The Middlebury chapter of the American Association of University Professors is dedicated to representing professors and staff at Middlebury College. Like the national organization, the Middlebury AAUP focuses on issues of faculty governance, academic freedom, and compensation.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the AAUP, check out their website here.
The AAUP does all sorts of important work and we hope you can support them. They represent individual AAUP members and chapters like ours and provide all sorts of resources, including legal ones, to their members. You can become a member of the national organization by clicking this link. If you want to join, but need financial support, please let us know since we are able to support a couple of national memberships this year.
You can also join the Middlebury chapter of the AAUP. While we encourage everyone who can to join the national organization, it is not a requirement of attending Middlebury AAUP meetings.
To join the Middlebury AAUP mailing list or if you have any questions, contact us at AAUP@middlebury.edu
The direct answer to your question, Shannon, is that the faculty were vocally critical of workforce planning at every meeting of the full faculty, which was the only avenue we had for affecting the administration of the college. The only perspective voiced by faculty at those meetings was full resistance to staff reductions—many of us have staff members in our families, myself included. Vigorous, vocal faculty resistance to the administration’s desire to eliminate staff jobs helped prevent workforce planning from becoming the direct layoffs that happened in previous administrations.
The reason you couldn’t hear us doing that is because the college’s governance is designed to separate staff and faculty conversations. The AAUP wants to make advocacy more forceful than is possible through the full faculty meetings or staff governance. One of the first things that happened when the AAUP tried to advocate for our shared interests was the administration tried to push the conversation back into the faculty meetings, where staff are not allowed without invitation (by the administration).
To put that all together: the people who came up with workforce planning (the administration) WANT you to be skeptical of the AAUP and think that faculty don’t care about staff. But we do. They’re our family members. The people who are organizing the AAUP are the faculty who have always advocated for staff. We are trying to work against the idea that staff and faculty have different economic interests. That divided thinking only benefits the people who actually did subject you to the indignity of workforce planning. Please join us. We need you.
Just curious about where all this support and fervor for Middlebury ’employees’ was when the staff went through the completely undignified process of workforce planning last year. Not a peep from the other employees known as faculty when my staff job was being talked about in the abstract as being necessary or unnecessary. I would need a LOT of information about this organization and GUARANTEES that I as a staff member would have equal rights with faculty within the union. Because y’all keep complaining you can’t live on your wages–how about you try living on mine.
Hi Shannon- you are 100% right that there was not enough support during workforce planning- I do believe some of that was because there was not enough communication- the AAUP is one way that all employees can communicate. Unfortunately we are not a union- I wish we were- but we have no ability to force collective bargaining over contracts, for instance. Profs here cannot legally form a union- so the AAUP is really our only ability to have some sort of collective voice if not bargaining- but staff can and I can say for sure I would totally support that happening. We just saw UVM staff who were not unionized see huge cuts whereas unionized staff have more protection. But whether you decide to join or not- we promise we are dedicated to communicating better between all employees. And if you want to join the Midd AAUP- send me an email lessig@middlebury.edu