This morning at 4:30 AM I sent two separate messages to two
friends and colleagues who are very knowledgeable. The both responded shortly after 8:00 AM. They both strongly recommended giving money
to the DCC, but notice how different they are in the detail! One gives a
short answer, and the other writes an essay!
Short-Answer Response
Best
place right now. DCC needs all the support we can give them. Please thank your
friend.
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Essay Response
Tina, thank you for passing on
the question that someone asked you, thereby giving me an opportunity to think
about it. Maybe my thoughts can be helpful to others who are advocating for
this cause. I'm sorry this is long but there are a lot of reasons to support
the DCC!! They've put out their own list. Here's mine.
There is never any one most
worthy cause to donate to---there are always competing places to put one's
resources for which an excellent case can be made. However, the Department
Chairs Council has some compelling things going for it in terms of what
would be now a very important cause to support. I've donated twice before, and
will do so again. From my own perspective, never having been a chair, here are
some unique benefits of supporting that particular cause and why now. Both
current employees and retirees may want to consider these points:
The danger is genuine of completely
losing the department chairs system at CCSF and having all decisions affecting
us directly made by deans. The Department Chair Council (DCC) has been strongly
targeted by those who would completely transform the nature of the college and
who state that as their goal. When Pamela Fisher first got here and the chairs
introduced themselves, her very first reaction ---essentially before "nice
to meet you" ---was that she was "against all that." There was a
written proposal under the next interim chancellor to drastically reduce the
number of chairs, even eliminating the chair of ESL (largest CCSF department)!
It was only the strong pushback that reinstated that position. Our
pushback and advocacy remain critical. Every document released relating to
the school or campus deans positions now attempts to usurp duties that
are contractually the chairs' duties. Eliminating the DCC is clearly at the top
of the list, the agenda. The onslaught is continuous and requires a
counter-force or it will be victorious.
There is a lot of middle
ground that can be explored and that could be done to the benefit of the
college, but in order to do that, the DCC must be kept in place. I think there
is some acknowledgement that the deans, the administration, have not always been
ready to draw a line and say, "This is something on which we will take
input, but for various reasons it needs to be an administrative decision. The
college is best served by that." Occasionally, that can be the case
and when it is the case, the deans need to know what their job is, and it needs
to be clear to everyone else too. That is different from changing what
their job is. Deans are already in charge of the chairs in all the ways that
count. Each constituency has its part to play. Faculty/chairs are
assertive and administration should also make their case when necessary. If it
has not done so when required, administration's inaction should not be
blamed on the DCC. When there's a leadership vacuum of any kind, it will
certainly be filled by whoever notes that vacuum, and can fill it with their
own energy and talent.
Why is that only
"occasionally" the case that decisions affecting instructional
programs be left primarily to administration? Those decisions are best made
with maximum information about what is happening in the field--at ground level.
Those decisions should be made at least in part by chairs who know what is
going on because they are in the classroom, have years of experience in the
classroom, and are meeting regularly with their faculty who are in the
classroom. It's about informed decision-making from the ground up, not from an
ivory tower level by a dean who has been told what to do by superiors who take
their directions straight from the top. In the worst case, that can ultimately
be by big money that finances election campaigns---a wholly non-academic and
profit-oriented perspective. It's far superior to have the ground-level (chair)
and bottom-down (dean) supervisors meet to discuss what the issues are from
their perspectives and work something out that takes into account both
perspectives. Chairs are not only working with their faculty and their
dean. DCC representatives participate also in venues that allow Board of
Trustees, student input, and classified input into a well-informed decision-making
process.
This system of "academic
democracy" allows faculty ---and to some extent indirectly, the students
they work with daily--- to have some vehicle for direct input into overall
decision-making through the elected chair. It's a good system that mirrors our
representative democracy system in the United States. As a model for other
colleges, it's been made a target for elimination before it can spread. But
maybe it SHOULD spread. And it certainly "fits to a t" the grassroots
democracy traditions of SF and the Bay Area. It's a visible and effective
representation of our values.
The DCC is a bargaining unit,
but the difference is that they are an independent union. That means that
unlike AFT2121 or SEIU 1021, they do not have a parent organization which can
support their struggles by providing financial and logistical resources. The
chairs receive different levels of stipends depending on the size of their
responsibilities, but those stipends do not take into account the costs of
defending against political attacks that have statewide and even national
origins. The chair system benefits the whole college in helping to give
employees a voice. It's only one mechanism for that and cannot guarantee that
each person will be heard. However, compared to a dean-only system, it
goes a long way towards making that possible. Many hands make light work---we
cannot expect the chairs to have all the resources required to defend their own
organization against this political attack. All of us who benefit by academic
democracy need to lend our support. Those who are fortunate to be able to lend
major financial support should do so.
A primary milestone for
reducing further the number of chairs is to consolidate various
diversity-related departments under a single chair. But diversity has so many
elements to it and a major point in having department chairs is that even a
smaller department has an advocate. Do none of these need their own
advocate---Women's Studies, LGBT Studies, Latino Studies, African American Studies,
Disabled Students Programs, etc.? No one person can advocate with equal passion
for each department and that would not be the purpose of
"consolidation" anyway. Consolidation of diversity-related
departments would undermine the whole social justice thrust of our college. Of
course that is part of the intent of this conservative attack on our structure.
When the funding of chairs was
cut back as part of this political onslaught, the funding of coordinators at
the campuses was also drastically curtailed. In my experience working for
the enrollment campaign, I have noticed that it makes it much harder to get
coordinators to do yet another thing outside of the small number of things they
are now actually paid to do. The practical effect that we experience in the
Enrollment Campaign is that some departments or campuses cannot even get a
flyer together that could be used to promote their programs! Not one flyer! We
can't say "that's your job!" because their jobs have been curtailed
so much that it really isn't even on their plate. It doesn't make sense to cut
coordination back that much. That's only one example of the impact of cuts to
coordinating time. We could probably draw up a long list. The primary rationale
for those cuts in coordination time is to transfer any essential duties
to rank-and-file classroom teachers who are then expected to do the
coordination work for free. In fact, one of the interim chancellors stated
that---it's about making more work unpaid.
This is the time that the DCC
has chosen to hold a major fundraiser, so obviously this is a time they can
really use our donations of any size. For all the above reasons, and probably
even more, it's our turn to step up when they need us.
Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment