BEYOND FURLOUGHS

THE UNIVERSITY’S END AND THE SHIBBOLETH OF “CONSULTATION”

By Michael Meranze

“These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
…..
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that though shouldst cease to be.”
--Shelley

As the Gould Commission begins its rounds of the system’s campuses it is too early to say exactly what its recommendations will be. But it is not too early to take a measure of what it means and of its relationship to the changes that have occurred in the structures of authority within UC. For dramatic changes have occurred in the structure of UC Governance and whatever specific proposals the Gould Commission makes (and it is hard to be optimistic there) unless we find some way to push back on those changes more power will slip into the hands of UCOP. This slippage will secure the gap between UCOP and the Regents on the one hand and the campuses and those who work there on the other. And faculty will need to press both UCOP and the Academic Senate on this problem.

This picture is not, to be sure, the one that UCOP or the leaders of the system-wide Senate would like to paint. Interim-Provost Pitts, who to his credit has offered the most serious and formalized description of the present structure of University governance, has, having described his decision-making process on the question of furloughs on instructional days, insisted that “How and along what fronts we proceed will be a matter for rigorous debate and discussion in the year ahead. So long as I am provost, I can assure you that whatever decisions I take—even the most unpopular ones—will be shaped by robust, informed and inclusive consultation. Our shared governance is a hallmark of this great institution and it is a key to our progress through these difficult times towards a brighter future.” But the ideal of university governance was never about “consultation” or at least not simply consultation. Of course, for some members of the University community this attitude is not new. The Regents and UCOP have always behaved as if agreeing to consult was an act of nobility in the case of the Unions. In that case, the assumption in Oakland that unions were not really a part of the University community meant that UCOP and University Counsel resisted all attempts to open up decision-making and information concerning the working conditions of union membership and other staff and technical employees. Too many Senate members, we have to recognize, have been indifferent to this question in the past. What are new, however, have been the steps taken by UCOP and the Regents to effectively dismember the system of authorities that the Regents themselves had set up and embodied within the Regents’ own standing-orders. The University is turning itself inside-out; corporate governance has taken even more of the center stage.

Take the Academic Senate as a convenient example. As the Standing Orders of the University indicated “The Academic Senate shall authorize and supervise all courses and curricula offered under the sole or joint jurisdiction of the departments, colleges, schools, graduate divisions, or other University academic agencies approved by the Board.” Under this system how is it that UCOP can determine how class times are spent? Or whether a faculty member decides that his or her class should have spend each of its meetings? The short answer is that it couldn’t; indeed, to my knowledge Interim-Provost Pitts’ intervention in course scheduling was unprecedented. But by transforming a division of authority into the obligation to consult, UCOP has elided what is really at stake in the decision about furloughs and teaching.

I want to make clear that I am not here discussing whether teaching on furlough days was a good idea or not—that is a topic where faculty, students, and administrators have a wide range of positions. Instead, what I want to emphasize are the ways that the focus on the furlough decision and the insistence that nothing has changed if UCOP engages in consultation conceals a more egregious and far-reaching attack on shared governance: the granting of emergency powers in the first place. For if UCOP can claim that there was a serious disagreement about how furlough days should be taken and that therefore they stepped in to settle an uncertain issue, they cannot pretend that there was a disagreement about the reordering of University government that occurred in the granting President Yudof emergency powers. In that case there was overwhelming opposition to the proposal from Senate and Faculty committees across the system. In that instance shared governance was shattered not only by the complete disregard of faculty and staff concerns but by the clearly rushed manner in which the change was pushed through. Under the threat of a sudden crisis (as if it was not possible to foresee the problems with the state budget) the normal structure of authority of the University was transformed. Of course, that is not how President Yudof sees it. As he described his decision in a recent interview with students he insisted that when he discovered that there was no formal process for imposing “furloughs or salary reductions” he said “’That’s no good.’ I said what we need is a set of rules that says you have to consult with various groups and you have to declare that there really is a financial emergency and you have to go before the board of regents and it expires on its own in a year, even if nothing happens.” Consequently he insists that the point of the emergency powers was to limit the powers of UCOP and the Regents.

But once again, this story ignores a fundamental point: President Yudof could have established a process for planning for furloughs by drafting one and following it. It did not require changing the Standing Orders. But in changing the Standing Orders the President was granted, albeit for one year, “the authority, during the pendency of the Declaration and consistent with applicable legal requirements, to suspend the operation of any existing Regental or University policies otherwise applicable to furloughs and/or salary reductions that are contrary to or inconsistent with the terms the President deems necessary to the proposed implementation.” It is this grant of power that transformed all questions relating to furloughs and their implications into a matter of “consultation.” It also, shifted power over the organization of teaching to UCOP. To be fair, the revised Standing Order 100.4 is drawn narrowly to relate to implications of furloughs and salary cuts. I am not concerned here with proposing some conspiracy on the part of UCOP. And to be fair to UCOP, the system-wide Senate Leadership has walked hand-in-hand with this redefinition—going so far as to chide Yudof’s critics for their lack of faith. Simply having Senate leadership in Oakland will not solve the problem.

But whatever the intentions of President Yudof and the Regents, they have configured the present moment in such a way so that an immediate budget crisis is driving fundamental long-range changes in the University. Those changes, we are told, are going to take place under administrative direction with “consultation” with faculty, students and staff. That, after all, is the task of the Gould Commission. The membership is dominated by administrators with only token representation of “common” faculty; there is no presence of anyone known to be a critic of the course that the Regents have taken over the last decade—on the other hand there are well-known and consistent proponents of privatizing parts of the University such as Christopher Edley. The Commission is supposed to report by March but at this point not all the members of the various “workgroups” have been appointed nor is it clear that the workgroups will hold public meetings. What their charges will be, whether they will be granted real authority, whether they will have a predetermined set of options all remain unclear. And if the first campus meeting at UCSB is any indication, the idea that the Regents and UCOP will take input from the campus communities seriously appears fairly farfetched.

This then is the problem we face: the Regents, UCOP, the granting of emergency powers and the organization of the Gould Commission have transformed an immediate budget crisis into a process of a long-term transformation of the University and its structures. The assumptions that underlay this conflation of short-term shortfall and long-term reorganization are ones that I have to put off till another post. But one change has already begun: the shift in the nature of University Governance. UCOP and at least some Senate leaders would like to suggest that anyone who doesn’t recognize the justness of this consultation is simply a malcontent who doesn’t understand reality. . Perhaps these changes are in line with Yudof’s powerful image of himself as a crypt-keeper. But it is a strange model for an institution whose End has been to promote debate and inquiry, to critically examine pre-packaged choices, and which prides itself on its collective and open self-definition. Others changes will follow in its wake. That is unless we are able to publicly and forcefully push back against the process now unfolding. Can we defend the university’s End or will we see the end of the University?