FAM holds a march into Roudebush pressuring management to negotiate contracts

After 438 days of negotiations with Miami University administration, the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM) held a march into Roudebush Hall yesterday afternoon to pressure management into negotiating, to them, a fair contract.

Theresa Kulbaga, FAM’s lead negotiator and chair of communications and social media, did not go in empty-handed. FAM members and students wrote leaf-shaped notes to Miami President Gregory Crawford demanding that he thank librarians and faculty in advance of Thanksgiving by giving fair raises and a fair contract.

The leaves weren’t just demands to Crawford, but also written letters of appreciation from students to their professors for Crawford to read.

Elena Albarrán, associate professor of history and global and intercultural studies and FAM member, said she came up with the leaf idea following the proposal to build an arena on slant walk and tear down Hall Auditorium.

“That being suggested as something that the university is willing to prioritize is a real step away from what FAM is fighting for …” Albarrán said. “So I gathered some leaves from slant walk from the trees that would be taken down if we did build an arena there, and I made them into thank you note shapes, and I distributed these to my students, and I asked my students to write thank you notes to any professors on campus.”

Albarrán added that the leaves also represented the funds diverted from the quality of education the students thanked their professors for.

“We want to continue to do the work that we've been doing well with our students,” Albarrán said, “but we want to do it with dignity and fair compensation, with job security, and some of the negotiations are going in the wrong direction in terms of job security, especially for our more vulnerable faculty.”

More than 30 notes were created and dropped off at Crawford’s office.

One of the notes was written by senior Lucas Orlando, a philosophy and political science double major, who said he stopped by the booth at the march to support FAM, a cause he’s followed for a long time.

His message talked about ending this “unfortunate use of resources” in a fair contract that would support both students and faculty and further “education, academia and free thought.”

Other leaves thanked the German department for “fostering a wonderful learning environment,” the history department for its passionate professors and the College of Arts and Science professors for allowing students to explore their identities and individual professors.

At a FAM rally on Nov. 11, more than 40 FAM members gathered to march to Roudebush to pressure administration into negotiations.

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“We see [the march] as one of many collective actions that we are going to do until we get a fair contract,” Kulbaga said, “and until we get a package that we're actually happy with, we are going to continue to do these actions, and they're meant to pressure and to educate the community and to get students behind us and to make the administration sort of face the people that they're saying you deserve a 1.7% raise to.”

Kulbaga said the goal is to get a final contract that ensures academic freedom for all of its members, significant annual raises above cost-of-living increases and job security for all faculty members, including librarians, teaching, clinical professors and lecturers, and tenured and tenure-track faculty.

In a statement to The Miami Student, the university wrote that it remains committed to engaging in good-faith negotiations and reaching an initial contract agreement with FAM while also holding up its obligation to be a responsible steward of public funds and student tuition.

“Since the beginning of these negotiations, the University has committed to negotiating in good faith to reach an agreement with FAM that recognizes the dedication of our faculty members while also balancing the University’s obligation to advance its educational mission, support its students and ensure the equitable application of policies, procedures and practices for all University employees, which includes both faculty members and staff,” the statement read.

stumbata@miamioh.edu