Animal Farm [Senate Resignation]

I have not subscribed to any of Pratt's various listservs since April 2005 and will not, as long as Adjunct Associate and President of the Academic Senate Jenny Lee is the sole owner and operator of all so-called community-based/academic/faculty communication forums.

In April, I was yet again summarily "unsubscribed" from the 'academic-forum' without my permission by Ms. Lee, who is charged with administering these institute-wide communication systems by Pratt Institute, her employer. The day-to-day operations of: academic-forum, announce, senate-members and others, are all completely under her governance. Despite many complaints about her conduct and control of these vehicles, she operates with complete impunity and without reprimand.

I have been personally subjected to bounces, delays, scrambling, multiple postings, deletions, and un-subscriptions; all trademarks of her direct commands. These machinations are given de facto sanction by those who budget and manage Ms. Lee's operations – a feckless administration that chooses to look the other way. I will remind everyone that a 'file log' exists that demonstrates indisputably that JL commanded that I be blocked and dropped from all e-mail correspondence, this at the height of the UFCT's elections. Jenny denied this for over a year, and then claimed she had been 'hacked' and that although an e-mail address bearing her name did command my un-subscription, she was not responsible because someone had stolen her identity[?]

Animal Farm

Imagine you are a woman and told by your peers that you always filter all you see through the lens of gender. Or, that because you are African-American, you only care about race? From the outset, I was lectured by a few narcissist colleagues that as a "union official" I had an "inherent conflict of interest". As this was "self evident" I should "do the right thing" and step down from the academic-senate, a "shared governance" body.

Apparently, it is a "1930's worker's mindset" that renders me incompatible with academics and prevents me from seeing the academic trees through an "issues of employment" forest. For two years, these few self-anointed academicians have wasted much time repeatedly regurgitating their fantastical notions of a "union presence" preventing the senate from addressing academics; an omnipotent and all powerful union with unchallenged and unparalleled powers actually negotiating away faculty rights, freedoms and protections. "Of what use is the union today?" is asked seriously by these denizens of the Pratt meritocracy, their battle cry: "We are academics, not workers!"

Sadly, this kind of nonsensical and circuitous bigotry was never quelled nor countered by the many well-meaning and well-intentioned faculty members who comprise the senate, nor for that matter, by the Pratt community at large. Listserv forums have served as spin zones for anti-union propaganda, flagrant misrepresentations and yes, out-and-out lies. Consequently, the stifling silence of the wider community has only engendered more toxicity. Would there have been an outcry had chairpersons been singled out, or if the architects had been pilloried? How catholic of us all to have countenanced attacks on the union.

The talking points have been simple: the union is to blame for all of Pratt's ills; the senate, the faculty's savior and beacon of hope It is often proclaimed by the same few that the senate is a participatory, open, inclusive, democratic, non-discriminatory, transparent and autonomous governance body and the "primary representative voice" for the faculty in "community based decision-making." Yet, I knew early on that I was unwelcome and that serving on the senate would become an exercise in futility, which it has. As such, and effective immediately, I will resign my seat; the senate now free from the oppressive grip of the 'Union' and now free to be even "more productive". Will more productive mean more discussions of free lunch or how often Pratt is mentioned in the local media? Or, will there now be productive conversations about academic freedom, the erosion of faculty rights, and/or the utter lack of transparency when it comes to administrative policies?

The senate has become the great enabler, a quasi-faculty/administrative body whose distinction and effectiveness is only measured by its compliance with administrative boilerplate. For this accomplishment, the senate president and her potentates deserve the highest marks. The senate's embrace and codification of the "Faculty" Handbook, the administration's policy manifesto, is particularly unctuous.

This [Slight of] Handbook is not a legal document nor does it confer any contractual right to any faculty member; yet two of its six sections are devoted to full-time and part-time faculty rights and policies. As written now, these two sections serve only to confuse the faculty by blurring clear distinctions with the collective bargaining agreement. One needs to look no further than the 'Personal History Form' – the political equivalent of a car-bomb detonated by the administration this past fall semester to 'see' what purpose the handbook actually serves.

The primacy of the collective bargaining agreement is indisputable. This is manifestly clear to any 'academic' that cares to put aside their own biases and prejudices. The CBA is a legal and binding agreement; the Senate's handbook is not. The CBA confers all faculty terms and conditions of employment; the handbook confers nothing. All faculty rights, privileges and protections are enumerated in the 'Contract' (CBA, collective bargaining agreement). There are no such rights, privileges and protections in the handbook, a non-legal, non-binding document which cannot be adjudicated.

Yet, most annoying has been the senate president's maniacal insistence that this administrative tract has somehow met the union's 'approval'. What exactly has the Union approved? It is not only for its deliberative weaknesses as a governance body, or for its lack of vision and/or interest in truly supporting the faculty that I step down from a deeply conflicted Academic Senate.

Patronizing lectures about learning outcomes, goals and assessment are, at best, impositions on an already exploited and unrecognized faculty. This is disturbing to me as a faculty member; but unbearable as the faculty's union president. I cannot stand by quietly nor — simply by my presence — be implicated in actions that are re-defining (in a negative way) what it is to be a faculty member at Pratt Institute.

In Solidarity,

-Kye