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Press Release Statement

Statement on Participation in Commencement Exercises

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.

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Press Release Statement

Statement of Solidarity with LMU Facilities Workers

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.

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Press Release Statement

Open Letter for Budget Equity and Transparency

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

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Press Release Statement

Statement regarding administration’s response to anonymous op-ed

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

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Statement

LMU-AAUP Stands in Solidarity with #BlackAtLMU and Black Faculty and Staff Association Demands

Following the statement of solidarity issued by the Executive Committee of the LMU-AAUP in support of Black faculty, staff, and student demands at Loyola Marymount University, the membership of the chapter voted on Sep. 18 2020 to ratify and endorse this statement as the offiical position of the LMU-AAUP chapter:

We stand in solidarity with #BlackAtLMU and the LMU Black Faculty and Staff Association and completely support the demands which they have issued. We join their calls for LMU to move beyond words and act directly against racism and anti-blackness at Loyola Marymount University. We too are “impatient with the institutional inertia that is historically, consciously, and strategically used to resist change.”

Black Lives Matter.

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Statement

Statement of solidarity with #BlackAtLMU and the BFSA

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

We stand in solidarity with #BlackAtLMU and the LMU Black Faculty and Staff Association and completely support the demands which they have issued. We join their calls for LMU to move beyond words and act directly against racism and anti-blackness at Loyola Marymount University. We too are “impatient with the institutional inertia that is historically, consciously, and strategically used to resist change.”

Black Lives Matter.

—The Executive Committee of the LMU-AAUP

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Statement

Response to Provost’s August 5, 2020 Town Hall

August 13, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

We found the Provost’s Town Hall on August 5th shocking and demoralizing. After all of the work we have done to preserve LMU’s future, under impossible conditions, it was dispiriting to hear that faculty and staff will have their compensation reduced by nearly 10%, and not receive this news from the President. It was dispiriting to be talked to, but not really heard. It was dispiriting to hear several major errors in fact and judgment from our executive leadership.

We would like to briefly address a few of them here:

  • The AAUP has defined and defended the principles and practices of shared governance in higher education for a hundred years. Shared governance is thus not, as was asserted by Provost Poon, “in the eye of the beholder.” LMU has an objective framework for shared governance as laid out in the Faculty Handbook, and through policies adopted by the Faculty Senate. Insofar as shared governance is in the eye of the beholder, if the beholder is executive leadership, too frequently it is viewed as merely optional or entirely unnecessary—as was indicated by the decision to bypass the University Comprehensive Benefits Committee, and thus abrogate the contractual requirements of the Faculty Handbook, in order to suspend contractual obligations of deferred compensation.
  • The Provost was mistaken in claiming that only executive leadership’s pay has been cut; this statement erases the immense sacrifice that has already been made of hundreds of staff who have been partially or fully furloughed, or who have been laid off entirely.
  • There seems to be significant confusion about the meaning of an equity budget. An across the board cut is not an equity budget. A flat rate cut is not an equity budget. These cuts are not progressive; they are regressive in effect, in that they harm those most vulnerable and protect those least vulnerable. This is not a matter of opinion, but a statement of fact. To mischaracterize publicly, and in written communications, these cuts as “progressive” is especially dispiriting at an institution of learning. Moreover, such an approach is not in keeping with our values as a university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions.
  • And while it is the case that public universities have a higher degree of budget transparency than private universities, this alone is not sufficient reason for LMU to keep its faculty in the dark about the tough decisions we must make. There has been no meaningful effort to justify how and why these decisions have been made. The goalposts keep changing, the relevant decisions are always made elsewhere, and the faculty are told that we must cut educational resources, but grow management. Transparency is necessary for trust and for confidence in our university; increasingly, as a faculty, we have none.

We look forward to working together as #OneFaculty for greater budget transparency, an equity budget that accords with our values as a university and that preserves the educational mission of LMU, and for a stronger, more democratic governance.

With our respect and solidarity,

The Executive Committee of your LMU AAUP