UFWW Members

UFWW 2022 Election Results

2022-06-14T12:32:58Z

Dear Faculty,

Thank you for your participation in selecting the leadership of your union. The Elections Committee would especially like to thank all the candidates for their willingness to serve. Please find the results of the 2022 United Faculty of Western Washington elections below and contact us with any questions. Congratulations to the elected officers!

- UFWW Elections Committee (Jeff Young, Lysa Rivera, Nini Hayes, Josh Cerretti)

President: Peter Pihos

Vice President: Vicki Hsueh

Treasurer: Mark Springer

At-Large: Jerry Ek

At-Large: Melina Juárez Pérez

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Peanut Butter Challenge - Last Chance

2021-06-24T10:15:36Z

Dear UFWW Members,

A quick reminder that Friday, June 25 is the last day for the Peanut Butter Challenge. Details are below the signature.

Thanks, JJC

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This June, in collaboration with the other unions in the Northwest Washington Central Labor Council, United Faculty of Western Washington are participating in the PEANUT BUTTER CHALLENGE in support of local food banks. We'll be trying to gather more donations of peanut butter than the other unions in pursuit of bragging rights and, more importantly, addressing food insecurity in our community.

We ask that you buy union peanut butter (Jif or Adams) from a union grocery store (locally, Haggen, Safeway, and Fred Meyer) and drop it off any Friday in June (the 4th, 11th, 18th, and/or 25th) between 10am and 2pm. The drop off location is 816 Mason Street, a blue house on the left side with a driveway just past the "People First Bellingham" sign. There will be a box on the front step. Josh and Theresa from UFWW exec will handle the drop off and submission to the competition.

More info is available on the attached flier but feel free to reach out via email with any questions.

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Peanut Butter Challenge

2021-06-15T09:17:59Z

Dear UFWW Members,

More info is available on the attached flier but feel free to reach out via email with any questions.

JJC

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UFWW Members Message

2021-06-14T17:46:16Z

Dear UFWW Members,

The Elections Committee is pleased to congratulate the new officers for the 2021-2023 term:

President. Theresa Warburton (English, CHSS)

Chief Steward. Peter Pihos (History, CHSS)

Communications Director. Lysa Rivera (English, CHSS)

At-Large Representative. Kirsten Drickey (Modern & Classical Languages, CHSS), Nini Hayes (Environmental Studies, Huxley), Kathryn Trueblood (English, CHSS)

For all who ran — thank you for your support of UFWW. Thanks also to everyone who voted in this important democratic process.

Sincerely,

UFWW Elections Committee

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THE SECOND TIME AS TRAGEDY

2020-06-17T09:08:26Z

From the UFWS Blog by Bill Lyne

This time it’s going to be much worse.

From 2008 to 2012, during the recession that now seems more quaint than great, the state slashed appropriations to public higher education. This only accelerated a process of privatization. Following a trend that had been consistent since at least the early 1980s, state universities raised tuition between 60% and 80% over four years and went on their merry way. Overall university budgets were actually affected very little, but the cost of public higher education was shifted more and more to students and their families.

This time, the full bill for a house-of-cards public higher ed funding scheme will be coming due. Funding for public universities comes in three buckets—state appropriations, tuition, and self-supporting auxiliaries like dorms and dining halls. All three of those buckets are about to become dumpster fires.

The need to shut down the economy has shriveled state tax receipts and whenever the inevitable legislative special session comes, the temptation to make deep cuts to universities will be great.

Raising tuition, even if we were willing to overlook the ethical problem of making public education more expensive when people are losing their jobs in droves, is not an option. In fact, universities will be lucky to convince students to pay the current price. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven all education temporarily online. Teachers and professors all over the state have worked heroically to move their courses on a dime to Zoom and Canvas. And, while those courses continue to be high quality, our students have discovered what faculty have known all along—online college isn’t as good as real college. With all due respect to the bankers and quasi-non-profit evangelists who have spent millions trying to convince us that the future of education is people in their pajamas in front of a computer screen, our students aren’t buying what you’re selling. Polls are showing that if we’re still mostly online in the fall (and the stubborn science suggests we’re going to be), up to 20 percent of our students won’t return. With half of university budgets coming from tuition, this drop in enrollment will have a huge impact.

If all that isn’t bad enough, public universities are also facing a third financial crisis they haven’t faced before. When the pandemic hit, we sent our students home with housing and meal plan refunds in their pockets. The state provides no funding for student housing, so both the building and operating of residence halls have to pay for themselves. Dorms are built with debt—Washington’s six public universities have billions of dollars in bonds. Empty dorms and dining halls mean no revenue to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and the bond market doesn’t like to wait for its money.

So this time is shaping up to be a perfect financial storm for public universities, both in Washington and across the country. Some won’t survive and many of those that do will emerge as hollow shells of what they should be. Here on the eve of that destruction, we should pause to reflect on what we could be losing.

Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, was one of the first instigators of the defunding of public higher education, arguing that the state should not “subsidize intellectual curiosity.” As the events of the last couple of weeks have reminded us, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

From the 1920s to near the end of the 1970s, state and federal governments invested massively in the public higher education they’ve allowed to crumble over the last 40 years. The gray-haired among us can still remember a time when regular people could pay nominal fees to go to school in Bellingham, Cheney, Ellensburg, Olympia, Pullman or Seattle and get essentially the same education that rich people got at fancy private schools. Higher ed was the engine of U.S. middle class growth and increased access to college corresponded with the lowest level of U.S. economic inequality in the twentieth century—and the defunding of public higher ed has corresponded with the transformation of the United States into one of the most inequitable societies ever. Public funding of research in public universities also drove innovations in energy, agriculture, the internet, and aerospace that still pay dividends today.

Public universities also played a vital and nourishing role in the social movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The G. I. Bill along with the various strands of the Women’s and Civil Rights movements brought working class people, women, and people of color into universities in large numbers. These students brought with them demands for the relevant curricula of Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Ethnic Studies programs. And they organized to make the world a better place. The end of the Vietnam war began on college campuses. The Free Speech Movement began at a public university. Huey Newton met Bobby Seale in college. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was created by Black college students. Angela Davis was and is a public university professor.

College as the incubator of a more democratic, less white, less patriarchal society was what most frightened Governor Reagan and his descendants (who include, to one degree or another, not only the Bushes and Trump, but also Presidents Clinton and Obama). As long as higher ed was for mostly middle class white boys, it was a public good. But as soon as other kinds of people start filling classrooms, a sustained and organized effort to redefine higher ed began. Politicians brought us budget cuts and tuition increases. Well-funded think tanks and task forces brought us a relentless campaign to redefine higher ed as a private good. These arguments have become so naturalized that any attempt these days to speak of college as anything more than supermarkets where students shop for credentials that will bring them a higher salary gets a dismissive wave from most politicians and policy makers. We tell our students that our tuition is worth crippling debt because our degrees will bring them more money. In both the way we treat them and the way we talk about them, college presidents have become CEOs and students have become customers. Last year, a coalition of higher education advocates in Washington helped pass the Workforce Education Investment Act. In arguing for that investment, we dared not range beyond the idea of our students as anything more than a workforce. Our debate around college has become so constricted that we can only conceive of it as training employees, not educating citizens.

Following the money can tell us some hard truths about how we got to where we find ourselves today. Between 1989 and 2013, state appropriations for higher education in the United States increased by 5%. In the same time, state appropriations for the Corrections industry increased by 89%. In Washington during that same period, state appropriations per FTE higher education student decreased by 50%, while state spending per capita on Corrections increased by 43%. We’d rather pay to send people (especially Black and Brown people) to jail than to send them to college. And as we can see in our streets now, we get what we pay for.

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UFWW Message: 2020 Officer Election Results

2020-05-26T16:44:45Z

Dear UFWW Members,

The Elections Committee is pleased to congratulate the new officers for the 2020-2022 term:

President – Ricardo Lopez, History, CHSS

Vice President – Vicki Hsueh, Political Science & Director of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, CHSS

At-Large Representative – Josh Ceretti, History, CHSS

Treasurer – Mark Springer, Department of Decision Sciences, CBE

For those who ran and for you who voted — thank you for your participation in this democratic process.

Sincerely,

UFWW Elections Committee

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UFWW Message: UFWW Annual Spring Meeting Announcement

2020-05-06T16:02:01Z

Dear UFWW Members,

Please join UFWW President Rich Brown and members of EXEC for our annual spring meeting on Tuesday, May 19^th at 4:30 pm (Zoom invite below, please note the password requirement). The meeting will include a state of the union summary for the year, solicitation of nominations from the floor for spring elections, and conclude with a Q & A session.

More information regarding elections will be coming out at the end of next week in our annual spring newsletter.

Best,

Rich Brown, UFWW President

Department of Theatre & Dance

—

Rich Brown is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: UFWW Spring Meeting

Time: May 19, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82867493577?pwd=OXBiVnRKSHdLWGFPZnZnUExYTmZIdz09

Meeting ID: 828 6749 3577

Password: SPRINGMTG

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Meeting ID: 828 6749 3577

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbzEUxqTFA

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UFWW Message: Senate Code of Ethics

2019-06-05T08:07:46Z

Dear UFWW Members,

I write to inform you of the action taken by Faculty Senate this week regarding the amendment to Section 2 of the Faculty Code of Ethics.

After months of debate and discussion, which included the admirably brave and impactful testimony by many WWU students of color who have been, and continue to be, personally impacted by racial discrimination both on and off campus, the Faculty Senate voted to amend Section 2 of the Faculty Code of Ethics to read as follows:

“As teachers, the Western faculty encourage the free pursuit of learning by students, and demonstrate by example the best scholarly standards of their respective disciplines. The faculty respect students as individuals and adhere to their designated role as intellectual guides and counselors, make every effort to foster honest academic conduct and to assure that evaluations of students reflect their actual performance. The faculty are to avoid and condemn racism, sexual harassment, intimidation, the exploitation of students, and discrimination against students based on all protected characteristics. In particular, faculty condemn verbal use of the n-word racial slur in learning environments. Faculty do not participate in discrimination based on all legally protected characteristics, including the following: Race, Color, Creed, Religion, National Origin, Citizenship, Sex (including pregnancy and parenting status), Gender Identity and Expression, Sexual Orientation, Disability, Age, Veteran Status, Marital Status, and Genetic Information. The confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student is respected, and any exploitation of students for private advantage is avoided by the faculty member who acknowledges significant assistance from them. Faculty strive to help students develop high standards of academic competency and respect for academic freedom. Academic freedom is a right that does not protect or provide cover for racism or any other form of discriminatory behavior.”

I wholeheartedly support the sentiment of the proposed resolution, however as UFWW President I could not vote to approve the resolution in its current form. The Faculty Senate resolution as it is currently written is a bad tool trying to fix an important problem, and bad tools often make the problem worse.

UFWW Exec provided the following statement to Faculty Senate to consider before taking their vote on Monday:

“UFWW supports efforts by the WWU community to make our university a safe and inclusive environment for all its members. We strongly oppose the use of slurs to undermine, intimidate, or create a hostile environment for any students, faculty, or staff. From different disciplinary positions and fields of expertise, we strongly advocate for classrooms where we investigate, interrogate, and question the conditions of inequality in our society at large. Thus, rather than offering piecemeal resolutions for pervasive problems or resorting to actions that may infringe on academic freedom, UFWW encourages the Senate take advantage of this moment to orient its energy towards addressing root structural causes for the persistence of anti-black racism on campus.”

It is the daily work of UFWW to support efforts by the WWU community to make our university a safe and inclusive environment for all its members. Along with the members of the UFWW Executive Board, I strongly oppose the use of racial slurs to undermine, intimidate, or create a hostile environment for any students, faculty, or staff. We fiercely advocate for classrooms where we can investigate, interrogate, and challenge the conditions of inequality on our campus and in our society at large.

This is a foundational tenet of the CBA, found in Section 13 Discrimination and Harassment Prohibited:

13.1 The University and the Union are committed to the principle of equal employment and educational opportunity as expressed in various state and federal laws and in University policies, including, without limitation, laws and policies on prohibiting illegal discrimination, sexual and other harassment, and bullying. See relevant policies: "Ensuring Equal Opportunity and Prohibiting Discrimination and Retaliation" (POL- Ul600.02); "Accommodating Persons with Disabilities" (POL-U1600.03); "Preventing and Responding to Sex Discrimination, Including Sexual Misconduct" (POL-U1600.04): "Implementing Affirmative Action Program" (POL-U1600.05): and "Prohibiting Intimate Personal Relationships Between Supervisors and Supervisees" (POL-Ul600.06). See also Appendix D - Code of Faculty Ethics. (my emphasis)

The Faculty Code of Ethics is a legal document, as it is ratified by the CBA, which is the legal contract between the administration and the faculty on our campus. Its conditions are the ruler by which faculty conduct is measured, and those faculty members who do not comply with those conditions face disciplinary action including dismissal from their positions at WWU:

13.2 Faculty who violate policies and laws referenced in Section 13.1 are subject to discipline as described in Section 19 and have rights to Union representation and grievance procedures as described in Sections 19 and 20.

My biggest concern with the Senate’s resolution was that the term ‘racism’ does not have a legal definition, which makes the language of the proposed resolution unenforceable.

Additionally, the lack of precise and legally enforceable language in the proposed resolution is open to interpretation by the administration, and could be used in future years to discipline faculty for teaching/researching on subjects such as white supremacy or white privilege. These are just a few examples of the ways in which the vagueness of the proposed resolution might lead to the erosion of academic freedom resulting in limits to speech, curriculum or access to research by our faculty and students. Like one colleague who provided feedback to Senate, on manners like these, I refer to the legal experts of organizations such as the ACLU:

"To be clear, the First Amendment does not protect behavior on campus that crosses the line into targeted harassment or threats, or that creates a pervasively hostile environment for vulnerable students. But merely offensive or bigoted speech does not rise to that level, and determining when conduct crosses that line is a legal question that requires examination on a case-by-case basis. Restricting such speech may be attractive to college administrators as a quick fix to address campus tensions. But real social change comes from hard work to address the underlying causes of inequality and bigotry, not from purified discourse. The ACLU believes that instead of symbolic gestures to silence ugly viewpoints, colleges and universities have to step up their efforts to recruit diverse faculty, students, and administrators; increase resources for student counseling; and raise awareness about bigotry and its history." (my emphasis). - (https://www.aclu.org/other/speech-campus)

As UFWW president, I have become keenly aware of the strength that clear, unequivocal language brings to our contract. It is the strength of that contract that helps students and faculty at Western to find justice in the face of discriminatory actions, such as those that may occur on the basis of race or ethnicity. UFWW will continue to work in whatever ways we can to ensure that the academic environment at WWU is one in which we may all pursue the hard work of dismantling systems of oppression.

-Rich Brown

UFWW President

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UFWW Message: Election Results and Newsletter

2019-05-29T08:47:26Z

Dear Members,

As I hope you saw in the Provost's email yesterday, you will be receiving a 4% across-the-board raise next fall due to the union's negotiations with the administration during last spring's "re-opener" bargain. Congratulations!

Also, election results are in! Please join me in congratulating our newly elected and re-elected Executive Board Members:

President: Rich Brown
Vice President: Ricardo Lopez
Chief Steward: Lysa Rivera
Communication Director: Nabil Kamel
At-Large Representative: Blanca Aranda
At-Large Representative: Theresa Warburton
At-Large Representative (NTT): Kristen Drickey

Finally, you will find our annual newsletter at this link with more union information including our upcoming annual spring party on June 7th (be sure to register) and much more.

Wishing you the best as you wrap up another year!

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UFWW Message: Spring Meeting (room change)

2019-05-13T12:31:37Z

Dear Colleagues, 

Our Spring member meeting will be this Friday, May 17th at 2:00pm. Please note that since our last message there has been a room change. We will be meeting in Bond 221. We will also call for, and then close nominations for the election of officers. The following positions will be up for election (terms are in parentheses): 

President (2019-2021)
Vice President (2019-2021)
Director of Communications (2019-2021)
Chief Steward (2019-2021)
At-Large I, II, III (2019-2021)

The terms for these positions begin on June 1, 2019. Descriptions of these positions are available at ufww.org. Nominations should be submitted to the nominations and elections committee. The committee members are Yvonne Durham (Economics), Mark Springer (Decision Sciences), and Jeff Young (Biology). Nominations can be submitted to the committee at: elections@PROTECTED. Nominees must be willing to serve and they must be members of UFWW. Nominations will close at the meeting. The election will be held by electronic ballot the following week. Only members may vote. Faculty may join UFWW at any time. For more information on membership, please contact Lysa Rivera (lysa.rivera@PROTECTED).

The nominations and elections committee has already received the following nominations:

President: Rich Brown
Vice President: Ricardo Lopez
Director of Communications: Nabil Kamel
Chief Steward: Lysa Rivera
At-Large (Three Positions):, Blanca Aranda, Kirsten Drickey, Sean Dwyer, Ben Minor, and Theresa Warburton

We look forward to seeing you on May 17th, 2019!

Sincerely,

2019 UFWW Executive Board

UFWW Message: Email scam alert

2018-12-18T18:10:34Z

Dear UFWW Members,

Please be aware that there is a email scam targeting WEA members. Please below for details.

Rich Brown

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Dear Local Presidents,

We have been made aware of a SPAM/Phishing scam that you should know about.

We have heard from several local presidents that emails are being sent to members, in the president’s name, encouraging people to purchase iTunes cards and then contact the local president. The account looks like an authentic local president email, but it is from a gmail account. WEA has blocked this sender on our servers to prevent further abuse.

If this has happened to your local, you should contact your membership and tell them that this scam exists and people should delete the messages without reading. The subject line reads, “Quick Request.”

If someone has replied to the message, we advise them to change their passwords and run their anti-virus computer protection software.

If your local was targeted by this scam, please also inform the IT helpdesk, which is investigating this issue.

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