Secrecy and Morale

In May 2008, the ad hoc Faculty Handbook Task Force completed its work on revisions of the Faculty Handbook. The product was submitted to the Office of Academic Affairs, then sent to the university editor. In September, the editor asked for responses to a list of questions about the text, and the task force contact responded to the questions promptly.

As a member of the task force, I have to admit that we took longer to do the job than we should have taken. The VPAA wanted the revisions to be submitted a year earlier. Partly, we were slow in doing our work. Partly there were some sticky issues that were not easy to resolve.

More than twelve months since the task force submitted its report, the faculty still have not received a draft of the revised handbook. Some deans and department chairs have received copies, but it is not widely available. Why is it necessary to keep a document such as this secret? Let the faculty see what has been proposed and think about it. Let them respond. If making revisions is worth doing, then talking them through should also be worth doing.

At a Faculty Senate meeting last October, we raised the issue of critical university documents which are unavailable to faculty because of the seemingly interminable approval process. A high-level administrator, with the authority to make such decisions, told us that there was no reason we should not be able to see them in their draft form. Specifically, we were asking about a Personnel Policy Manual.

Yet when the Senate President asked to receive a copy, the people who had it again hesitated. Eight months later, faculty still have not seen a draft of the Personnel Policy Manual.

In an institution committed to the dissemination of knowledge, information, a variety of perspectives, and critical reasoning, why would the practices of policy development have to remain behind closed doors indefinitely? These and other documents need to be made available to the people whose jobs and lives they effect. The steps and timeline for their approval, amendment, or disapproval should be clear and visible. The word of the times is "transparency."

It's time to get the Faculty Handbook out to the faculty. People who are consistently kept out of the loop of decisions and policies that determine their fate cannot be blamed for becoming suspicious. As my preaching daddy has said many times, "Tell the truth, and trust the people." Let's work on these documents together.

Mike Broadway