March 28, 2025

FSU Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

March 28, 2025 3:30pm (Zoom)

Executive Committee Members Present: Caroline Coscia (President); Sana Haroon (Vice President); Lynne Benson; Andrew Elder; Monique Fuguet; Karen Grayson; Wei Zhang

Others Present: Lorenzo Nencioli (FSU Senior Staff Member); Maria Hegbloom (MTA Field Rep); Daria Boeninger; Rita Kiki Edozie, Sandra Copman, Peggy Vaughan; Janna Kellinger

1. Approval of Minutes: No minutes available to approve from March 7, 2025 meeting.
   
    
2. MTA Higher Ed Push Back events
   
   1. More will be announced in the Monday Nuts and Bolts.
   2. Important to join together with our fellow Union members across campus.
   3. April 8 Day of Action, an upcoming May Day action coming up.
   4. Marie: It’s important to pace ourselves, this is going to be a longer fight.
3. Fall 2025 Article 5 CLRs and stipends: vote to accept list (might be a partial list)
   
   1. Caroline asked that FSU ExComm members review these and be prepared for an email vote.
   2. Note: With Jason R. running unopposed. We are assuming he has received the majority of votes cast and therefore will be your new vice president. This then allows us to do one vote and not a subsequent vote in another meeting.

FALL 2025

SPRING 2026

4. AUP Action Committee: Wei and Daria reporting out.

1. Prepared list of questions for Amy Todd to bring to Faculty Council on April 7.
2. Working with Marie H. on this.
3. Caroline will forward this to the personal emails for ExComm members, who will need to provide feedback by April 1.
4. Decided to focus on overarching and bigger issues and questions, like: The tone of the policy (ours is very negative), the fact that our policy doesn’t include any sense of protecting users from privacy encroachment, why does it sound like the user has the final responsibility rather than the university, etc.
5. Maria is setting up something on SharePoint with an educational flyer that people can access via a QR code. People will be able to sign up with their personal email for updates. This will be the list we use for the email action.
6. Policy seems like it was developed without consulting any relevant parties—many (including department chairs) were surprised by the things that the policy requires of them.
7. The Action: After faculty council, a flyer with a QR code will help with collecting personal email addresses from faculty and librarians. We would then provide a list of questions that they can email administration with these questions. We will all need to help out with distributing these flyers.
8. Caroline will reach out to the Chairs union

5. ICE abductions

1. What can we do to restate and shore up FSU’s commitment to non-citizen community members?
2. Attorney General for Massachusetts has asked campuses to identify for themselves what safe spaces there are for people.
3. What are people hearing from their networks and their communities? What is our role as the FSU to address this?
   
   1. Recommend to members that everyone have red cards and flyers and make those available to students.
   2. Red cards available to download here: https://www.ilrc.org/red-cards-tarjetas-rojas
   3. Pinning safe space flyers on doors.

6. MTA Annual Meeting: May 2 and 3 in Springfield

1. We get to send a certain number of delegates.
2. New business items with budgetary implications need to be submitted by April 28, but we should do it as soon as possible so it’s not low on the agenda.
3. Email Caroline if you’re interested in attending. The FSU does have some funds for reimbursement.

7. FSU Annual Budget:

1. Caroline Coscia will share. We need to share with members before annual meeting.
2. Notes from March 7 meeting:
   
   1. FSU Fiscal Year: Our fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th.
   2. Executive Committee and the budget: We are the governing body of the FSU and as such, we are responsible for matters relating to policies, goals and fiscal management. It is our responsibility to determine a budget to be presented to the full membership at our annual meeting. This requires a formal vote to recommend a budget to the annual meeting.
   3. Annual Meeting: An Annual Meeting is legally required. Its purpose is to share information about our activities, adopt a budget, adopt any proposed bylaws and take actions on any submitted new business items.
   4. Our Annual Meeting is Thursday, April 17^th: Once the Annual Meeting date is established, our policies contain a specific timeline for when communications are to be made to our members.
      
      1. Members must be notified of the meeting no less than 30 days prior to the meeting. This will be done in the March 10th Nuts & Bolts.
      2. The Annual Meeting agenda including the budget must be sent to members no later than 14 days prior to the meeting. The goal is to send the materials on April 1st.
   5. Annual Meeting and the Budget Recommendation: To send members annual meeting information including the proposed budget requires us to vote no later than March 28th. We are meeting tomorrow, March 7th and then again on March 28th. Beginning our discussion (and maybe the vote) on March 7th reduces the pressure to do all on March 28th.
   6. MSP and the JCC:
      
      1. We, along with the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) at UMass Amherst, are officially and legally bound together as a single bargaining unit. A Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) consists of representatives from both FSU and MSP, which is the governing body for the bargaining unit.
      2. Prior to 2017, we bargained with MSP meaning FSU and MSP bargaining teams worked together and bargained with both UMA and UMB administration resulting in one contract.
   7. JCC Budget:
      
      1. The JCC handles the finances – receive dues monies from UMB and UMA human resources, pays MTA the member dues, maintains our checking accounts, and pays out bills. There is a paid staffer who does all this work. Each year a budget for the JCC is developed and adopted by the JCC. This will happen on March 14th. The FSU pays one third (1/3) of the JCC budget as our membership is about a third of MSP’s.
      2. The proposed budget (developed by the staff) was received a few days ago and our portion has an increase of $1308 to $22,200. There is a new line item of $3000 for Quick Books online. I will be asking about this when the JCC meets next week.
   8. Our Budget and Dues:
      
      1. Just a reminder that when you pay your dues, it goes to three levels – FSU, MTA and NEA. Dues are taken from your paycheck and UMB sends the funds to the JCC for deposit. JCC then pays MTA (and the NEA portion) of their dues.
      2. Each of the three levels has staff and expenses. As such, each level will most likely need to raise dues each year to cover cost of living increases.
   9. Our Budget proposal:
      
      1. We are keeping most lines with the same level of funding.
      2. Increases include our senior staff member’s salary, taxes and health insurance. JCC uses the cost-of-living rate for the increase.
   10. Dues increases – consistency:
       
       1. When we raise dues, it has been one year $5, the next $25, the next $15. We are not consistent. MTA will be voting at their annual meeting of delegates (May 2nd and 3rd) for a bylaw change to always increase their dues 2.5% each year. It comes to about $19. This allows for better planning.
       2. We (Caroline, Sana and Monique) would like to do the same in that we agree to raise the FSU dues portion every year by set percent. Our members will then not be surprised by any large increase.
   11. 2.5% FSU increase: We thought 2.5%, the same as MTA, might be the right amount. Look forward to your comments and suggestions.
3. Monique Fuguet provided a presentation about the proposed budget.
4. Discussion:
   
   1. People should email Monique with any questions about the proposed budget.
   2. We will need to vote on this in our FSU ExComm meeting on Friday, March 28.
   3. Caroline will get numbers about membership from Lorenzo.
   4. Caroline and others will be at the next JCC meeting, where they’ll bring questions about the budget increase.

8. Tabling initiatives around student support (Karen)

1. Tabled for time.

9. Updates

1. Spring Elections
   
   1. Collective Bargaining: Please look for the next CBT email. Short version: not moving along at all.
   2. FSU Elections: Voting closes on March 31st.
   3. Space Policy DLR hearing has been scheduled: The in-person hearing is Jan 28, 2026. Yes, 2026.

10. FSU Events

1. March 27th CSU Bargaining Stand Out 2:00-2:30 ISC 3d floor: Please stop by to show your support for our sister union members.  This morning, we had four CSU members join us in Wheatley 5th floor for a standout before our bargaining session.
2. Weds., April 2nd FSU Lunchtime Conversations and Pizza. 12:00-1:30 UDC: Please come by the UDC to join colleagues and have a bite to eat.
3. Weds, April 8th 12:00-12:50PM Day of Action Teach In on each campus: MTA members across the UMass and state universities are putting together teach in as part of a Higher ed Day of Action.  Event details will be known by the end of the week.  It will include a 12:00-12:20PM video (shown on all campuses) followed by attendee discussion.
4. Events of Interest
   
   1. April 7th Faculty Council meeting: IT is scheduled to attend and answer questions related to the AUP policy.

MEETING ADJOURNS