Dear Brooklyn College Community,

As Chapter Chair of our union I think it is important to be in constant communication during this latest budget crisis. From my perspective this crisis is somewhat manufactured, somewhat real. On the one hand, we have seen the largest year over year budgets for CUNY (past two years) in over 20 years. On the other hand, CUNY remains chronically underfunded. At the same time, CUNY has over 100 million dollars in reserve, yet they are implementing austerity measures. Nothing about this is inevitable, but we need to be prepared to push back, and push back hard. 

Rather than sending too many emails, I will be writing weekly updates on the meetings of the Vacancy Review Board on our chapter's blogspot. As most of you know, CUNY implemented a hiring freeze at the beginning of February. This means that all approved positions will go to a CUNY Central Vacancy Review Board. CUNY asked the campuses to institute their own Vacancy Review Boards (VRB), essentially to limit the quantity of requests to CUNY Central. Alan Gilbert asked me to serve on the VRB on February 9. I felt it was important for me to participate to ensure that our union's perspective is in those meetings. 

VRB Meeting Feb 23, 2023

There are 100 open (and previously approved) positions at Brooklyn College, everything from custodial staff to full-time faculty. These will need to come to the VRB. But before they even come to the VRB, division heads are being asked to prioritize positions before sending them to the VRB and chairs, supervisors, etc will need to seek approval before things move up the chain. Importantly, this means the VRB will see only a fraction of the requests made and approved by chairs, supervisors, and administrators. 

The local VRB will meet once a week to review applications and make decisions. The general approach will be decision making by consensus. Once we make our decisions they will be forwarded to Michelle Anderson and she will have the final authority on what gets sent to the CUNY VRB. 

My understanding is that the positions not approved by the local VRB are not cancelled, but rather will continue to be paused/frozen. 

The voting members of the local VRB are: 

Anne Lopes-Provost

Ron Jackson- VP Student Affairs

MJ Robinson- Chair of TREM and on Master Planning

Randall Clarke- Director of Seek

Carolina Bank Muñoz-PSC Chapter Chair


Comments

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated just to make sure they are not spam! We aim to review and publish within 24 hours.

Popular posts from this blog

CUNY First Computer System to Aid Administrative Control over Colleges at the Expense of Efficiency and Effectiveness

Guest Post   Every once in a while I get a question, either privately or in a department meeting, regarding CUNYFirst. Here is what I know of CUNYFirst, based on a few years of working with the project as a "training liaison" (which is a fancy term for room-scheduler). (1) The idea of CUNYFirst is a good one: to have a unified, integrated "enterprise"-scale system that encompasses all university/campus business processes. Such a system could, in principle at least, have saved a lot of expenditure on maintaining dozens of disparate, redundant, barely cooperating third-party systems. Such a system could have offered information access that would have benefited the administration, the staff, the faculty, and students. (2) CUNY Central's motives in pursuing CUNYFirst were dominated by an agenda that has nothing to do with such benefits however. Rather, CUNY Central sought absolute control over all college activity, including curriculum. Think of it: whoev
Read more

CHAPTER LETTER CAMPAIGN: to President Michelle Anderson

Image
In the Fall of 2023, we asked all departments or units to write and sign letters to the college President, Michelle Anderson. We wanted her to know what our colleagues do well. We wanted her to hear our vision for work and mission at Brooklyn College. We wanted her to understand what we all need to thrive. We wanted to model a mission-driven discourse, not a workplace lead by austerity.  We wanted our President to hear us. Professor Naomi Braine reads the Sociology Dept Letter Professor Jillian Cavanaugh reads the Anthropology Letter     Twelve letters, signed by 100s of our colleagues were submitted—although many more were penned (many felt uneasy about being visible in this way). 1) Synthesis letter signed by over 80 faculty and staff 2) Sociology Department , 26 signatures 3) Anthropology Department, 16 signatures 4) Accounting Department , 14 signatures 5) Library , 28 signatures 6) PRLS , 6 signatures 7) Psychology Department , 30 signatures 8) English Department , over 100 signat
Read more

93% Vote No Confidence in Pathways

The referendum votes have been tallied: a total of 4,322 votes were cast, out of a total number of 7,202 possible votes: a 60% turnout. Of those, 3,996 full-time faculty agreed that they have No Confidence in Pathways, with only 323 voting Disagree (and 3 void ballots). An absolute majority of the full-time faculty are on record as having no confidence in Pathways. That is a stunning rebuke to the new curriculum and the coercive process used to implement it. I will send a longer message to the entire membership shortly, but for now I want to congratulate you all on your extraordinary collective effort in defense of our students' right to a rigorous education. Equipped with this result, we can take the campaign to a new level in the fall. In solidarity, Barbara Bowen
Read more