The Point: Administration's Puzzling Protest Policy

11/21/2024

This week’s Point is a collaborative effort of the ad hoc Point Committee.

Administration’s Puzzling Protest Policy

On Tuesday, November 18, the Faculty Council met to deliberate whether to endorse a resolution passed by CLA Senate (see attached) condemning the University’s new (anti-)protest and demonstration policy (see the upsetting policy here; see in particular item “XI. Protest and Demonstration Policy”). Notwithstanding impressive filibustering by the Administration’s sacrificial lamb representative in the room, the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance, the Faculty Council unanimously endorsed CLA’s powerful resolution.

In last week’s Point, Steve Striffler ably demonstrated how Administration’s recent confusing behavior in three areas—overhauling the Graduate Assistantship allocation process, stonewalling unions at the bargaining table, and sudden unveiling of this draconian protest policy—can only be interpreted as top leadership’s abandonment of shared governance, giving rise to bad policy and more busy work for everyone else.

This week, the Point is diving back into the protest policy issue, because it really is that awful, and on Tuesday, many of us realized that it is worse than we first thought. Consider Administration’s key talking points:

• When asked what problem the policy was designed to address, Administration could only gesture vaguely at the recent construction on campus, which they claim is so dramatic (new quad, new paving, new benches, fewer catwalks, etc.) that it generates a need for a policy overhaul.
• When asked why they developed the policy without input from faculty and students, Administration again gestured vaguely at our incomprehensibly transformed Columbia Point, noting in particular that the transformation has been so rapid that a new policy simply had to be ready by the start of the new semester. Since faculty were away for the summer (what an unexpected, unpredictable twist of fate!), Administration admirably soldiered on without us.
• When asked how Administration developed the requisite knowledge base to formulate a new policy, attendees learned that UMB procured the services of a former police chief’s consulting firm.
• Administration’s talking points included the refrain that they will gladly have a conversation with any member of campus who wishes to provide input on this new policy—the one that was railroaded through without any regard for shared governance.

Their story does not withstand even cursory scrutiny:

• As several councilmembers indicated, there is no clear connection between the physical changes to campus and many of the specific elements of the protest policy. Nobody objects to sound, up-to-date policy. The question is, why is this policy appropriate? For instance, why should a new quad lead us to place seemingly unlimited financial liability on protest organizers?
• Many of these revolutionary amenities were first made available toward the end of Spring 2024, at which time it seems we were all allowed to saunter onto the quad unguarded by the aegis of this vital new policy. Moreover, the campus transformation has been foreseeable since at least 2020, leaving conservatively three years for Administration to develop policy in a way that respects shared governance. Finally, the belief that bypassing shared governance is a time-saving strategy is predicated on the assumption that faculty will just roll over when their prerogatives are trampled on. But we don’t! So here we are! Having the same conversation we would have had anyway, except that leadership has eroded trust, intimidated members of our community (see here), and threatened two members of a sibling union with disciplinary action (see here).
• As GEO’s representative observed, Administration’s priorities as revealed through what they manage to find money to support, continue to disappoint. Yet again, they’ve opened the checkbook for outside consultants, but when it comes to paying their own workers a living wage, they just gaze back at us with an apologetic countenance, pockets turned inside out like the Monopoly guy on the Poor Tax card.
• People are unlikely to trust you if you don’t first demonstrate trust in them. For instance, if Administration is so eager to have a conversation, why did they send only one member of their team?

This last point is important. Granting that Administration is quite busy, and few of us envy their jobs, it is a bit surprising that this particular meeting didn’t rise higher on their list of priorities. The point is not that we should expect every member of top leadership to attend. It is just to say that their absence is misaligned with the claim that they want to have dialogue.

Let’s be clear, the concern among members of campus is twofold:

1. The policy development trampled on shared governance.
2. Partially because of (a), the policy itself undermines our culture and mission at UMB—it has a chilling effect on protest and free speech, undermining academic freedom, which is integral to our reason-for-being.

Most narrowly, the concern is about our working conditions (so HR might be appropriate) and academic freedom (so the Provost probably should have been there), as well as students’ experiences on campus (where was Student Affairs?), particularly those who may be marginalized or otherwise vulnerable (if the Vice Chancellor of Inclusive Excellence isn’t allowed to shape this conversation, what is he allowed to do?). More broadly, it is an existential concern about our profession and our institution: what do we think this thing, university education, is? Who is the Other whom we find ourselves enacting a university with?

These concerns tap into fundamental aspects of campus life, calling (one would think) for an engaged, transparent, consensus-driven administration to devote more personnel to the conversation that they claim to be eager to have. Why are you asking us to come individually, one by one, behind closed doors, to bargain with you when literally dozens of us have devoted two hours of our day to have this conversation with you right here, right now? Well, I might know the answer to that question…

It is increasingly clear that it is up to staff to properly raise and address questions such as these. The FSU is here to do that work.