Dear UUP Member:

UUP continues to work hard to insure the terms and conditions of employment are upheld for our members during this unprecedented and demanding time.

UUP Cortland leaders continue to collaborate and communicate regularly with the SUNY Cortland leadership to resolve issues related to the crisis, and we are confident that management will continue its commendable level of collegiality as we all wait to hear about re-opening from state leaders and plan for it, in whatever form it might take.

Together with an ad hoc group of concerned activist members, UUP Cortland, with oversight from UUP Statewide leadership, has crafted the attached Pledge of Solidarity to help clarify our needs here at Cortland and our priorities moving forward.

We are all in this together, and UUP will work hard to do our part to help us all experience a safe and productive fall semester.

If you are interested in getting involved in union work or advocacy on this or any union issue, please contact me at jaclyn.pittsley@cortland.edu

In Solidarity,

Jaclyn Pittsley

Lecturer III

English

UUP Cortland Chapter President

PLEDGE OF SOLIDARITY FOR SUNY CORTLAND WORKERS

Joint Statement from Cortland’s UUP Executive Board and an ad hoc group of Concerned Teaching Faculty*

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis on a scale beyond measure in our lifetimes, both nationally and internationally. The state of New York continues to be the epicenter with the second largest number of cases in the world and with a higher death rate (7.8%) than the US (5.9%), and the world (6.4%).

As we mourn the incalculable losses in lives and health, we also recognize these tolls are inseparable from devastating effects on all sectors of the economy, including higher education. As schools across the country grapple with the long-term effects of the pandemic, some have chosen to persist with austerity such as defunding or even closing academic programs (as at Ohio University) or terminating the contracts of contingent faculty for next academic year (as at John Jay College). SUNY Cortland, too, has struggled with austerity budgets and state disinvestments, our SUNY system having lost more than $600 million in direct aid from New York State between 2008 and 2020.

This pledge of solidarity insists that we choose a different path as an institution. The long-term solution to our current crisis lies in a significant public re-investment in public higher education in ways that transform students’ lives and life chances and serve as the foundation for expanded democracy, a platform for civic engagement, an engine of economic development, and a generator of health, creativity and innovation. It is absolutely necessary that we reaffirm that SUNY Cortland is a public good and a vital component of the economic and social fabric of Cortland county and Central New York. It is also critical that we recognize all employees at SUNY Cortland, as working people who contribute to the public good of the College. Putting our lives and health at risk will further compromise SUNY Cortland’s ability to provide higher education and serve as a vital force within the wider Cortland community.

Fortunately, we are not alone in this assessment of the public good. In an aggressive response to state and municipal budget crises created by COVID 19, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has opened the Municipal Lending Facility (MLF). Given this new and extensive source of liquidity provisioning, we join a growing chorus of academics in calling on leadership, beginning with Governor Andrew Cuomo, to make our budgets whole. This action will greatly reduce the widespread and intensifying uncertainty that is gripping our community, and make responsible planning for a safe and just opening increasingly possible.  

We also invite all members of the Cortland community, including local government and SUNY Cortland administrators, to join us in pledging to demand that all available financial resources are thoroughly explored and utilized before any cuts are made, and that all of or our decisions and actions resulting from COVID 19 are in accordance with the following principles:

• Defend jobs, wages, and benefits at SUNY Cortland: Protecting jobs minimizes human suffering and allows all of us to function without unnecessary anxiety during a pandemic. We call upon the administration, unions, Faculty Senate, faculty, professionals, staff, and students to unite against job losses, loss of healthcare (which remains tied to employment in the U.S.), and reductions in other benefits. All Cortland workers, including student workers, part-time and full-time faculty, professionals, and staff, must be defended during this health emergency.

• Protect the most vulnerable: We should take special care to ensure the security of those who have the weakest job protections, the smallest salaries, and the most tenuous access to health benefits. Unavoidable cuts should be distributed broadly and progressively across campus. Moreover, as Cortland’s strength is in the diversity of its degree programs, employees in liberal studies units such as the Arts, Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies must be protected.

• Prioritize the safety and well-being of the community: The need to ensure the health and safety of all members of the University community should be centered and prioritized as we consider the economic solvency of the College. Any consideration to re-open the College this Fall must take place with full awareness that educational institutions are among the highest- risk spaces for transmission, given the close and unavoidable proximity of people on campus. Special arrangements must be made to protect faculty, staff and students who are at higher risk, or those who live with family members at higher risk. Alternative scenarios such as providing SUNY Cortland faculty with the option to teach virtually in Fall 2020 and providing continued telecommuting possibilities for all employees where feasible must be part of the conversation as well. Last but not least, our community of the City of Cortland and CortlandCounty must also be considered and protected from an influx of potentially asymptomatic carriers from other parts of NYS through a program of rigorous testing, notification, and contact tracing.

• Practice meaningful shared governance with consistency and transparency: At a time of unprecedented crisis, SUNY Cortland faculty, professionals, staff, and students must be given the chance to meaningfully shape decisions on the organization and format of the Fall 2020 semester, in consultation with medical and public health experts. Faculty and staff have unique insiders’ knowledge about the learning needs and expectations of our students, the resources required to serve them, and the challenges of student-faculty interaction at a time of crisis.  Such knowledge needs to shape the decision-making process via campus-wide surveys and departmental discussions about alternative scenarios for Fall 2020. The processes through which decisions are made and the data on which they are based must be entirely transparent including making complete, itemized university budgets and disseminating any new information on emergency relief, stimulus funding, state budgets, enrollments, and other relevant criteria, public.

• Maintain academic quality: While faculty should determine decisions on remote and online learning in consultation with professional staff and relevant administrators, the current crisis should not be used to accelerate the transition to online programs. We must recognize that online education is often sub-optimal and, when inappropriately used, can disadvantage students and erode the quality of education and the academic reputation of SUNY Cortland. Nevertheless, steps should be taken to support faculty in any use of online resources during the pandemic, including providing reimbursement for any individual expenses incurred in the process.

• Protect intellectual property and academic freedom.

In order to preserve the scholarship and teaching excellence of the college, we commit to work together to protect the intellectual property and academic freedom of the faculty. This includes preserving intellectual property of research, lectures, course materials and assessments.

• Defend SUNY Cortland against privatization: As providers of a necessary public good, we commit to working together to ensure that local agreements and state policies reject any and all institutional closures or privatization schemes, including the outsourcing of student services, the creation and expansion of privatized units on campus, and the increasingly many contracts with private entities to provide educational services to campus.

• Collaborate and share responsibility: In order for the campus to function in a healthy, productive and safe manner, all elements of the community must be a part of the work of building a safe and productive learning and living environment for all. All members of the community bear responsibility for the safety of everyone in the community and, thus, must be party to discussions and deliberations on steps taken to ensure that the campus emerges from this crisis healthy, financially strong, and a place where an affordable, high-quality education is available for all who seek it.

*A group of Concerned Teaching Faculty have taken an activist role in developing this pledge in solidarity with the UUP Executive Board. The resulting pledge represents the interests of all UUP faculty and staff at SUNY Cortland.