The following are letters published in the Ann Arbor News in support of Eastern Michigan University faculty:

EMU administration's comparisons are unfair

Ann Arbor News, December 31, 2006

What a sad time for Eastern Michigan University. In the space of one year, a new president has managed to alienate a significant portion of the faculty. Three members of the Board of Regents resigned. The faculty struck because it deemed the contract offer to be unreasonable in comparison with its sister institutions.

In what must have been perceived as a clever negotiating move by those responsible for the administration's bargaining team, this administration defended its contract offer by comparing salaries with institutions having fewer students, less diverse curricula and far fewer distinguished alumni. This point is made not to belittle these younger and smaller schools, but to indicate the narrow-minded, shortsighted perspective of this administration. Setting sights lower as a means of cutting salary costs is destined to diminish the stature of the university in the eyes of the faculty, the students, the alumni and the community.

It is sad that the faculty leadership compromised their stand and allowed the comparison with institutions other than those in the MAC. In doing so, they have agreed to an inferior position that in the long run will not serve the university well.

The Board of Regents paid over a half-million dollars to a president who left after his actions severely damaged the university's reputation, but they cannot find the funds necessary to bring faculty salaries in line with its true sister institutions.

Israel Woronoff, Ann Arbor

It's time for EMU to stop stonewalling on contracts

Ann Arbor News, December 22, 2006

Eastern Michigan University has 1,000 employees, represented by EMU-American Association of University Professors and United Auto Workers 1976, working without a contract since September. EMU students, parents of students and Michigan taxpayers deserve better. As an EMU faculty member, I urge EMU's administration to genuinely participate in fact-finding with AAUP, and to negotiate reasonable contracts with AAUP and UAW 1976. It's past time to stop stonewalling. It's past time to let professors return completely to what they want to do - education and research with their students.

Susan M. Haynes, Ann Arbor

Story on Fallon survey refreshingly balanced

Ann Arbor News, December 22, 2006

I appreciate the fact that you finally chose to publish News staff reporter Geoff Larcom's story on Eastern Michigan University faculty's survey of President John Fallon (Dec. 14). I found it to be a more balanced article than his other reporting on EMU, and I have thanked him for this. It made a very nice counterpart to the article on the University of Michigan faculty's survey of President Mary Sue Coleman. I found it especially interesting that Fallon pointed out that the 44 percent of EMU's faculty who responded to our survey was less than half. Yet, 44 percent is quite a large number of responses to a survey - a fact supported by U-M's survey, to which only 33 percent responded. Please keep up the more balanced articles dealing with EMU faculty.

Sheila M. Most, Ypsilanti

The writer is an EMU professor of English

Survey a fair, accurate reflection of EMU faculty's views on Fallon

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

BY F. ELAINE MARTIN

On Dec. 4, results were released of an online opinion survey, sent to all EMU professors, about Eastern Michigan University President John Fallon's leadership. The survey was written and analyzed by a volunteer group of faculty, experienced in survey research, who selected questions after reviewing a dozen similar surveys conducted at other universities.

About half of EMU's 675 professors completed the poll, which asked them to agree or disagree that Fallon is effectively demonstrating 15 different leadership qualities. Faculty rated Fallon extremely low in nearly all of the areas surveyed. For example, over three-fourths of those who completed the survey either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that Fallon provides effective overall leadership for the university. Two-thirds disagreed strongly with the statement that Fallon "helps resolve disputes while maintaining harmonious and productive relationships with faculty.'' The faculty clearly indicated little confidence in the leadership capabilities of the current president.

The results of the poll were so overwhelmingly negative that some have raised questions about its objectivity. As a member of the committee that wrote and analyzed the survey, I would like to address the concerns that I have personally heard about the survey and its results.

To those that have criticized the survey as not being "objective,'' I wish to point out some of the characteristics of the survey design. First of all, the questions are not "questions'' in the usual sense. They are a series of 15 statements to which the respondent is to agree or disagree on a five-point scale - not unlike the student evaluations which are taken every semester in every class at Eastern Michigan University. A sixth response permits respondents with inadequate knowledge to check "unable to assess,'' and from six to 31 professors chose this response on various questions.

Every single statement is phrased in a positive way. Thus, for example, statement/question No. 5 was: "Exhibits a sense of vision and innovation.'' I fail to see where this statement is biased. Do we not want a president with a sense of vision and innovation? Are professors somehow not qualified to assess if their president has a sense of vision? Faculty were very honest in their responses: 15 faculty members responded that they were unable to assess the president's sense of vision. Of those who did choose to express their opinion (285 faculty), over 75 percent or three-fourths disagreed or disagreed strongly that President Fallon has a sense of vision and innovation. Add to these numbers the fact that, given an opportunity to make open-ended comments, 21 faculty (18.5 percent of those who made comments) chose to focus on their belief that Fallon lacks vision.

Secondly, the purpose of the survey was to give faculty an opportunity to express their perceptions of President Fallon in a confidential, non-threatening forum. You may disagree with my perceptions, but you cannot claim that they are not my perceptions. I believe the survey analysis accurately reflects the perceptions of the 300 faculty who responded. Again, I call on the analogy of student evaluations - students are asked their opinion about faculty's teaching effectiveness.

Third, to those who say that it is too "soon'' to ask questions about how faculty feel about President Fallon because this is only his second year on the job, I say that new faculty who join the EMU campus are evaluated in October of their first year, and every year thereafter until they achieve tenure, to determine if they will be reappointed for the following year. In other words, their continued employment is dependent on positive annual evaluations. Student evaluations are not used the first year because they are not available, but after that they are a part of the process. In such an important position as president, are we to use looser standards than we do for faculty?

Finally, to those who say that polling faculty opinion in the midst of a labor dispute is somehow unfair, let me say that opinion polls are always a snapshot in time. Should we not conduct opinion polls of President Bush because we are in the midst of a war? As we all try to move this institution forward, it is essential to have feedback from faculty about their feelings. The survey is one way, not the only way, but a perfectly legitimate way to get that feedback.

Survey results and the full report may be found at www.emuprofessors.org.

EMU students, faculty weather the battles

Monday, December 18, 2006

Your Dec. 10 editorial sounded like a dispatch from Baghdad. Accordingly, I write as an Eastern Michigan University faculty member located deep within the Pray-Harrold zone of our embattled campus, along with hundreds of colleagues and students. Despite the inadequacy of almost all important support services on campus and the "feel good'' emptiness of our president's rhetoric, we carry on our academic mission at a very high level of professionalism and solidarity. Ironically, ongoing contractual combat has united us as never before. Unlike Baghdad, we're not at war with each other. We're just struggling to be heard and respected. Is anybody listening?

Like Baghdad, we're about as badly governed by our boards and presidents, with money disappearing into the administrative green zone of pretty buildings, like "The House'' and the Student Center; students looking for the exit; regents with corporate mindsets ruining our campus services; and very little working the way it should. The faculty strike is characterized as a little unpleasantness which will go away as soon as everyone spends more time "visioning.''

Except that suddenly the helicopters arrived for three of our regents, carrying them to the safety of their corporate careers, but not before they blamed the "sectarian violence'' on the administration they appointed, just as President Bush's appointee Paul Bremer did when he exited Baghdad. Meanwhile, we're left in our bunkers. And the remaining administrators tell the faculty that we would all see things differently if we would just trust the green zone where everything works and no one is accountable.

Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott, Ann Arbor

The writer is an EMU professor of political science.