Mount Holyoke News AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1917 THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2021
MOUNTHOLYOKENEWS.COM
College removes faculty status for athletics BY CASEY ROEPKE ’21 NEWS EDITOR
After contract changes that removed faculty status and benefits from senior lecturers and coaches in the Department of Physical Education and Athletics were implemented, Athletics employees are requesting that the College reverse its decision and reinstate their faculty status. In October 2020, members of the athletics department received a memorandum from the College that communicated changes to their faculty status and employment benefits. This followed a July 2020 memorandum of understanding signed by Athletics employees at the College. The MOU changed all senior lecturers’ contracts from five-year contracts to rolling contracts and adjusted several components of the department, including review, evaluation and promotion processes. This change was implemented in January 2021 and communicated in a memo on Jan. 20. Athletics faculty members say that the MOU was not accurate to conversations and negotiations held in July with former Dean of Faculty Jon Western. Following Western’s departure from that role, some Athletics faculty felt that his commitments to them were lost in the transition to his interim successor, Dorothy Mosby. In an initial response sent to Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Marcella Runell Hall and Mosby on Oct. 26, the undersigned faculty members of the athletics department said that the Oct. 6 communication redesignated Athletics faculty to staff status, stripping them of benefits and compensation. “This is not what we agreed to during negotiations with Jon Western, nor is it what we voted to approve and sign with the MOU,” they wrote.
Status change was based on out-ofcontext definition of faculty
The change in status came out of a long review and evaluation process that began in 2010, as well as conversations about coaching initiated in 2013
u
by former Director of Athletics Lori Hendricks. In various department reviews of Athletics — including the 2010 advisory committee review and a 2018 external review by Spelman Johnson, an executive search firm — decisions were made to conduct reviews of coaches on a departmental level. In these evaluations, coaches reported that the majority of their time was spent in a coaching capacity. These evaluation results were used in faculty legislation that recommended that coaches be reassigned to staff positions instead of faculty, citing a definition of “faculty” from the American Association of University Professors, which required 50 percent of working hours be spent teaching or preparing for class. On Monday, April 26, an AAUP Steering Committee partnered with Mount Holyoke coaches to send a letter to College President Sonya Stephens, Mosby and Hall in opposition to the removal of faculty status from coaches and senior lecturers in the athletics department. In this letter, the signatories wrote that the AAUP definition of faculty was taken out of context by the College. “It was used by AAUP in that survey to screen out employees such as medical faculty and high-profile coaches at major state universities, so as to better compare rank-and-file faculty compensation across institutions,” the letter stated. “It is unethical to lift this narrow definition outside its original context in order to justify the unilateral termination of an entire group of current employees’ status, as faculty. MHC coaches teach P.E. and club sports — both of which are courses offered in our MHC catalog — therefore meeting AAUP’s actual definition of faculty.” The College has since retracted its citation of the AAUP definition from its memo, though it maintains its position that coaches do not meet Mount Holyoke Faculty Legislation requirements. According to the Faculty Legislation, “Lecturers and senior lecturers are CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
8 FEATURES: Elizabeth Smart speaks at MHC
u
u
Photo courtesy of Mount Holyoke College Kendall Sports and Dance Complex, above, is home to the Mount Holyoke College athletics department.
SGA board sends open letter citing shared governance concerns thing else,” Sopory said.
BY KATIE GOSS ’23 STAFF WRITER
The executive board of the Student Government Association sent two open letters to the Mount Holyoke community on April 28. One letter was written on the topic of shared governance at Mount Holyoke as well as to stand in solidarity with those impacted by the initial closure of the Gorse Children’s Center. The other letter was directed toward Student Financial Services and outlined various “discriminatory practices” students have been facing while also requesting an apology to students for past actions and words from the department. Although the letters were sent out by the SGA, they were a collaborative effort between the SGA executive board and the Mount Holyoke community as a whole. Maya Sopory ’22, the president of the SGA, said that although board members put their own input into the letters, they also included the thoughts and opinions of students and faculty. “We try really hard to incorporate what we are hearing from the student body … people email us, people come to my open hours, things like that. It really is a collaborative process more than any-
12 ENVIRONMENTAL: Plant-based dining
u
Letter about shared governance
Chair of Senate Jane Kvederas ’22 said that community members affected by the Gorse situation especially influenced that letter. “Once the initial decision to close Gorse was announced, several professors reached out to Maya Sopory … with their concerns and personal responses,” Kvederas said. “In light of what was conveyed in these interactions as well as the executive board’s response to the decision, we decided [to write] an open letter addressing the full weight of Gorse’s clos[ure] to MHC admin.” The letter regarding Gorse and shared governance at Mount Holyoke had been in the works since the original announcement of the closure of Gorse. Once the executive board of the SGA started writing a letter to stand in solidarity with those affected by the decision, it became apparent that the topic of shared governance should also be outlined. “It represented this sentiment that we weren’t asked to help inform this CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
u
14 OP-ED: Self-care commercialization