The College of Literature, Science and the Arts administration is expected to respond today to the grievance that the Graduate Employees Organization has filed against the college regarding the use of tuition in hiring graduate student instructors.
The GEO, LSA representatives and University Human Resources held a grievance hearing the third step of the University grievance procedure on Wednesday April 18.
GEO President Cedric deLeon said the LSA administration “stonewalled the entire meeting. The administration has been fairly forthcoming, but each time we ask a question about bottom-line budgeting, they say they”ll “address that in the written response.””
deLeon said the meeting focused on a memo sent several weeks ago to all LSA departments from John Cross, the former associate dean of LSA, which told all departments that bottom-line budgeting would effect the LSA hiring for the 2001-2002 academic year.
Bottom-line budgeting is a plan to give LSA departments set amounts of funds to hire GSIs and lecturers. GEO grievance coordinator Alyssa Picard said this includes the notion that some departments will discriminate against GSIs with higher tuition, such as out of state students, pre-candidate students who take classes and GSIs from outside LSA.
Prof. Phil Hanlon, associate dean of LSA planning and financing, said the hearing was helpful and clarified essential points which the GEO and LSA had disputed.
“The GEO leadership was concerned about a potential method for funding GSIs that was proposed last fall in an internal LSA document. We were able to clarify that this proposed method was not implemented and that we will be funding GSIs according to the same “slot model” that we have used in recent years,” Hanlon said in an e-mail.
But deLeon said departments had taken this internal memo from Cross seriously and it was followed.
“Departments did fashion their hiring around bottom-line budgeting,” deLeon said.
He said LSA administration has “back-pedaled” from implementing the bottom-line budgeting as was stated the in memo from Cross because of the reaction from GSIs.
“GEO”s position is that for that period of time when John Cross”s memo was in effect, they were in violation of the contract (between GEO and LSA),” deLeon said.
deLeon said he thinks the LSA will continue to deny the grievance as it does not believe the grievance is valid.
Hanlon also said the grievance hearing clarified the LSA”s recent agreement with the Office of the Provost.
“Specifically, the Provost will provide for any increase in tuition flow to other schools and colleges over this year”s levels. But there will be no reduction in GSI funding by LSA next year,” Hanlon said.
But deLeon said the GSIs he has spoken with have said they are not fooled by the plan proposed by the Provost for the 2001-2002 year. He still believes tuition will play a part in the hiring of GSIs for the fall.