November 12, 2024
FSU Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
November 12, 2024 3:30pm (Zoom)
Executive Committee Members Present: Caroline Coscia (President); Sana Haroon (Vice President); Suha Ballout; Lynne Benson; Jorge Capetillo; Andrew Elder; Monique Fuguet; Karen Grayson; Patricia Krueger-Henney; Jared Poole; Alejandro Reuss; Rania Said; Wei Zhang
Others Present: Lorenzo Nencioli (FSU Senior Staff Member); Maria Hegbloom (MTA Field Rep); Michael Johnson (Special Assistant to the Chancelor for Black Life)
EXECUTIVE SESSION
- Uncollectable dues (Monique): Vote on uncollectable dues
- Monique (Treasurer) shares information about dues that may be uncollectable.
- Executive Committee votes on dues deemed uncollectable. Unanimously approved recommendations.
OPEN SESSION
- Approval of Minutes: Motion to approve the minutes of the October 22 Executive Committee meeting. Motion seconded. Motion passes.
- Expanding the FSU Executive Committee (Monique): Call for volunteers to compose a proposal.
- Aimed at fostering more participation from members, better organizing and acknowledging the work/contributions of ExCom members, and improving member satisfaction with the union.
- Lynne, Monique, Caroline, and Alejandro volunteer to investigate the issue further.
- Visit from Michael Johnson, Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Black Life (SACBL):
- Michael expresses interest in learning from FSU about the campus needs he can meet in the role of SACBL.
- Shares information about the origin and nature of the role and his goals.
- He notes that the SACBL is not necessarily a permanent position/role. It came about in response to a specific historical moment as part of Chancellor’s strategy when he first came to campus.
- Organize events such as BLM Day. Michael is open to feedback/suggestions for future themes.
- Organize activities such as collaborate to study and address issue of retention of Black faculty; support recruitment/retention of Black students; support outreach to Black alumni.
- ExCom members note that our lack of retention of faculty of color is a concern of FSU’s that we have pressured administration on for some time.
- Tasked with leading institutions/bodies such as the Restorative Justice Commission. He notes that refining the purpose of RJC is an important next step.
- BHE Dental Plan (Rania): Update on examination of benefits as some members have struggled to understand and use them.
- Caroline supplied screenshots of website through which we use our benefits.
- Dental is supported through the Health and Welfare Trust. For a long time we have been dissatisfied with the trust. It is possible that the board has been somewhat negligent of the trust, but we cannot make a change unilaterally because we do not hold enough seats on the board. MTA has an effort underway to improve the trust in a couple ways; importantly, they were able to pass a vote commissioning a study to determine what it would take to transfer us over to a different, larger trust of public sector workers.
- Technology Policy (Sana): Discussion.
- We discussed at a previous meeting that members noticed that a new technology policy was rolled out in the last few years that seems to have far reaching implications.
- Now, members are receiving notices of a mandatory security training, at the end of which they must accept/sign to indicate their agreement to this new policy.
- Although we may have been able to demand that we bargain over this new policy, that might not be possible at this point, because the policy is now quite old.
- It is suggested that if legal avenues are closed, we may want to at least issue a statement of concern/objection.
- It is suggested that to organize around this issue we might:
- Gather questions about the policy amongst ourselves.
- Pool questions; write to members to gather more questions if useful.
- Publicly submit questions to administration.
- ExCom agrees to follow this course of action.
MEETING ADJOURNS