemic corruption that is itself something that may undermine faculty governance more profoundly still.

Power and Control Through the Prism of Benefits -- Between Administration and Faculty Senates Shared Governance When Convenient

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

The relationship between the institutional voice of a faculty, usually organized, as it is at Pennsylvania State University, through a University Faculty Senate, and an increasingly professionalized cadre of administrators, organized within a substantially autonomous and self-referencing organizational structure from out of which it manages and controls sub-system to sub-system structural coupling (see eg here and here (at pp. 15-25)), and usually in the form data harvesting and command communications,  has been quite dynamic over the course of the last several years.  That dynamism evidences both changes in practices and shifts in power among the various sub-systems (administrative organizations, faculty senate, board of trustees, legislature, etc.) that together formally constitute the governance apparatus of the university. 

The currency of power is usually expressed as control over (1) factors in the production of university wealth and prestige, (2) the results of that production (usually measured in money). The exercise of that power is usually effectuated through mechanisms, the objectives of which are to (1) socialize subordinate factors of production within power regimes (eg to get labor to do what is commanded or to accept what is done), and (2) to mask the realities of control through elaborate systems of transparency that feigns engagement but offers only the provision of information.

This post considers these trends in the context of the rejection, by Penn State's administrative apparatus, of the recommendations of the University Faculty Senate, and the larger institutional context, relevant to universities nationally, that these represent. I welcome a conversation and continue to look forward to rewarding interactions with all university stakeholders.

The Social Dimension of the Eugenics of Employee Benefits--The View From Penn State

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

I have been considering the move by universities to embrace cultures of eugenics through their benefits  programs (e.g., The New Eugenics--The Private Sector, the University, and Corporate Health and Wellness Initiatives (July 16, 2013); The "Wellness" Program at Penn State: The View From the Bottom Up (Aug. 6, 2013).  These programs are meant to serve as part of broader programs to manage employee behaviors to maximize their benefit to the university, and to capture, for the university, the increased productivity such behavior management generates (See here and here).  And the U.S. Government has sought to intervene to develop some regulatory structures within which employers are free to re-make their employees as they wish (See,  EEOC Issues Proposed Rule on Application of the ADA to Employer Wellness Programs ("The EEOC's proposed rule would provide much needed guidance to both employers and employees about how wellness programs offered as part of an employer's group health plan can comply with the ADA consistent with provisions governing wellness programs in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as amended by the Affordable Care Act. In addition, the EEOC is also publishing a Fact Sheet for Small Businesses and a Question and Answer document for the general public.")).

I noted that this new eugenics, articulated through the management behavior controls increasingly incorporated into benefits programs, appears also to have a social dimension. The social dimension of benefits eugenics does not target behavior modification--instead it targets  the cultures of employment and the control of the thoughts and values of employees through processes of socialization that manipulate employees into becoming the strongest advocates of the programs the university targets to employees but for the benefit of the university enterprise.

This focus on the control of the "hearts and minds" of the target population is an efficient response to the problem of reducing the cost of imposing and policing programs requiring changes in employee behaviors and beliefs. By convincing employees to become the principle advocates, and monitors, of these programs, the university, like of other "masters" (understood in the sens of that term in U.S. labor law), the university increases compliance rates and decreases the costs of disciplining workers into the new managerial order.  The business case for a social dimension, then, is obvious.  

The methodologies of socialization requires the deployment of the traditional tools of incentives and disincentives common to mass management int he U.S.  It is common knowledge that the tax law in the United States has been used to manage behaviors by increasing and decreasing the costs of targeted activity by raising or lowering the tax consequences of that activity.  Business has long known that cost is a significant factor in consumer choice (and when used unfairly by pricing below cost a mechanism for destroying competition).  Where the object is to induce employees to become the advocates of the choices that university administrators have made for them, the ability to manage the costs of choices provides an important tool of this sort of socialization. Such socialization is best undertaken covertly, though the long history of tax behavior manipulation suggests that it can be as successful when the project is fully transparent. It is also best managed when a conscious policy of administrators, though the logic of administrative cultures might permit the adoption of policies that have the effect of socialization management without the need for a formal or conscious policy.

The possibility of the use of the social element of eugenics--socialization management--among a target population, can thus be discerned, at times, by the approaches that universities take to the pricing of choices among benefits made available to employees.  These issues were discussed in the context of the consideration, by the Penn State University Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty Benefits, of the pricing of benefits at Penn State.  This consideration was presented in its Advisory and Consultative Report, Employee Contributions to Penn State’s Self-Insured Health Care Costs (March 17, 2015). The six recommendations of that report were overwhelming approved by the Senate at its March 2017 meeting (Record).  While the university administration has yet to speak to the recommendations, it would not surprise to expect a negative response, and perhaps a passionate one.  I will report on that response when and if it is made.

 The report has importance not merely for the internal policy debates at Penn State but rather for the way it indicates that large universities are beginning to change their administrative operations and develop policy and policy approaches in the face of the need to contain costs, and to effectively manage their employees.  The social costs of those decisions will have ramifications far beyond the university, and those might have political dimensions as well.

The POWERPOINT PRESENTATION may be accessed HERE.

The Report follows or may be accessed HERE.

Crafting a Policy for Open Access to Scholarly Publications From the Penn State University Faculty Senate

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

Open access has become an important issue for the dissemination of knowledge.  I have written about the way in which the efforts of the last decade to financially exploit the dissemination of knowledge has produced an increasingly class based system of knowledge dissemination in which the rich or well funded have access to knowledge denied to poorer individuals and institutions.  (E.g., Disseminating Knowledge Broadly--New Offerings From the Digital Commons Network (Jan. 7, 2014), Open Access at Penn State: Scholarsphere (Dec., 14, 2012);   Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering (May 28, 2012); Opening Access: Course Proposals Archive at Penn State (June 1, 2012); Digital Humanities From the CIC (Oct. 6, 2012).

Mirroring the age in which we live, and the technology that has changed the way in which knowledge is produced and distributed, we can no longer assume an identity between prestige markets for academics and the populations to which works of scholarship are addressed. Moreover, prestige markets themselves have fragmented--the markets for prestige and advancement within a university may not be the same as markets for prestige  within globally dispersed fields.  And universities have been taking to measure the impacts of such prestige in distinct ways, parsing out rewards accordingly.  Beyond that, and though sometimes it tends to be overlooked in the quest for institutional and personal self interest, their is or ought to be a public duty to the production of scholarship that might call for the broadest possible distribution of works to spread knowledge to those without access to the university or to those business enterprises that make money from publication. 

More insidious are current efforts (I know some in professional schools) the object of which is to seek to assert institutional rights to faculty scholarship and then to hijack scholarly production of faculty, in the name of open access.  The effect, of course, is to transfer effective control of scholarly work from faculty to the institution, leaving, of course, the rights of publishers untouched.  Between the effort of publishers (for perfectly reasonable economic reasons) to capture for themselves most of the value of scholarly production, and of the university (for perfectly plausible reasons of controlling the production of its "servants" at least to the extent that the university might satisfy its conscience that all such work are at least hypothetically plausibly connected to employment) to capture for itself the prestige and distribution value of scholarship that remains. (See here).

The Committee on Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology of the Penn State University Faculty Senate, has sought to develop a reasonable middle way, one that maintains the strong bond between scholars and the institutions in which they are resident, publishers rights (and the logic of publication prestige systems), and the control of scholars over their work. The Committee has proposed a "Resolution on Open Access to Scholarly Publications" for consideration by the University Faculty Senate at its April 28, 2015 meeting (April 28, 2015 Senate Agenda (PDF)).  The Resolution seeks to balance the needs for open access and knowledge dissemination, with the needs of publishers, the protection of faculty rights to their work which represents a substantial amount of their working time and efforts. It builds on earlier work of the Committee and ought to be seriously considered as a benign step toward more vigorous access to knowledge for those who the university, and its academics, ought to serve.

What Should be the Faculty Role in the Development of Administrative Regulation at the University--Penn State's Senate Debates the Issue

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

In September 2012, I noted a substantial issue of transparency at large universities. Focusing on the situation at Penn State I explained:

I have been writing of the obligations of transparency in its two principal forms.  As communicative transparency, this embodies the obligation on the part of the speaker to provide a sufficient amount of information in a timely manner that conveys what is necessary for stakeholders to understand actions undertaken, or that acknowledges communication received or that explains the nature of basis of a decision.  As engagement transparency, it provides  information sufficient for stakeholders to fully participate in decision making to the extent appropriate to the decision.  I have also suggested the challenges to institutional programs of actions in the face of failures of communicative and engagement transparency, and the potential for significantly adverse distraction from even significantly positive institutional objectives. (On the Importance of Transparency and the Relentless Pursuit of Knowledge in the Sandusky Affair--Governance in a New Era; see also here, here, and here)

Penn State has addressed the issue of communicative transparency, and has become something of a model for communication to its stakeholders. Penn State, however, has been slower to fully embrace  engagement transparency in a more meaningful way.  The issue of engagement transparency thus comes back to the University Faculty Senate.  For its January 2014 meeting, the Senate will engage in an open discussion (what we call a forensic), led by Ann H. Taylor, Senator representing Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Director of the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, about the need for greater engagement transparency in the development of university administrative regulations--especially those that directly impact faculty. 

This post includes Professor Taylor's description of the issue and some brief observations:

Indulging the Politics of Age in University Benefits--The Example of Move to Strip Older Family Members of Education Benefits

Universities sometimes provide a window onto the darker natures of societal expectations and beliefs.  And there is nothing like the drumbeat of fiscal crisis (the extent of which remains debatable) to permit these darker natures to indulge in otherwise taboo behaviors.  

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Nowhere now is this more notable than in the way in which the current (and fashionable) fear of a benefits "crisis" has permitted universities, and sometimes even their faculties, to indulge their darker passions in sometimes quite regrettable ways. I have written about the way in which these crises have permitted universities to indulge in eugenics.  (See, The New Eugenics--The Private Sector, the University, and Corporate Health and Wellness Initiatives).

Today universities are beginning to indulge their passion for discrimination--this time against older persons. The latest trend is marked by the indulgence of a desire to reduce the availability of educational benefits to faculty members by capping the age at which such benefits might be accessed.  

While such efforts tend to be carefully crafted to avoid legal liability for discrimination, the discriminatory intent, as a matter of social norms, is inescapable.  This post considers the vacuity of the rationales usually put forward to support these efforts and suggests that though there may be a legal authority to enact these discrimination, there ought to be a moral basis for opposing these efforts. 

Resolution to Honor the Late Penn State Vice Provost W. Terrell Jones

(Terrell Jones)

It is with great sorrow that I report the recent passing of Terrell Jones, whose presence we will miss greatly here at Penn State.  To honor his memory the Penn State University Faculty Senate will consider the following resolution to honor Dr. Jones at its next meeting.

Diversity in Silence--The Joint Diversity Task Force Report at Penn State University Becomes Less Visible

Penn State University, like many other similarly situated institutions of post secondary education, has been struggling with the very hard work of moving from the embrace of flowery statements of solidarity respecting diversity to actually making it a lived reality in the environment in which students, staff, faculty and particularly administrators operate. (Statement From the Penn State University Faculty Senate Chair ).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Among the most pro active elements of Penn State's conversations about diversity have been our students.  (Student Statement of Solidarity With Duke University Student Body).  Current efforts to bring greater focus on diversity started in January 20'13 when the students addressed the Penn State University Faculty Senate about the issue. (Diversity Awareness Task Force: Statement to the University Faculty Senate January 29, 2013).

Following that intervention a Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force was constituted including elements from the major stakeholders of the University.  Its charge included:

· Bring a diverse group of administrators, faculty and students together to work collaboratively to engage in dialogue and provide recommendations to the University Faculty Senate and Administration to enhance diversity awareness in the University Community.
· Thoroughly investigate practices that will be most effective to increase diversity understanding among the student body.
· Provide recommendations to the Faculty Senate Committee charged with reforming the general education curriculum as a whole.

The JDATF as now produced an informational Report.  It will be delivered to the Senate but in silence. The Penn State University Faculty Senate Council approved the JDATF’s Informational report and it will be included in the March 18th Senate Agenda. But it will not be presented.  It will be posted online only and that there will not be any presentation at the Senate meeting. The JDATF will not be able to present the report or stand for questions.

This response provides an excellent illustration of the approach to diversity at many institutions--engagement and oblivion.  This is all the more important because of it collateral result--Marginalization.  Even as the University devotes a tremendous amount of resources to its reconstruction of General Education, even as it focuses substantial public time to experiential learning and other important elements of a public education--the education and practice of diversity is buried and marginalized.  Consider this:

Our guiding principle in revising General Education is to enable students to acquire the skills, knowledge, and experiences for living and working in interconnected and globalized contexts, so they can contribute to making life better for others, themselves, and the larger world. (Penn State Gen Ed Matters, Vision)

Diversity plays virtually no role in the construction of either experiential learning or general education reform, unless, perhaps, one does some very deep interpretive reading.  The expectations appear simple enough--provide a formally responsive forum for meeting, produce a report well received but avoid robust interconnection to the vital life of the university, and then move on with a sense of satisfaction of having engaged with diversity.

You judge for yourselves.  For those interested, it might be possible to raise questions and issues--especiually about the ways in which diversity has been integrated as an important part of the reform of general education and the formation of premises that support experiential learning during the "New Business" segment of the Senate Meeting or elsewhere.  It might also be time for another forensic on the state of diversity in the University Faculty Senate. 

The Informational report follows:

Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State, Employer Responsibility and the Part Time Employee; The AAUP Speaks, the IRS Regulations Are Released

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ― also known as the Affordable CareAct or ACA ― is the health reform legislation passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The so-called employer responsibility provision of ACA (ACA § 1511 et seq.) must be implemented by all large employers, including Penn State, in 2014. The employer responsibility provisions primarily affect part-time faculty and staff. Employer penalties will be assessed if Penn State does not offer affordable health care to 95% of its employee population who meet the "full time" employee criteria of ACA.

The issue of calculating hours for part time employees, and the determinaiton of the provision (or no provisions) of benefits for part time employees remains very much a work in progress at Penn State, as it does for most large educational institutions across the nation. Penn State, in concert with its sister universities have chosen to adopt similar approaches for the determination of part time status, and for the benefits no longer available to that class of employee.

In the spirit of shared governance, university administrators determined that it would be useful and appropriate to solicit the input of faculty and others affected by the policy determinations that Penn State would be making with respect to these ACA requirements. The Penn State University faculty Senate obliged with a forensic discussion at its January, 2014 meeting (Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State--Employer Responsibility Provisions and the Part Time Employee).

Here is a link to last month's Senate Record of the forensic discussion, conducted by Profs Larry Backer (previous Chair of the Senate) and Ira Ropson (Chair of Faculty Benefits Committee). The session may be accessed here: http://senate.psu.edu/record/13-14/012814/012814record1.pdf

At session's end, all interested stakeholder were urged to contact our Human Resources personnel and the Senate Faculty Benefits Committee to provide necessary inpiut to help guide the administraiton in choosing the approach it would take, within the limits of its discretion under the ACA, with respect to Part Time Employees.

Among those important stakeholders who have sought to contribute to the discussion has been the Penn State Chapter of the AAUP. This post includes the letter sent by Brian A. Curran, Professor fo Art History at the University Park campus, and president of the new AAUP chapter to Lori Miraldi, Lecturer in Communication Arts and Sciences, and forwarded to Dr. Ropson.

It also includes the gist of the new Treasury Regulations that permit much harsher treatment of part time faculty employees.

If the University chooses the easy path, it might wrap itself in the protections of the Treasury regulations and  create a substantial class of exploitable academics who would contribute to better operating margins for the benefits of students being outfitted for maximizing their value to wage labor markets.  But it might be possible for the University to protect its financial position and deliver quality sustainable instruction without the need for the sort of exploitation the state now would permit. It is to be hoped that Ms. Susan Basso, Penn State Vice President for Human Resources,  and her colleagues at other large public institutions, would take the higher road.  But that remains to be seen.

Penn State University Faculty Senate Chair Censured by the Faculty Senate

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

I have been writing about the consequences of the wellness wars at Penn State.  (Penn State's New "Wellness Program" in the News (UPDATED Through 8 August 2013)). These consequences have affected not merely relations between faculty and administration (e.g., The Wellness Wars Continue--A Task Force is Constituted and the Institutional Role of the Faculty is Reduced in Function).  It has also brought attention to the issue of the duty of loyalty that a Senate Chair owes to the representative body of the Senate of which he is a part (e.g., The Wellness Wars and the Corruption of Shared Governance--The Fallout Continues). 

These consequences have not gone unnoticed by Faculty Senators.  At the University Faculty Senate meeting held December 10, 2013, two motions were presented for faculty consideration and vote at the January 2014 meeting. The first appears effectively as a censure motion; it condemns the Senate leadership for breach of their duty to the Senate and a failure of fidelity to the core responsibilities of their office. The second is an engagement motion.  It seeks to inject the Senate back into the process of deliberation of the scope and character of changes to the university's wellness programs in ways that the Task Force was meant to preclude.  These motions suggest both the extent of the damage done and the efforts undertaken to repair, to some extent, the weakening of shared governance.

At the January 28, 2014 Penn State University Faculty Senate meeting, both motions were passed.  It remains to be seen what, if any effect, that passage will have on the way in which the Senate leadership approaches its task and the university administration listens.  No official word has been distributed.

Both motions follow:

Transparency in Senate Elections--Reform From the Bottom Up

Faculty Senate elections at Penn State have traditionally been secret affairs.  The numbers are tabulated and the results announced with no indication of vote totals.  That fits in nicely in a system that traditionally sought to manage the nominations in a way that was meant to avoid plurality votes.

I am happy to report that at its January 28, 2014 meeting, the University Faculty Senate voted to approve a motion to make voting more transparent.  The motion was made by Senator Jim Ruiz (Harrisburg).

The approved motion follows.

Implementing the Affordable Care Act at Penn State--Employer Responsibility Provisions and the Part Time Employee

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ― also known as the Affordable CareAct or ACA ― is the health reform legislation passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The so-called employer responsibility provision of ACA (ACA § 1511 et seq.) must be implemented by all large employers, including Penn State, in 2014. The employer responsibility provisions primarily affect part-time faculty and staff. Employer penalties will be assessed if Penn State does not offer affordable health care to 95% of its employee population who meet the "full time" employee criteria of ACA.

But this requires defining part time employees. This is a straightforward exercise for hourly employees (assuming hours are fairly and completely counted, something of an open question in some institutions given working time assumptions). It becomes more difficult where hours are not counted directly, especially for example for teaching staff. As such, the determination of part time employment may in reality involve policy choices, and produce consequences, well beyond the extent to which the university is compelled by law, or obliged through the constraints of the social norms within which it operates, to provide benefits. And as an "industry leader", the choices Penn State makes will have some substantial influence of the approach generally adopted by other universities. As such, consideration of Penn State's ACA requirements has national dimensions.

Though it already appears to have moved to implement these provisions as it sees fit, Penn State has also nodded, if only as a matter of empty courtesy, in the direction of consultation with affected stakeholders, including the university faculty Senate. Originally that "transparency" effort was to be presented in the form of an "informational report" funneled through the Senate Faculty Benefits Committee. After sustained discussion about its form and content, I agreed to sponsor, in its place, a forensic discussion about the university's approach to ACA compliance (at least in this respect) as originally set out in that draft report.

This post includes the Forensic materials: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at Penn State: Employer Responsibility Provisions; Part Time Benefits and High Deductible Plans.
Feedback and comments on the university's implementation approaches as described below would be most welcome. 

And the Sponsors of the Call for the Special Senate Meeting Respond Back--A Continuing Wellness and Shared Governance Dialogue

I have recently posted the University Administration's first public response to the criticisms of the Wellness Program that culminated in the Wellness Program interactive dialogue at the September 10, 2013 University Faculty Senate Meeting (e.g.,Penn State Responds: A Message From the University President). To some that response appeared to be a welcome first step, but only that.  Below I have posted the reply to this Administration initiative from two of the sponsors of the Senate Special Meeting (e.g., Special Faculty Senate Meeting to Consider Penn State Wellness Program: Anouncement of Meeting of Senate Council to Review the Petition Along With Petition Text).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

I hope that those with views will make their opinions known either at the Special Senate meeting or otherwise to the parties.  As the letter below suggests, there are two intertwined issues that require resolution.  The first involves the substance of the Wellness programs itself, one that requires a greater cultivation of sensitivity to the human rights issues involved in the employment relationship especially when it touches on the most personal issues of human dignity. The second involves the continued cultivation of cultures of shared governance.  This, in turn, implicates the need to avoid formalism--the appearance of shared governance through the establishment of bodies that appear to include stakeholders--but which have no functional value, either because the selection of stakeholders have been marred by corruption and cronyism or because decisions will have been taken elsewhere and presented ready made for the appearance of consultation and approval.  It remains to be seen whether, together, the institutional leadership of the Senate and the university are up to either task.

Statement and White Paper From Penn State Faculty--"Assessing the Evidence for Penn State University’s “Take Care of Your Health” Benefits Program"

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

In the run up to the September 10, 2013 University Faculty Senate meeting to be held on the Penn State University Park campus (agenda HERE) and discussion about the new Penn State Wellness Program, some faculty have issued a statement and a report that might be of interest to those who are interested in the wider debate about changes to benefit structures in American enterprises, including universities.  This debate will likely have repercussions not just within the industry of the university but also influence the way that businesses may approach benefits and wellness programs for their own employees.  For that reason alone, this debate between faculty, university administrators and the health benefit provider industry may be useful for students of American industry and health policy and administration. One hopes that university administrators, like the faculty at Penn State will profit from a careful reading and consideration of these contributions ot the debate.   

This post includes: (1)  Statement of Jim Ruiz, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Matthew Woessner, Associate Professor of Political Science, to the Members of the Penn State University Faculty Senate dated Sept. 8, 2013; and (2)  Dennis Scanlon and Dennis Shea, "Assessing the Evidence for Penn State University's 'Take Care of Your Health' Benefits Program," Sept. 9, 2013 (the authors are professors in the Department of Health Policy & Administration, Penn Sate University).

The Wellness Wars at Penn State--Is the Institutional Faculty Splintering?

I have been following the quite heated controversy over Penn State's new wellness program.  Like the Sandusky scandal of 2011, the scandal generated by the roll out of this eugenics program for faculty and staff will have consequences far beyond what would have been an eminently repairable gaff in program implementation (e.g., Susan Berry, Penn State Employees Protest Wellness Mandate over Privacy Concerns, Breitbart, Aug., 21, 2013 (tying wellness efforts to repercussions from Obamacare); Tom Emerick and Al Lewis, The Danger of Wellness Programs: Don't Become the Next Penn State, Harvard Business Review, Aug. 20, 2013 (managerial failures)).  

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Beyond the obvious errors one could chronicle relating to the management of the program's roll out (a program the general approach of which was inevitable though not in the form eventually adopted and defended in every detail) through the well known but substantially ignored channels for engagement and participation at the university, the regrettable choices of some in appearing by their choices and actions to make the resulting controversy personal and the strategic missteps in responding to what should have been expected reactions, and the appearance of an unwillingness to reach out in a well focused way to key stakeholders,  it might be argued that some of those charged with the imposition of this program have effectively played into the hands of any number of actors who might seek to use these managerial failures as a way of opening opportunities that will have an impact far more substantial than the benefit program changes that would have been relatively easy to procure acceptance with the right touch. But all of that is water under the bridge.  All actors have staked out their positions and it is now merely a matter of following this aggregated set of strategic calculations, and the choices that followed, to their conclusion.   

This post considers an important though overlooked consequence--the University Faculty Senate's responses in the face of sustained faculty anger and frustration (however misdirected or wrong) has produced one result already, the fracture of faculty cohesion institutionally represented by its University Faculty Senate.  The Faculty Senate may be losing coherence; more worrisome, it may be losing relevance to faculty interested in protecting their interests within the political structures of the university.  The University Faculty Senate may have taken an inadvertent  step toward its transformation into a form of employer union and low level administrative body within the university's management structures.  Most important, it is possible that the pace and form of its response might well have paved the way for something that would have been improbable even six months ago--the establishment of a potentially significant new faculty representative organization (and competitor for faculty loyalty and support) at the university, the American Association of University Professors.  It is far too early to tell whether or to what extent the AAUP chapter will be able to displace or supplement the University Faculty Senate, but its establishment suggests that even the University Faculty Senate is accountable to its members and that members will use what power they have to either work within the organization or if thwarted to seek representation elsewhere. As a former Chair of the University Faculty Senate I view this as regrettable. As a member of the faculty and an AAUP member I can only hope that this new chapter will represent its constituents and the rest of the faculty with honor, sympathy and restraint.    

Remarks of the Senate Chair Made at the April 23, 2013 Meeting of the Penn State Faculty Senate

The Penn State University Faculty Senate held its first meeting of this academic year on Tuesday April 23, 2013 (e.g. Faculty Senate April 23, 2013 Meeting Agenda). This post includes the remarks I made at the conclusion of that meeting.  They are my last remarks as Chair of the Faculty Senate and represent both a summing up and a look to future challenges.

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

This post will also be the last for the "Faculty Voice" but not the end of this blog.  Having dedicated my year as Chair to issues of governance and transparency, it seemed to make sense to continue the blog during the year I assume the duties of Immediate Past Chair of the University Faculty Senate.  In its new form this blog will have a new name--Monitoring University Governance--and a new focus: engaging in a spirit of collegial cooperation, core issues of transparency and shared governance that marks the essence of university organization and governance not just at Penn State but elsewhere within universities in the United States and abroad.      

Upcoming Senate Forensic Session--"Search for the Next University President--Senate Input"

I am happy to announce that at the last Senate Council meeting there was a consensus for formal Senate participation in the recent efforts by the outside consulting firm Isaacson Miller to gather information from important stakeholders at the university about what the Presidential search committees ought to be looking for in reviewing candidates for the next president of Penn State.  

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

The forensic session will take place at the last Senate meeting of the Spring Term, April 23, 2013 at Kern Hall at Penn State. All faculty are encouraged to send their thoughts to their Senate representatives and all Senators are encouraged to speak up during the forensic.  The session is as important for whatever insights our executive search firm may choose to draw form it as it for the faculty's discussion of its sense of the appropriate relationships between faculty and high administrative officials and the character consequentially, of those who are fit to hold that position.  It is, in this sense, an important marker of faculty thinking about the character of shared governance and its expression in the person and office of president.  I am looking forward to a lively and informative session.  

Statement of Senate Chair Made at the March 12, 2013 Penn State University Faculty Senate Meeting: Restructuring the Way We Operate

The Penn State University Faculty Senate held its fourth meeting of this academic year on Tuesday January 29, 2013 (e.g. Faculty Senate March 12, 2013 Meeting Agenda).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

 I used the occasion to speak to the important reports of the Special Committee on University Governance, and those relating to faculty salaries, tenure flows, and informational reporting.  

I am pleased to report that at the meeting the University Faculty Senate endorsed the Report of the Special Committee for University Governance,   "Improving the Governance of Penn State, Revising the Structure of its Board of Trustees, and Furthering the Academic Mission of the University:  Report and Recommendations of the Special Committee on University Governance."  That endorsement will be conveyed to the Penn State University Board of Trustees.