Letter to the editor: Oakland has asked the AAUP to make sure that Moodle be fully deployed per normal procedures
We are writing out of concern that some faculty seem to be misinformed regarding the status of the contract between Oakland and the AAUP. As you know, that contract has been extended. Consequently, all faculty are currently working per that contract, a contract that has a no-strike clause (an action that is also proscribed by law). It appears that some faculty are not loading materials on Moodle due to their incorrect view that they’re working without a contract. That is not true. We hereby insist that the union inform faculty that they are to work in the best interests of students per their contractual and legal obligations, and to not withhold their obligations to the students.
We ask the above for these legal reasons, but know that we also do not wish for students to be drawn into what is truly an internal labor relations matter between Oakland and the AAUP. Our joint mission is to support students and student success as best as we can and not allow labor relations to interfere. You know that Oakland is endeavoring to provide a fair compensation package for the faculty. Our goals are similar in this regard, but both parties are challenged in balancing what we may like to do against what is realistic in light of the unprecedented drop in enrollment of over 8% in just one year, a drop that is projected to trigger a $17 million deficit. Notwithstanding this dilemma, Oakland has proposed net compensation increases for the faculty with a benefit package that is competitive, and in many respects better, than what many other universities provide, and better than what is generally offered per best practices in the market.
Oakland is still committed to reaching an agreement that is in the best of interests of the faculty, the students, and the entire Oakland community. We hope that our next session will be productive and we look forward to the union’s response to our most recent offer. We are also eager to finalize a new contract without delay. To facilitate that becoming a reality, we have invited the state mediator to get involved. The mediator will attend our meeting on Tuesday. It’s my understanding that she will reach out for information allowing her to set up the Zoom conference.
This letter was sent by OU Director of Media Relations Brian Bierley on behalf of the OU negotiating team. Letters to the editor can be submitted to [email protected].
Anonymous • Sep 1, 2021 at 5:05 PM
Critical thinking is obsolete and downright dangerous. All such programs should be eliminated and faculty fired (preferably by firing squad). Instead, we should hire a Senior VP for Propaganda, a Regular VP for Propaganda, a Junior VP for Propaganda, and respective associate and assistant underlings. The minimum salary should exceed $250k/year + a monthly $2,500 personal helicopter allowance. Now, CAS has to go. Instead, we should establish the Institute for Hypocrisy and Moral Depravity with at least 10 deans of all kinds.
Jessica Rico • Sep 1, 2021 at 4:14 PM
When I teach critical thinking, I would teach that this is fallacious thinking, or to borrow Politifact’s truth meter, “mostly false.” This leaves out critical information regarding the contract proposals being bargained for, and inaccurately reflects faculty expectations.
Here is the wikipedia page, which has a summary from the AAUP bargaining diary regarding the issue under University administration controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_University
Anonymous • Aug 31, 2021 at 10:22 AM
It feels like there is a need for audit and scrutiny of the OU dealings that bring malicious mediocrities like Merchant to our campus and allow them to run the show. I suggest that OU faculty, staff, and students flood the governor and state representatives with letters about this untenable situation.
MAL • Aug 31, 2021 at 8:00 AM
Josh Merchant is not the lead negotiator for Oakland. He is the OU Chief of Staff, an unnecessary, made-up position with a do-nothing job description. A perfect place and time for someone with a successful history of destroying universities.
https://oakland.edu/president/university-leadership/cabinet/
Robert Boonin is the Lead Negotiator for Oakland, a hired gun. Like all outside negotiators, he has absolutely no stake in the quality of the final agreement. He doesn’t have to administer it nor does he have to live and work under its terms.
https://www.dykema.com/professionals-robert_boonin.html
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:37 PM
Josh Merchant, lead negotiator for OU, was sued at his last place of employment for workplace discrimination. That is OU’s leadership. https://www.stormlake.com/articles/merchant-resigns-as-bvu-president/
LBR • Aug 30, 2021 at 10:26 PM
l=The last word in my previous comment just now should be ‘incompetent.’ [Please correct, thx]
LBR • Aug 30, 2021 at 10:25 PM
It is a genuine surprise to me how incompetent the OU Negotiating Team and the senior administration are. Up until today, Tuesday, August 30th, I considered OU’s hamfisted approach to contract negotiations to be due only to conscious attempts at gutting the university. However, today’s letter regarding the ‘legal’ (lol) issues around Moodle makes it clear that OU, and particularly the OU Negotiating Team, are also embarrassingly competent.
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 9:43 PM
So, this Joshua Merchant is “famous” for eliminating chemistry, theater, and music education programs (this one was spared at the last moment by the BOT) in exchange for the Center of Diversity and Inclusion ( = center for bureaucratic bullshit) and similar entities at Buena Vista shortly before his sudden resignation. I can only imagine his plans about OU with an order of magnitude larger student and faculty body. I suggest that our executives be rather called executioners for the sake of semantic precision. We can even rename Wilson Hall into Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval Hall.
First Time Moodler • Aug 30, 2021 at 8:22 PM
Hey Faculty, Ya know, if the bargaining team needs us to use Moodle, here is some language to paste. And students! Please know we are here for you! And we can’t wait to see you soon.
Typically at this time of year, our Moodle pages would be full of course content in preparation for the fall semester. We eagerly look forward to meeting all of our students and engaging in the work we love best, the education of our OU student body. Currently the Oakland AAUP, the labor organization that represents most OU faculty, is working hard to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with Oakland’s administration. No agreement has been reached yet. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions and without a fair and equitable contract with Oakland’s administration, the ability of faculty to teach is diminished. As soon as we have a fair and equitable agreement, our Moodle pages will be fully restored, our class communications will be in full effect and we will be ready to deliver excellent course content. To follow the progress of negotiations, read the regular updates to our Bargaining Diary on the OU AAUP website. Faculty will update students via Moodle with important updates to the situation as necessary.
Lizabeth A. Barclay • Aug 30, 2021 at 5:42 PM
It is ironic that the university chooses to post this message in spite of the fact that they are aware of significant problems with both Moodle and SAIL (occurring since Saturday). I can’t access SAIL for class or wait lists. I get this message “invalid username/password; logon denied”. Moodle is slow or not working. The university has not sent out an update on this situation nor have they posted on the UTS webpage. However, they have time to imply that faculty are not doing their jobs rather than being honest about the current situation.
Michael Latcha, PhD • Aug 30, 2021 at 4:21 PM
Well now, the esteemed “OU Negotiating Team” has weighed in (via proxy, like all cowards) to demonstrate clearly how out-of-touch and misinformed they are.
What exactly did they do here? They did not advocate for students at all, they tried to seize an opportunity to spew the same nonsense they have been pushing at the AAUP Team all summer.
“Negotiating in the press” is a last-ditch tactic of amateur negotiators who are completely out of ideas. This OU team, directed by the OU administration, has been reduced to flailing about for anything that might sway public opinion to their side.
If there wasn’t so much at stake for students, faculty, staff and even the university itself, this letter would be laughable. Instead, it is the clearest and most direct indication of the mindset of the OU administration.
anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 4:16 PM
This is silly. Students and faculty ought to start asking serious questions about Josh Merchant’s past, since he is now playing a lead role in these negotiations, and, if the above letter is taken at face value, is only seeking to benefit students. In fact, he has a pretty clear pattern of doing the opposite.
In his last job, he enacted very serious cuts to the liberal arts, the hub of a university. https://www.stormlake.com/articles/bvu-ending-chemistry-music-theatre-majors-to-try-new-studies/
How student-centric is this? Look something like the contract language being proposed now? Fleshes out the kind of at-will layoffs that OU is asking for. How does that benefit students or add value to the degree?
He has also worked on the advisory board for the very company that he is now using as “consultants” in his OU Global initiative, which will essentially outsource much of OU’s marketing and recruitment efforts to a private (read for profit) company. As he wrote recently in an email describing his initiative: “We have partnered with Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) to facilitate the year-long planning process”
https://mocajacksonville.unf.edu/board/Joshua-D–Merchant/
https://www.ruffalonl.com/about-ruffalo-noel-levitz/press-releases/ruffalocody-announces-merger-with-noel-levitz/
Again, see anything in the proposed contract that would help in this quest to gut the core of OU’s programming?
The OU community (students, faculty and alums) ought to start asking very serious questions about Merchant’s role in these negotiations, starting with his intention to shift the locus of academic program control from faculty to a company he used to advise. After that, they should demand a clear explanation of how he ended up here.
Anonymous faculty • Aug 30, 2021 at 3:42 PM
Whoever wrote this clearly does not understand how classes and teaching work. Just to be clear. Not all faculty use Moodle and faculty have never been required to load materials to Moodle prior to the start of classes. Some of us would load some materials ahead of time to help students get a sense of what to expect, but it has never been a requirement. One usually receives the syllabus on the first day of classes. Classes have not even started yet! The vast majority of faculty get into this profession because they care about and enjoy working with students. One does not become a professor to get rich. It would behoove the OU bargaining team to treat faculty with more respect and for the university to stop creating so many wasteful executive, VP and high level administration positions. What is even the purpose of a chief of staff? I still don’t understand why we are wasting $250k+ a year on such a position. This is a university not a for-profit company. If you ask students for the names of professors, they can list many. Ask them for the names of upper administrators…?
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 3:23 PM
This silly statement about Moodle pages illustrates how out of touch the administration is when it comes to faculty obligations. Ordinarily, faculty are willing to go above and beyond what is required (and Moodle pages aren’t required), but that’s not going to happen if the administration continues down its current path.
I think the administration is going to be surprised at how little is going to get done even if they ‘win’.
If faculty strike, they’ll likely be ordered back to the classroom by a judge. And if faculty do not get a fair contract, then they are likely to ‘work to rule’, which means that they’ll provide only those services that the contract requires them to provide. But much of what faculty do is not in the contract, for example, writing letters of recommendation and serving on committees to create and modify curriculum.
Meanwhile, President Pescovitz has let her new Chief of Staff, Joshua Merchant, run the university (she doesn’t even attend her own cabinet meetings), while she tries (but fails) to raise money. It doesn’t take too many Google searches to see that Merchant left his former university presidency under suspicious circumstances, and that his only real accomplishment was to turn a decent university into a glorified community college, after he closed many departments and fired scores of faculty. This is not the future that Oakland’s students, faculty, and staff should accept.
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 2:32 PM
Oakland University is working hard to cover their tracks. This article is as laughable as the email that they just sent out to the OU campus community. The “legal language” in the article is a moot point. Faculty are not required to post their materials on Moodle, especially since classes haven’t even started. Where did the federal COVID relief money go?! It didn’t help students or faculty. If OU is suffering financially, why doesn’t OU stop expanding rather than cutting faculty salaries?! There is constant construction on campus, and the new Oakland Center is quite a bit on the fancy side. Neither students nor faculty believe the story that they are trying to sell. If OU actually believed what they are trying to feed us, they would not have had someone from media relations write this article. It should have come from the president, provost, or the chair of the BOT. No one wants to put their name on this rubbish.
Disheartened Student • Aug 30, 2021 at 2:23 PM
Increasing student tuition during a global pandemic and inflicting more tuition debt on us students and treating student workers like shit must be the admins idea of “student success!!!” Now OU is refusing to pay the student government reps!!
Just stop trying to portray our faculty as not caring for us. Our faculty are the reason I chose to come to Oakland. My professor already emailed me and told our class what’s happening. I didn’t expect moodle to be up on Monday anyway and I have no problem if the faculty don’t put moodle up on Thursday either. Im so appalled by the wha OU Admin is treating our beloved faculty.
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 2:22 PM
Why or how would students “know that Oakland is endeavoring to provide a fair compensation package for the faculty” when they have no proof that administration has done anything of the sort? This letter is asking students to disbelieve the numerous op-eds posted here over the last week, including some by students themselves. This is gaslighting and manipulative on the part of the administration toward students.
Mary Lyons • Aug 30, 2021 at 2:11 PM
Just received a communication from OU UCM ..“as a result of respectful and productive negotiation discourse, and a state mediator has been engaged to assist with remaining issues.” Must be a line from Comedy Central.. if it’s so respectful and productive then why is a state mediator called in? What an oxymoron!!!! Oakland Admin must think we are morons!!!
BadBadNotGood • Aug 30, 2021 at 2:06 PM
“You know that Oakland is endeavoring to provide a fair compensation package for the faculty.” What?!? No, Oakland isn’t. OU is actively SLASHING faculty compensation. A 14% decrease in compensation, to be precise, when OU faculty are already paid WELL BELOW what they would make at another university. They can leave, and they will. You want to end negotiations soon? Then START negotiating respectfully with your faculty.
Nadine Disheartned • Aug 30, 2021 at 1:53 PM
So now is Mr. Bierley part of the OU Admin negotiating team?? Or is the Joi Cunningham and Robert Bosnian cowardly hiding behind Mr. Bierley. Seriously? If this is how OU Admin is treating their at will staff forcing Mr. Bierley to use his name for this BS–what hope do the faculty have? Without shared governance and tenure we will be forced to become the Mr. Bierleys for OU admin. Shameful. Is this Mr. Merchant’s new style of management as Chief of Staff? IS this what 249,400.00 got us? Is the new CIO going to do better to manage the messaging? Are they planning on cutting the 17% benefits and healthcare for OU Admin? How about Ms. Cunningham, Mr. Merchant, Ms. Pescovitz and the new CIO all take 14% in benefits that’s going to save more than enough for all the Special Lectures to get a decent compensation package and 16% in retirement.
Faculty are under no obligation to put material on Moodle prior to the start of classes start on Thursday. It’s Monday!! Why is OU trying to wedge discord between the faculty and the students? Or is because OU doesn’t want to give the faculty a fair and equitable contract prior to Thursday? Are they setting the groundwork for a long drawn out shameful charade like NMU?? Does Ora want the faculty to walk out like they did at NMU? Is this what the OU BOT led by the deplorable and amoral Robert Schostak is orchestrating? We need a BOT that’s elected not cronies appointed by governors who don’t care about higher education or our precious students and their welfare. Students know better. They are smart and can see through the BS OU Admin is spewing. The faculty, Staff and Students are united in this fight. We can see through this BS.
disheartened • Aug 30, 2021 at 12:50 PM
I was unaware the saying “no” in as many insulting ways as possible was considered negotiating. The administration’s hired gun’s tactics are as disingenuous as the article on which he won’t put his name. Classes haven’t started and there is no contractual obligation to load Moodle, which is not responding btw. The administration has gotten fat sucking on the teats of the faculty’s over and above dedication.
Enzo Collombat • Aug 30, 2021 at 12:16 PM
It’s telling that OU forced Brian Bierley to put his name on this drivel. He most assuredly did not write this. Other writers of late proudly penned letters using their names, but OU’s bargaining team hide like cowards.
Why doesn’t Robert Boonin use his name? He’s being paid at least five figures to break the faculty union. Why doesn’t Joi Cunningham use her name? She’s paid $136,753 per year to wield this hatchet.
These people are beyond disgraceful.
Amanda Hugg • Aug 30, 2021 at 12:09 PM
> in light of the unprecedented drop in enrollment of over 8% in just one year
… did administration forget that there was a global pandemic when they decided to jack tuition and inflate their personal salaries? That’s a dubious way to consider yourselves bastions of ‘student success’.
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:23 AM
In the past, faculty were under no contractual obligation to hand out syllabi or assignments prior to the first day of class, faculty who utilize Moodle are under no obligation to do so. The purpose of not putting up material prior to class is sadly completely lost on you. I’ll spell it out. Faculty have continually gone above and beyond contractural obligations (like putting up material on Moodle before class begins) to help this university. One of the plethora ways we do that is to work over the summer. This is to point out to you how much we do that’s beyond our contractural obligations.
Faculty are the ones that generate the majority of the money. For example, it takes only 3.4 students to pay the salary of a special lecturer! The rest is pocketed by the university- much of which goes to pay the overbloated administration with their exorbitant salaries- which, by the way are mysteriously not being cut.
Part of what enables this money for the administration is the faculty going above and beyond to benefit the university and its students. It is our work that generates the income but it is our compensation being diminished and our work conditions eroded.
This letter is disingenuous and a further statement of your total lack of appreciation for your faculty. Shame on you.
Peachy • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:23 AM
Considering it was decisions from the administration behind the 8% decrease in enrollment, the administrators should shoulder the burden of the enrollment loss. More students will join the 8% that left. We support the faculty. We do not support a relationship that places students, faculty, and staff in a position of bondage to dictates of the administration.
Jeffrey Insko • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:20 AM
This letter is troublingly disingenuous. Even under “normal procedures” faculty are under no obligation whatsoever to load any materials to Moodle, contractual or otherwise. And if they were, they are certainly wouldn’t be obligated to do so before the semester begins, which it has not.
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:04 AM
Will the OU administration be taking salary decreases and benefit cuts, since they are also part of the OU community?
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 11:03 AM
OU administration be taking salary decreases and benefit cuts, since they are also part of the OU community?
Anonymous • Aug 30, 2021 at 10:25 AM
How nice. Maybe, it behooves President Pescovitz to address the issue rather than Mr. Bierley? We haven’t heard about how much the upper administration appreciates us for quite some time. Well, since it became clear what the monetary expression of the proverbial “appreciation” really was.