Dear Chancellor Gill:

We met in a group setting at an MSCA Board meeting this past fall, along with Chairman Tocco. I am currently chapter president of the Faculty Association at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. I am writing because I have numerous complaints and several questions. The nightmare proposals that are in the subject of this e-mail refer to the governor's reorganization plan and attack on the rights of employees.

All of us are stunned and angered by the proposals. What the Romney/Bain plan does is to take a very fragile system, one which is working even better than can be expected (given the budget constraints and constant attacks on it from the political leadership in this state), and presents a blueprint for its destruction. I don't use the word "destruction" lightly. Many of us, in looking at the plan, see it as a hostile corporate takeover of public higher education, and we understand it in the context of the governor's view of public services and his former firm's treatment of employees. What I don't understand is how someone like yourself, a friend of public higher education, someone with a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, can support this plan.

I can say much more about the specifics of the plan, but I don't want to go on too long. Let me just give one example, from our own campus. The reorganization plan, based on an "efficiency" model of cost per full-time-student (a model which, by the way, in sociology we refer to as "McDonaldization"), concludes that our college is over-spending by about four million dollars, some 30% of our state funds. Our punishment is be cut by that 30%. We are told that our library is over-spending by more than $180,000. Chancellor Gill, are you aware that we have one full-time reference librarian, one full-time employee who does all of the media-connected work for the library, that we have not been able to buy one new book for the library for the past two academic years, and have had to cancel dozens of academic journals? Chancellor Gill, can you explain to me how we are over-spending in the library? Or, perhaps more importantly, would you explain that to our students and their parents?

Yesterday I learned from our state-wide union president, Pat Markunas, that she had a conversation with you about the governor's legislative proposal to carry out his reorganization plan. You had provided Pat with four pages from the proposed legislation, a document which is at least thirty-three pages long. In those four pages, one section specified that two of our state colleges, Mass Art and Mass Maritime, were no longer to be governed by the BHE, as they are now and as are the other seven state colleges. Rather, Mass Art and Mass Maritime are to each have a local board and, to quote the document (pp. 31-2), "each board shall be the `employer' of its institution for purposes of chapter 150E." What does that mean? One legal interpretation that I have heard is that the effect of changing the employer from the BHE to a local board would be to decertify the MSCA as the union representing the faculty at those two campuses. It would also mean that our current contract would no longer cover those two colleges and that there would be no system of tenure protection? Chancellor Gill, is that what you have in mind?

Further, Pat informed me that she asked you what the governor's proposed legislation covered regarding the proposed mergers. She was told by you that our college would be merged with Berkshire Community College and that we would share one local board of trustees. And that the BHE would no longer be our employer and that our chapter 150E tie with the Board would be severed. My assumption, then, is that the governor's proposed reorganization legislation means to decertify the MSCA from representing our faculty, that the intention is to end the state's contractual obligations to us, and that the plan is to end tenure protection as well. I must ask you, again, Chancellor Gill, is that what you have in mind?

I will end now. There is much more to ask you, but that is enough for now. We --the faculty, staff, students, their parents, the residents of Berkshire County and of western Massachusetts-- have much work to do. We are committed to protecting and enhancing our very fragile system of public higher education and, specifically, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and Berkshire Community College. Perhaps in your answers to my questions, you will explain how the reorganization plan you are supporting does that. I await your reply. In the meantime, I am committed to work as hard as I can to defeat that plan.

Sincerely yours,
Maynard Seider