Category: EMU

As I discovered today via this comment left on my blog by the president of EMU’s student government (Bobby– just send me an email!), student government has put together a web site called “Pray-Harrold Needs YOU!”

If you’re an EMU/Michigan local, it’s worth checking out because it more or less sums up the long and on-going saga of EMU getting the money for this project. I appreciate the effort, though to be honest, this is the sort of thing that should have been done (maybe by student government, certainly by the EMU-AAUP and/or just the EMU administration) a couple of years ago. After all, it is beginning to look now like we might actually get some of the funds in this year’s budget cycle.

It does remind me though of the importance of being careful what you ask for. Pray-Harrold construction is going to be, ah, “disruptive,” to say the least. And when all is said and done, they’re really only talking about significant remodeling of the first four floors, which means the extent to which this is going to impact my department (our offices are on the sixth floor, and we teach lots of classes up there too) is debatable.

In the meantime, check out the web site.

The EMU faculty union is actually a chapter of the American Association of University Professors. We’ve been associated with the AAUP since the union was organized in 1974. But apparently, there is a movement to get out of the AAUP and associate ourselves with the Michigan Education Association. And the AAUP local is obviously concerned. Today, I received a packet of materials in the snail mail from the union about why we should stay with the AAUP and why we shouldn’t get ourselves messed up in the raiding MEA union.

I realize that this stuff is probably not that interesting to people who are not at EMU, but since there are enough EMU folks who stumble across this blog once in a while, I thought I’d post a few thoughts (while I’m watching the Iowa/Wisconsin basketball game):

• I really don’t have any idea what the EMU-AAUP people are talking about. I either haven’t received anything from the MEA or I thought it was junk mail and I threw it away. I haven’t talked to any other faculty (other than my wife) about this yet; did anybody who teaches at EMU get this stuff?
• I think the AAUP makes a reasonably compelling case about why we don’t want to be affiliated with the MEA, which is really more of a union for K-12 teachers. But beyond that…
• … the absolute last thing we ought to do is take a vote for something like this while we’re in the midst of contract negotiations. That’s just dumb.
• One of the things that’s interesting here is that way WAY back, a couple years ago when I was involved more directly with the EMU-AAUP, there were rumors/off-the-record talk about moving over to the MEA. I don’t know exactly what that was all about, but the people who ended up getting thrown out of office (see this post and this post if you’re interested in a version of a recap) were pretty P.O.-ed at the AAUP national for a variety of different reasons. Anyway, I have to wonder if some of these past union folks are behind this MEA deal now.
• Now, having said all that, I’m not entirely sure what we at EMU get by being associated with the AAUP. That’s not a call for dumping the AAUP, certainly not to join the MEA. It’s just an honest question. When I was at Southern Oregon University, there was a faculty union, but it was a self-sustaining thing. The SOU faculty weren’t assoicated with any national or state organization; they were totally local.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to these issues when I was at SOU, but the faculty union there seemed to handle things well. Why couldn’t we do that at EMU? Instead of sending our dues off to some national or state organization, why not keep it all local?

• And of course, I once again must wonder about the faculty union in general. The leftist in me is all for the EMU-AAUP and unions in general. But when you sit in on these meetings (as I did for a few months in 2003), well, it makes you think. They say that making laws is like making sausage, an ugly and grisly process that might make you into a vegetarian, and I think that union politicing is about the same.

  Of course, I do kinda like a good bratwurst….

Here’s a typical elevator scenario in the building I work in at EMU, Pray-Harrold Hall, one I just experienced a few minutes ago:

• I arrive and enter the building on the second floor, which I realize is confusing because the basement is actually the first floor. No one is really around, I’m with my wife (who is carrying a bunch of school stuff), I’m not in a hurry, and I’m feeling lazy, so we go to the elevators. Despite the fact that my office is on the sixth floor, I often take the stairs. A perfectly able-bodied person is also waiting in the lobby area for the elevator.
• The elevators are very slow and often barely functioning, so after an inevitable wait, one arrives. We get on and select floors. I select 6, another person selects 7 (the top floor), another 5. Able-bodied person selects 3.
• People who actually have a reason to use the elevator look at each other and then at able-bodied person, who has inexplicably waited several minutes for an elevator to go up one flight of stairs and subsequently slowed the rest of us down. Able-bodied person disembarks on the third floor. We discuss able-bodied person on our ride to the higher floors.

I don’t know what the deal is here, but this happens all the time. What is all the more amazing is that there are many times– between classes, for example- when the elevators are very busy and crowded and able-bodied peoples will still wait around for ten minutes or longer and then cram themselves into an already crowded elevator to go up (or even down!) a single floor.

I’m not in charge here (and I think all of us, including myself, are thankful about that), but if I were in charge, I would make a rule. Unless you are pushing around something on a cart, have an enourmous amount of stuff that would be difficult to carry up a flight of stairs, you have a valid medical excuse and/or disability:

• You are not allowed to take the elevator up a single floor, particularly the second to the third floor.
• You are not allowed to take the elevator down a single floor, again, particularly from the third to the second floor.
• There are four stairwells in the building, and while it is kind of confusing that only two of these sets of stairs actually goes to the seventh floor, you should use them.

There– that is my effort this week at public service announcement and education all in one post.

When job candidates for different positions come to campus, my standard “tell all” statement is this: I like working at EMU quite a bit, but I really get annoyed with the building I work in (Pray-Harrold) and I also get really annoyed with the parking situation.

Parking is a common problem at just about every college or university, but it’s a big deal here because EMU is fundamentally a commuter school. I don’t know what the statistics really are, but I’ll bet about two-thirds of our students drive five or more miles to get to school (which is quite a bit different from that liberal arts school in Ann Arbor), and some of these students drive a heck of a lot farther than five miles. The same goes for the faculty. My wife and I are somewhat unique in our department in that we can walk to school, though the fact of the matter is we often don’t (too much stuff to carry back and forth, bad weather often makes walking unpleasant, neither one of us walks when we teach at night, etc.)

So, you’d think that there would be a fair amount of attention to the plight of commuters, or rather, of parkers. Sadly, not enough. Part of the problem is there just are not enough parking spaces. But in my opinion, the bigger problem is that there is not enough parking enforcement.

Here’s a photograph of part of what I mean. For some reason, it is near routine for the gates at the enterance to various parking lots to either be broken like this or to be raised entirely. And just to make the obvious even more obvious: if the gate is broken or otherwise doesn’t work and if this happens all the time, then that more or less defeats the purpose for having a gated parking lot in the first place. I took this picture with my cell phone last Tuesday; the gate was still broken on Friday, and I would bet a month’s salary that it will be broken when I go into work today.

There’s also the problem of a serious lack of enforcement, and everyone knows that this is a problem. It’s fairly common for students and others to park illegally in the faculty/staff lot that is near the building where I work. I understand why students do this, but if I had done this at my undergraduate institution (and actually, I didn’t have a car as an undergrad), I would have certainly have been towed away.

It’s worth noting that if EMU really wants to enforce parking, they can. For example, faculty and staff can buy a parking spot. I’m not sure how much money it is, though I do know it’s hundreds of dollars and there is a fairly long waiting list to get a spot. As far as I can tell, one would pity the fool who parks illegally in one of these golden ticket spots.

Now, one of the things that’s potentially interesting about all of this is that one of the issues (supposedly) on the table for the next faculty union contract talks has to do with parking. Essentially, faculty don’t pay for their own parking right now– or rather, faculty receive parking as part of their current benefits package. As I understand it, the administration wants to start charging faculty what they charge students– I believe $75 a semester, though it might be less– for faculty/staff spots.

We’ll see if that actually comes to pass; I have my doubts. But if the administration is successful in charging faculty for parking, then:

• I’d rather pay a few hundred dollars a year to guarantee that I have a spot;
• They’d better fix the gates; and/or
• A lot more faculty (including me) will just walk.