Advocate Online

Imagine you're the proverbial cat who has jumped on a hot stove. You won't jump on a hot stove again, but you probably won't jump on any stove again, either.

The Florida Community College faculty has been like that wary cat. Twenty-six years ago, we lost our first election by about 50 votes; two years later, we lost again, by 11 votes.

We vowed then to learn how to count better and promised ourselves not to be stampeded toward an election every time the administration angered an individual faculty member.

We learned to count heads and say, "Okay, you're for an election, but most of the others in your department aren't."

Over the years, we became insular and quietly focused on occasional newsletters and grievance work.

When it took four years for the civil suit of one of our annual contract members to come to trial in federal court, we learned to say, "If you don't have a collective bargaining agreement, you're pretty much saying you want to go along with what the administration orders."

But recently, faculty began to see changes in contract length and workloads, then salaries wound up being frozen for two years. And, instructors faced teaching six courses in one semester each year. And when instructors found they were working during the summer terms just to make their load, we heard the younger faculty say, "We ought to form a union."

Older faculty said, "Oh, but we have one. One's already here, and we've even had two elections. This is what we must do to gain bargaining rights."

After the old-timers helped to draw up a "hard" authorization card, the younger faculty spread out on each of our four main campuses and two or three centers to get the cards signed.

This time, we gathered cards differently than we did in 1976.

Back then, we asked faculty, "Why don't you sign so we can have an election?"

This time, we said, "Only sign the card IF you want the Faculty Federation as the bargaining agent."

We approached the card-drive with care as we aimed for a goal of 60 to 65 percent of the faculty as signees.

We are facing some opposition to bargaining, mainly from a handful of faculty senators who view the campaign as a personal affront and rejection of their energies. But, for many of us, it's time to hop on the stove again.

Howard Denson, long-time president of the Florida Community College Faculty Federation, a joint affiliate of NEA and AFT, teaches English and humanities at Florida Community College in Jacksonville.

I'd like to say!

I can only say I was very pleased to know that the faculty representative from Central Michigan University, Elaine Daniels, has a view of the world that coincides with this minority parent's views (December Dialogue).

I concur with Ms. Daniels' view of institutions of higher learning being models of tolerance and diversity which prepare our students to live and function in a diverse world! ! !

Decisions around visa acquisition are better left to the INS or other governmental agencies. If there are to be barriers to entrance into the academic environment, the barriers should be at our borders, not at "the school house doors."

As a parent of a future Central Michigan University student, I find comfort in the fact that Professor Daniels values diversity and the "attributes" that my daughter brings to the CMU environment.

As Professor Daniels notes, "Colleges and universities should do what they do best—perform their educational mission in a learning environment for students and scholars that is diverse and free from discrimination. And the federal government should protect our national security."

—Mark A. Jenkins
Michigan Education Association