(Note: The following statement was passed by an overwhelming majority by more than half of the Middlebury AAUP’s 200plus members on May 1, 2024)

The Middlebury AAUP chapter believes the ability to protest is central to both academic freedom and the mission of any educational institution. The AAUP supports the student, faculty, and staff right to protest and assemble, including at the current encampment to express solidarity with Gaza.

In the past, Middlebury has been a contested space where freedom of speech and the right to protest was challenged. The national media attention and the distorted narratives about what happened here have divided our community in ways we are still healing from. We hope to avoid a similar outcome this spring.

We appreciate the administration’s decision to refrain from escalating by bringing the police or outside security to campus. We urge the administration to hold the course and to vigorously uphold this right to peacefully protest.

We ask that the administration temporarily waive the prohibition to camp on school premises, and to actively listen to the requests of the protestors. We hope that our community can use this opportunity to lead by example by accepting peaceful protest as part of both democracy and education.

We call on all members of our community to denounce discrimination, hate speech and harassment in all its forms.

Protecting the right to peaceful protest and dissent is vital to the integrity of our mission as the AAUP.

The Middlebury AAUP
Attendee panel closed

At the March faculty meeting, the AAUP brought two important sense of faculty motions forward, both focused on wage equity. Both passed with overwhelming support. The texts of the SoFMs are below.

Sense of Faculty Motion Regarding Winter Term Compensation

When employees of Middlebury College teach a Winter Term class and it is not part of the employment contract, they should be paid the same as outside instructors. Currently, some staff employees receive $1000 while visiting instructors receive $4500.
The College’s Curriculum website currently offers a rationale for this policy with the following language:
“Please note that the standard stipend is different for members of the Middlebury staff who teach winter term courses. We welcome the exciting contributions that staff colleagues make to the curriculum, but also recognize that staff continue to be responsible for their regular duties, and continue to be compensated for that work. For that reason, when a staff colleague’s course proposal is approved, and the relevant supervisor gives permission for it to be taught, the College pays a modest stipend in thanks to the colleague, on top of their regular pay.”
The implication seems to be that staff employees who are not contracted to do J-term may take on this work in addition to their contracted responsibilities, but those who choose to do so will not be equitably compensated for this additional work.
It is unethical for people to do labor above and beyond their contractual obligations (i.e. teach winter term) and be compensated significantly less than others for the same work. Furthermore, it is clearly a huge service to the College to have these courses offered and staff who teach them should be compensated accordingly. Paying staff colleagues fairly for winter term teaching would also be beneficial to the college’s administration of winter term—as members of our community, staff members do not require extra housing (which is currently in a massive shortage) and offer a long-term mentoring presence for our students rather than visitors who might only be on campus for a single month.
Sense of Faculty Motion: Middlebury College should pay the same base rate to all winter term instructors whose job description does not include regularly teaching at Middlebury, regardless of whether they are external visitors or ongoing college employees.

Sense of the Faculty Motion: Bring All Employees at Least Up to 2019-20 Fiscal Year Wage Levels

The AAUP, in collaboration with colleagues across the college, are proud to put forward this sense of the faculty motion on compensation. As the Resources Committee and Faculty Council are revisiting how we identify faculty raises and merit, we believe that a cost of living adjustment (CoLA) is warranted for all Middlebury employees. We thank our colleagues for getting these conversations started and hope our sense of faculty motion propels further action on closing wage compression and gaps among employees (from full professors to long-term staff), as well as addressing lower salaries adjusted for unprecedented inflation over the past five years. The AAUP is happy to take part in these conversations and action planning but we ask that the administration makes a clear and actionable plan to address CoLA and other wage issues related to inflation since 2019.
Rationale:
A large number of employees of Middlebury College are in fact making less than they were in 2019 after adjusting for inflation.*
Everyone should be brought up to 2019-2020 levels adjusted for inflation, which is a total increase of around 19%. Most faculty and staff have received some increase, but very few have received anything equal to the rate of inflation. Some staff have received little or no increase because they are considered earning at the top of the “market.” All faculty and staff who make this place run are worth at least what we were worth four years ago, if not more, given the extra work that we performed during the COVID-19 pandemic and since. This is especially true when members of the administration have received increases far above the rate of inflation.
To give you some idea of the how salary increases below inflation are reducing the effective salaries for Middlebury employees:

• If you made $50,000 in July 2019, your salary would need to be $59,572 in July 2023 to have the same buying power.
• A salary of $75,000 in July 2019 has the same buying power as a salary of $89,358 did in July 2023.
• If you were paid $100,000 in July 2019, if your salary had kept up with inflation, you would be making $119,145 now.**
  This on-line calculator can do the math for your own salary for you.
  At this rate, many faculty salaries will not catch up to the rate of inflation for another three or four years, and the cumulative losses to retirement savings are huge. It will likely take the salaries of many staff members even longer to catch up. That’s almost a decade of not just salary stagnation, but actual loss. We

have also lost staff in large numbers in several senior positions, in part because many were told they were no longer eligible for raises. This loss of institutional knowledge and expertise is devastating.
The burdens of the pandemic were real, but they should not be used as an opportunity to make employees work more for less money.
*You can use this calculator to figure out how much you’re actually making today compared to the 2019-20. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100000&year1=201907&year2=202307
**These hypothetical numbers are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation rate.
Sense of Faculty Motion:
This sense of faculty motion calls on the administration to prioritize getting every employee up to 2019-2020 levels of compensation (in addition to merit raises and raises for promotion) for the 2024/25 fiscal year. We all deserve to earn at least what we earned in 2019. This is not a raise but a Cost of Living Adjustment to account for inflation. Actual raises must be above and beyond inflation rates and should not be tied to them. In the past 60 years, inflation has only been negative two times (2009, 2015) and in the event that inflation is negative in the future, then there is no need for a Cost of Living Adjustment, but, given the rarity of deflation, it is imperative that all employees receive a Cost of Living Adjustment for inflation.

February 22, 2023

Leah VanWey
Dean of the Faculty
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912

Dear Dean VanWey,

As the Executive Committee and Academic Freedom Committee of the Middlebury College AAUP, we are extremely concerned about the suspension of Professor Naoko Shibusawa for her article “Where is the Reciprocity? Notes on Solidarity from the Field.” Not only was this article clearly about Prof. Shibusawa’s expertise as a scholar and therefore covered under the principles of academic freedom to which Brown University has agreed to adhere, but the article was published in her field’s flagship journal, Asian American Studies.

The article in no way violates any codes of professional conduct nor does it break any rules of confidentiality. In fact, it is an important inquiry into why there is so little cooperation in academe among similarly marginalized forms of knowledge production.

We believe that Brown University’s sanctions on Professor Shibusawa are a clear infringement on her academic freedom.

We urge the Brown University administration to immediately lift its sanctions on Professor Shibusawa and restore her full faculty rights.

Signed on behalf of the AAUP Executive Committee and the Committee on Academic Freedom at Middlebury College,

Michael Olinick, Professor
Jamie McCallum, Associate Professor
Peter Matthews, Professor
Ioanna Uricaru, Associate Professor
Laurie Essig, Professor
Jamie McCallum, Associate Professor

Read our Campus Op-Ed here

June 28. 2022

Dear AAUP Members,

We’re outraged, but not surprised.

By now almost all faculty and staff have received their reappointment letters containing information on our FY23 salaries and wages. We’d like to offer a few reflections on what we know, have been hearing, and offer a way forward.

At our last faculty meeting in May, the AAUP successfully passed a sense of the faculty motion that urged the administration to give—at least—a 10 percent raise to all Middlebury faculty and staff. Such an increase would have brought all of us up to our 2019 rate of pay. Despite passing by an overwhelming majority of the faculty, the administration and the Board of Trustees pitted faculty and staff against each other, creating divisions where there should have been unity.

The result? All faculty received an increase, but 14 percent of staff received no raise at all. And many staff received only a discretionary increase, under 2%, based upon lobbying by their own immediate supervisors. (Remember that in 2020, when there was also no pay increase, select staff received a fifty-dollar check from the College, “a show of appreciation” for their hard work in tough times.)

Many staff and faculty received a pay cut in real wages even if they received an increase in absolute dollars because that increase was under 10%. Given inflation over the past three years, almost all of us are still making less in real wages than we were in 2019. In other words, the majority of our staff and faculty who worked through the pandemic have received a significant pay cut at the same time tuition increased by 10 percent and our endowment by a shocking 32 percent.

The wage and salary letters have generated significant confusion. The administration announced the faculty and staff salary pool increased by seven percent. Where did it go? We know that all ranks of faculty received less than a seven percent increase. Individual faculty who received a larger increase seem to have gotten it on the basis of their promotions, which typically come with standardized anticipated increases anyway. Does this add up to a general seven percent increase on average? We need a fuller explanation from the administration about how the money was actually distributed.

At a recent AAUP meeting, and in countless emails and conversations over the past few days, we’re hearing that Middlebury employees are fed up. They’re insulted by the pay cuts and tired of feeling like our voices and votes don’t matter. They fear that this unfair situation will persist, that their commitment to the College will never be rewarded, and are wondering how else to express their growing lack of confidence.

The 2022 State of the Faculty Report, released earlier this year, painted a dismal picture of the working life at Middlebury—only about 20 percent report being satisfied with the way things are going at the College and only one third are satisfied with their pay.

What can we do? Since the beginning of the pandemic, the AAUP has organized faculty and staff to support a campus climate that is safer and fairer. That work has been slow but steady. Despite our frustration with the austerity budgeting, we are confident that our pressure on the administration was at least partly responsible for whatever pay increases we did receive. Our members have at times been leaders within all elected committees on campus, including staff council, helping to raise our voice whenever possible. We will continue to organize for a budget that works for all of us, one that actually reflects the hard work and commitments of our faculty and staff.

Join us! The AAUP is open to all faculty and staff who want to speak with a larger collective voice. To join, and find out about our upcoming meetings, send an email to Professor Laurie Essig at lessig@middlebury.edu.

Together, we have the best chance of getting the jobs that we all deserve.

Onward,

AAUP Executive Council

The following motion was approved by 87% of the Middlebury Faculty at a faculty meeting on April 8th.

“The faculty urge the administration to provide all employees with a cost-of-living adjustment to wages and salaries of no less than 10% this summer, thereby restoring the living standards of College employees to their 2019-20 level.”

Rationale:
Since the start of the 2019-20 academic year, consumer prices have risen by 11.3% while wages and salaries at the College have risen only 2%. In inflation-adjusted terms, our “real” wages and salaries have already fallen by 8.3% since 2019-2020 and are falling more by the month. Vermont is not immune to the national acceleration in inflation: home prices and rents are up considerably, prices of cars and other durable goods have surged, food prices are up, fuel and electricity prices have risen sharply, and local services like daycare have become more expensive—all of which erode the purchasing power of our stagnant wages and salaries. Inflation should not be eroding the purchasing power of employees’ wages and salaries, but the college is currently failing its employees on the imperative of cost-of-living adjustments—and our wages stagnate despite soaring endowment returns and significant tuition hikes.
Based on conservative inflation forecasts, it would take more than a 10% cost-of-living adjustment this summer just to restore real wages to where they were at the start of the 2019-20 academic year; anything less means our real wages have still fallen. If anything, a real wage increase is merited given the increased work, stress, and health risks faculty and staff have taken on since the start of the pandemic. Given that HR is in the process of reconfiguring staff compensation, we urge that the principle of a minimum of 10% increase nonetheless stands. At the very least we should not earn less for more work. And the College’s stated commitment to intergenerational equity is incompatible with the reality that our most junior colleagues have known nothing but declining living standards since coming to Middlebury
Failure to reverse course on these real wage cuts will continue to worsen staffing, retention, and morale problems on campus as well as jeopardize Middlebury’s status as a top-tier liberal arts college providing a stellar undergraduate experience. We cannot continue to provide the kind of education we aim for while our employees suffer declining living standards—a sustainable College is one where employees can expect their living standards to rise.

Published here

To the Oberlin College community,

Life at a small liberal arts college is often referred to as being “in the bubble,” as it is easy to lose touch with the larger world around you while you focus on the daily life and insular struggles within your community. Those local struggles can often feel detached from larger trends and forces as you focus on the specific people, policies, and debates that feel unique to your campus.

We write from Middlebury College, Vermont, where we have read about Oberlin’s recent struggles over employee wages and benefits, with a message from outside your bubble: you are not alone. While every college campus is unique, these struggles are not. Across the United States, colleges and universities have seen record gains in endowments coupled with salary freezes — which are effectively a pay cut when offset by inflation — benefit reductions, union-busting, and other means to leverage the COVID crisis to disempower employees and hoard institutional wealth, often in the name of unity or “shared sacrifice.” Administrators at such institutions like to tout “intergenerational equity” to justify limited draws on a booming endowment, yet such policies undervalue current employees and students in the name of future wealth, promoting a skewed version of intergenerational inequity.

Thankfully, you are also not alone in seeing faculty and staff stand up to these administrative maneuvers. We stand in solidarity with the Oberlin American Association of University Professors, which encouraged professors to cancel class to demand fair compensation. We stand in solidarity with Bates Educators and Staff Organization, who are trying to unionize Bates College staff and contingent faculty together over objections from the college administration. And we hope you stand in solidarity with Middlebury’s AAUP, working to advocate for fair employee compensation and truly equitable endowment policies. 

One of the core values of a liberal arts education is thinking across boundaries and drawing connections between separate realms of knowledge and experience. Thus we reach out across our institutional boundaries to share our experiences, knowledge, and advocacy, hoping that our peer colleges can all work together to ensure fair and equitable compensation for employees and provide the best possible educational experience for students.

In solidarity,

Jason Mittell, OC ’92, Professor of Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College on behalf of the following members of Middlebury College AAUP

Laurie Essig, Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Amy Holbrook, Academic Coordinator of Economics

Peter Matthews, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics

Jamie McCallum, Associate Professor of Sociology

This sense of faculty motion was passed with a 75% vote at the faculty meeting on December 13th, 2021.

“The faculty urge the administration to reinstitute Spring 2021 COVID testing protocols for the remainder of the 2021-22 academic year, including entry testing for all students after breaks, and ongoing surveillance testing for all students and employees working on-campus.”

Rationale:
The events at the end of the Fall 2021 semester make it very clear that vaccines and a masking policy are not enough to mitigate the presence and threat of COVID-19 on Middlebury’s campus. Bringing thousands of students back to campus without mandatory entry and surveillance testing in 2022 risks another outbreak at worse, and widespread uncertainty and anxiety at best. We have a proven record of being able to support effective testing for students and faculty from the 2020-21 year; returning to these earlier protocols as the pandemic continues to disrupt our health and safety is the best way to protect our community and avoid major disruptions to our educational mission. It is vital that this testing protocol includes employees working on-campus, as the local testing resources are overburdened with limited availability that is particularly inconvenient to many staff members’ work schedules.
The events of the last week have proven that it is better to know the status of the virus on campus than to limit our knowledge. Following the lead of every single one of our peer colleges by using entry and surveillance testing of the entire community is the prudent and responsible way to keep us all safe and focused on educating students.
Presented by Jason Mittell on behalf of members of the AAUP Executive Committee and Working Conditions Committee:
James Berg
Laurie Essig
Peter Matthews
Jamie McCallum
David Miranda Hardy
Michael Olinickk

“The AAUP welcomes the bonus, an acknowledgement of the extraordinary efforts of so many faculty and staff to provide students a world-class education even in the midst of the pandemic. We nevertheless remain concerned that these same faculty and staff have experienced significant declines in inflation-adjusted income over the previous two years. In other words, nearly all employees now make significantly less, despite the bonus and a 2% raise.  That means, given current inflation rates, it will require substantial increases in compensation this year and beyond to preserve, let alone increase, the living standards of employees.  We therefore continue to look forward to working with the administration to identify responsible ways to build a rewarding and equitable future for all members of the Middlebury community.”

November 19th 4pm

There we will discuss 

1. Working conditions for employees during this 4th Pandemic Semester
2. The continuing fight for fair wages with a report from our Budget Committee
3. The formation of a new Committee on Academic Freedom (we are looking for volunteers for this)
4. And in break out sessions we will find out what else is important to you, our members

Topic:  AAUP MeetingTime: Nov 19, 2021 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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