Subject: Message for the Chancellor
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 16:25:58 -0400
From: "duffy, gavan" <gavan@MailBox.Syr.Edu>
X-UIDL: 1cafb126dccc22702e7c3b11955d69bb

Dear Chancellor Shaw:

Irrespective of one's views regarding the issues surrounding the
strike of workers represented by SEIU Local 200A, the administration's
threatening communications to others in the community are quite
troubling.

The threatening tone of Vice Chancellor Vincow's message stands out in
particular. He apparently forgets that faculty, as well as students,
directly suffer the consequences of this unfortunate state of affairs.
His message would have been couched much more appropriately in the
context of an apology for not having resolved these labor issues
earlier and for forcing us to undergo unexpected hardships as the
semester opens. Everything he wished to convey in that memorandum
would have been conveyed far more effectively had his tone been more
gracious and less adversarial.

As others have noted, your August 28 message to the community did not
exhibit a threatening tone. Instead, you clearly and calmly laid out
the administration's perspective on the labor negotiations and
action. It is clear that you find believe the Union leadership to have
acted in bad faith. At the same time, however, union communications
accuse the University administration of bad faith. In light of the bad
faith reflected in most administration communications to the faculty
and to others in our community, the union's views are frankly easier
to believe.

I expect that the trouble stems from bad advice the administration has
received from lawyers or other consultants. As you know, the
relationship between the administration and faculty differs from the
relationship between employers and employees in typical business
enterprises. Strictly speaking, administrators are not faculty
employers and faculty are not adminstrators' employees. Administrators
are faculty members entrusted by their colleagues to act as their
agents. For this reason, strikebreaking tactics that have succeeded in
the context of private enterprise may well produce unintended
consequences when applied within an academic context. By issuing
threatening communications and by refusing to meet with groups of
concerned faculty, the administration risks poisoning its relations
with faculty and alienating a crucial base of its support over the
longer term.

I urge the administration, then, to reconsider its tactics. Recognize,
first, that academic freedom being perhaps the most central value at
this or any other institution of higher education, the administration
should think twice before it issues restrictions on what may or may
not be distributed or discussed in class. Those of us who wish to use
the strike as a vehicle for educating students about, for instance,
the instrinsic relation between labor actions and democratic
processes, ought not face threats of reprisal. Recognize, second,
that the efforts of students and faculty to discuss the strike in no
way make them agents of the union. It makes them only concerned
members of the community who wish to express their views on an issue
that has become central within that community. Recognize, third, that
students and faculty did not generate this state of affairs. For this,
the administration bears far more responsibility. And recognize above
all that no self-respecting intellectual will countenance efforts to
restrict free expression on campus. Bullying just won't do.

Finally, I urge you to sit down, continuously and face-to-face, with
representatives of the SEIU until you hammer out an agreement. A
settlement will eventuate, ultimately. The sooner it does, the sooner
we can move past all this distracting nonsense and focus on our
primary mission.

Gavan Duffy
Associate Professor
Political Science