Faculty have the right of meaningful participation in the determination of their obligations to the University. When administrative decisions are made without such participation the administration is obligated to give transparent explanation and meaningful prior notification of changes to their contractual involvement in university organized events, such as graduation and commencement ceremonies. 

As such, if substantial logistical changes are made to such events, without sufficient notification for faculty to plan accordingly to attend to their own health, safety, and welfare, it is reasonable for faculty to decide not to participate in such events without fear of retribution or sanction.

Faculty and academic staff are not mere employees of a university, but rather are an essential and central group of decision makers for and about the life of the university. When this role is not respected by a university’s administration (as the case appears to be at LMU), then faculty are within their rights to remind the university of these facts.

The LMU-AAUP chapter stands in unequivocal solidarity with facilities management workers at LMU and support their fair, just, and reasonable demands for better wages and working conditions. Their work is essential to the work of the university and their cause is our cause.

The following letter was sent today to the University President, Provost, and Faculty Senate President, along with a copy of A Call to Justice: An Open Letter to the Loyola Marymount University Community in support of Budget Equity and Transparency:

Dear Colleagues,

We write to you at the far edge of the third wave, after the dark days of January, in the midst of a tentative but growing sense of confidence as educators are cleared for vaccination in LA County. We have weathered a year of crisis, from spring break to spring break. We have learned quickly, we have adapted, we have rallied. We have worried for our families, worried for our colleagues, and worried for our jobs. We have supported our students and encouraged them on when we thought we had nothing left. And we have rallied to carry LMU through.

Our efforts have not always been perfect, but our efforts have brought stable enrollments.

As we discern together in the coming weeks about the future of our university, we encourage you to adopt an equity budget and commit to budget transparency in the months and years ahead. There has been some confusion in the past year about what, exactly, an equity budget means; we hope that the enclosed open letter—signed by over 100 individual faculty and staff members and endorsed by the membership of the LMU-AAUP, Faculty Senate Committee on the Economic Standing of the Faculty, and the Latinx Faculty Association—provides some guidance in understanding what an equity budget is and why it is a necessary reflection of our values as a university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions.

We have made enormous sacrifices to get here. We must make good on those sacrifices now by taking care of each other.

Cordially,

LMU-AAUP

The Executive Committee of the LMU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (LMU-AAUP) issues the following statement:

The LMU chapter of the AAUP is concerned about the administration’s public response to the anonymous article published by The Loyolan. The administration’s response (which is unsigned yet claims to speak for “LMU” as a whole) reads as a public attack on our own students, rather than as a contribution to discernment for the sake of the whole university community regarding our financial situation. By offering no new documentation or evidence, this response exacerbates the deep distrust felt by many in our university community. The only adequate response is the fullest possible budget transparency, which has been demanded both by our Faculty Senate and by the LMU-AAUP, in an open letter adopted by its membership in September, signed by nearly 100 members of the faculty.

—The Executive Committee of the LMU-AAUP