Jon Reiskind, President, UF Chapter of UFF , 2001-2003

Remarks to the University of Florida Board of Trustees

Chairman Criser, Vice-Chair Morgan and Members of the Board of Trustees.

This is the eleventh and last time I will speak with you as President of the UF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida. My term has now come to an end. I would like to introduce to you the President-elect of the union, Diana Bitz, an associate professor in the School of Architecture. I am happy to say that Diana is an immensely talented person and a true conciliator. I am confident that if you want to forge a more productive relationship with the faculty and their union, Diana is the right person to be leading the union during that time. She will be addressing you on behalf of the union in the future.

Despite the current budget crisis, we at UF have a lot to be grateful for:
(1) the Governor's reorganization has made it possible for UF to chart its own course, largely independent of the needs of other universities;
(2) Trustee Fernandez and his committee have done a fine job of trying to get the Presidential Search off on the right track;
(3) President Young has mapped out the broad strokes of a Strategic
Plan; and
(4) the faculty have studied top-tier practices and made detailed recommendations, which have been posted on the web for almost a year now, about how they believe UF can best move into the top tier.

On the other hand, of course, there are still many problems. For one, we are now in the seventh month of a dispute over the faculty's collective bargaining rights.

In a recent ruling (March 14, 2003) the Public Employees Relations Commission stated:

"(W)e urge all of the parties affected by the university system reorganization to work cooperatively toward expeditious resolution of the representation questions raised thereby, and to foster stability and harmony in the work place through preservation of the status quo until those questions are resolved."

This ruling, written by the full Commission, seems to be a clear signal to those few institutions that have not been preserving the status quo. Unfortunately, UF is among them. The United Faculty of Florida has an obligation to protect the faculty we represent from unilateral changes in working conditions. If we have to go to PERC to enforce those rights, we will.

But we shouldn't have to. PERC is urging you to resolve the representation question quickly. There is no reason not to:
Eight universities have already voluntarily recognized UFF and will begin bargaining soon.
Over 70% of bargaining unit faculty at UF has endorsed collective bargaining.
You know how important it is that the Presidential search not be impeded by continuing uncertainty and contention.
And, finally, it is clear to everyone that continuing to fight the faculty will not help UF get into the top tier.

The real unanswered question is not whether there will continue to be a faculty union. The real question is whether the University will work effectively with the faculty union, or whether there will, instead, continue to be ongoing conflict and antagonism.

If UF is ever going to move into the top tier of research universities, the administration and the faculty must work effectively together. The administration needs to win strong and widespread faculty support if it is going to succeed in turning UF into a truly great university. It is self-evident that one sure way to deny itself that overwhelming faculty support is to carry on an antagonistic relationship with the faculty union. It is only common sense to accept that the key to true progress is to find amicable ways of resolving our differences and to move UF forward together. For all of our sakes, I hope we start trying to do that as soon as possible.

I have been privileged over the past two years to have been able to relay to you the feelings of the faculty in the bargaining unit. I thank all the members of the Board for having received me with uniform courtesy and respect. I will be retiring from UF this June after having worked here for some 36 years. I plan to continue to be involved in faculty concerns, even if in a more modest way, and I hope to be able to witness the University rise to the kind of greatness it has always sought but never been able to achieve to date. Perhaps you trustees can take the actions and show the leadership necessary to finally take UF where it has always wanted to go. I wish you and my faculty colleagues all possible success. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, Members of the Board.

This is a time to celebrate. 150 years of history! Almost 100 years here in Gainesville.

When I first addressed you nine meetings ago, in September 2001, I pointed out that we, at UF, have a magnificent physical plant, outstanding teachers and scholars, the brightest and most talented students in the state , and loyal and generous alumni.

We have a great deal to celebrate.

I have been at UF for almost 36 years and have seen it flourish, growing in both size and quality. For the last 26 years the United Faculty of Florida has been a partner in that progress. We are proud of that and we celebrate with you.

Personally, I have been blessed to have been part of a vital, caring department in an enlightened and supportive college. I also had the great and creative pleasure of spending 8 years helping to direct the outstanding University Honors Program.

I want this university to thrive. That's why I am doing what I am doing. I also appreciate that others with the same sentiments may have their own perspectives.

To briefly update you:

On December 20 UFF filed over 6600 authorization cards (1225 from UF) with the Public Employees Relations Commission and on January 8 we got notice from PERC finding our representation petition sufficient and scheduling a hearing promptly. We look forward to resolution.

Naturally the commitment of this Board to maintain the Contract in effect until the matter of representation is resolved would greatly assure a concerned faculty during this period of uncertainty.

As I have stated each and every time I've addressed you, we are and have been ready and willing to work together. Together with Dr. Young , together with you. I reiterate those offers today.

For all of us who truly care about the future of the University of Florida, let's make this sesquicentennial year, 2003, one to truly celebrate. A year in which faculty and administrators working together can shape a bright and an even better future.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Board.

One of my functions as the president of UFF, the faculty collective bargaining agent, is to relay to you at each of your public meetings what faculty are thinking about university policies, particularly about matters bearing on their terms and conditions of employment. This is information that you may not be able to obtain reliably elsewhere.

As you know, the faculty and the upper administration are currently in dispute about whether or not collective bargaining for faculty should continue at the University of Florida. Since I spoke to you last September, to try to set up negotiations on a new Contract, trustees McGriff and Criser have stated that you, our trustees, are not necessarily opposed to collective bargaining or to extending the provisions in the current Contract. President Young has said repeatedly that he only wants UF faculty, separately from any statewide unit, to have a chance to choose whether or not they still want a union to represent them.

The faculty have now chosen, and the choice they have made is crystal clear in support of rights and protections built up over the past 26 years and guaranteed by the current Contract.

You have in front of you the authorization card that the faculty have been signing. It reads as follows:

I, hereby, authorize the United Faculty of Florida to be my exclusive representative for the purposes of collective bargaining with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment as specified in Florida Statutes, Chapter 447 (Labor Organizations).

You will note that the authorization card is unequivocal. Whoever signs the card is stating what they want clearly, explicitly, and unambiguously. They want a collectively bargained Contract, and they want UFF to represent them in bargaining that next Contract.

The union has tried to reach each of the approximately 1800 faculty in the UF collective bargaining unit-a very difficult task logistically on this campus, as President Young's website acknowledges. So far UFF has managed to speak with about 1320 of those faculty. Of those 1320, 1204 (as of yesterday)-or over 90%-have signed the authorization card. Including the people we haven't yet spoken to, over two-thirds (nearly 70%) of the entire bargaining-unit faculty have already gone on record in support of collective bargaining and UFF. Clearly, as we contact the remaining faculty, that number will climb even higher. Soon UFF will be filing these authorization cards with the Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC), which will authenticate them.

Why are faculty supporting the union so strongly? They have told us there are many reasons. First, faculty understand that collective bargaining is the one process where, under law, faculty are guaranteed the right to exercise contractually a measure of self-determination and to negotiate the basic conditions that will invariably impact their careers as professionals.

Second, faculty have no intention of losing the rights and protections that they have fought hard to achieve over the past quarter of a century or the opportunity to improve on them. Last year when faculty task forces spent well over 400 hours researching practices at top-tier universities nationwide, they discovered that UF is still seriously out of step, and in many important respects its practices are inconsistent with the traditional AAUP values and principles that have guided the actions of great universities for over half a century. Faculty want to work at a great university. Faculty are committed to moving UF into the top tier of those universities. And faculty know that if UF is ever going to reach the top tier, we will need to start closing the gap, not taking actions that widen it. That is why they are committed to the carefully thought-out recommendations of the task forces.

Many faculty are astonished and insulted by the University attorneys' argument that all of a sudden UF is under no obligation to honor the faculty rights and protections that it has agreed to. The faculty are convinced that this position is neither sensible nor just. They believe UF should move forward by building on the provisions of the current Contract, not backwards by trying to truncate those provisions or erase them altogether.

Third, the faculty are committed to playing a more active role in shaping UF policies than they have thus far been permitted, since it is ultimately the faculty who will have to make those policies work. As President Young himself has pointed out, no university has ever become great without developing a strong tradition of shared governance with faculty. Yet the upper administration routinely has refused faculty a meaningful role-even in decisions that directly affect their productivity, as was obvious in the recent case involving the Genetics Institute. Unfortunately, at UF, policy is typically not made from the ground up. Administrators often do not adequately sound out or seek advice from the faculty who actually have to live with the consequences.

These practices bring up a fourth, even sadder reason why an overwhelming majority of bargaining-unit faculty are going on record in support of collective bargaining. Many of those faculty are telling us that they believe the actions of the UF attorneys and some Tigert administrators over the past several months reflect a basic anti-faculty attitude inconsistent with our mutual goal of making UF a truly great university.

Indicative of this disdainful and disrespectful attitude toward faculty, Tigert and the University attorneys have proposed, for example,

to eliminate the ban against discrimination on the basis of political opinion or affiliation-a move that will almost certainly invite additional lawsuits and might well make us a joke among faculty nationwide. [university rule and proposed changes vs. the Contract Article 6]

to pile even more delays on top of the current bureaucratic nightmare surrounding intellectual-property disclosure, a bottleneck that already inhibits technology transfer and the creation of new business ventures. [Intellectual Property Policies]

to strip faculty of the property rights they now have to their academic books and lectures. (Faculty can show you, at your convenience, why such a retrenchment makes no business sense and will end up costing the University far more than it could ever recoup in additional revenue). [university rule and proposed changes vs. the Contract Article18]

to weaken the tenure system
o by failing to give departments a coherent plan for expeditiously replacing the scores of tenure lines lost by retirements under the DROP program;
o by seeking to make it easier to fire faculty for minor infractions, which surreptitiously redefines tenure [university rule and proposed changes]; and
o by seeking to replace tenure lines with renewable multi-year contracts, which are now illegal except at Florida Gulf Coast University-hardly the university we should want to emulate. Even the Washington Group, an outside organization brought in specifically to offer suggestions concerning the Strategic Plan, expressed serious reservations about this part of the Plan. [ The Washington Advisory Group Report] [Strategic Plan]

and the examples go on and on.

Even when the upper administration seems to be trying to help faculty, its actions often suggest an insulting lack of seriousness. The Strategic Plan identifies the absence of a strong sabbatical program as a serious problem, but Tigert proposes only to raise the number of full-pay, one-semester sabbaticals from 25 to 50 per year-a drop in the bucket at a research institution of more than 3000 faculty. This so-called "solution" only trivializes the importance of sabbaticals to faculty research.

The Strategic Plan declares that UF has a "terrific faculty." Yet the UF attorneys and some of the Tigert upper administration have spent the past semester trying to strip 1800 of these "terrific" faculty of the rights and benefits that they have had for years and that the best universities provide as a matter of course. Is it any wonder faculty are interpreting these actions as evidence of disdain, disrespect, and even hostility?

Most of you are business executives, and you know how damaging it is when employees believe they are not appreciated or respected. A bad reputation travels farther and faster than a good one, and it stays in the public consciousness longer. Do we really believe that top-flight faculty nationwide will want to come to work here when they read in journals like the Chronicle of Higher Education that UF is attempting to take away the rights of its faculty? Does anyone really think that developing this kind of reputation is the road to top-tier status?

If UF is going to raise itself into the top-tier of research universities, ultimately it is the faculty who are going to make it happen. It is the faculty, not the upper administration, who will be inspiring our students with their enthusiasm for new ideas, who will be writing the cutting-edge books and articles and winning the prestigious grants that will enhance UF's reputation nationally and internationally. And it is ultimately the faculty, not the upper administration, who will attract the best graduate students and who will persuade outstanding colleagues to join them at UF.

Everyone in academia knows that no university has ever moved into the top tier by fighting with and embittering its faculty. The course the UF attorneys are plotting for you is an extreme and very dangerous one. If it is the case that this treacherous path is not in accord with the tone or direction you wish to set, I hope that you will insist on a different tone and halt the implementation of actions that the faculty believe are hostile to them. This year, faculty are protesting against attacks on their collective bargaining rights by voting with their pens. If UF continues to follow the lead of its attorneys in this matter, you may discover that in the years to come increasing numbers of UF's faculty will elect to vote with their feet. If there is eventually going to be collective bargaining-as now seems virtually certain-what is to be gained by needlessly antagonizing the faculty on whom the future success of the University will depend? Sooner or later, the UF Administration is going to have to bargain collectively with the faculty. The only question that remains is when and after what damage?

As I have shown you, the faculty have already answered this question for themselves. They are not willing to risk further damage to UF's reputation, productivity, or morale. They are committed to continuing collective bargaining; they have reaffirmed UFF as their chosen representative; and they want you and UFF to begin negotiations on a new Contract immediately.

These are difficult, uncertain, and perilous times for higher education in the State of Florida. It would be good for the upper administration to remember that the faculty are their allies. In order to achieve our mutual goal of making the University of Florida a truly great university, we all have to work together. UFF is ready now to sit down informally with the administration, to prepare the way for negotiations on a new collective bargaining contract-as soon as they are willing to meet with us. It is only by being willing to accommodate and compromise with each other that lasting progress can be made.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Board.

Another school year has begun. We are both in the second year in our respective positions. We are older and wiser, and like most sophomore years, it's time to get down to business.

It is clear from the national press that many people, not least potential future faculty and graduate students, have observed how contentiously Florida's reorganization of higher education has played out. They are wondering whether the University of Florida can rise above the fray and begin realizing its goal of becoming a truly great university. Our actions over the next few weeks and months will send a signal to the nation and will probably determine the future of the University of Florida for many years to come.

President Young has offered us his road map for beginning the process in the form of the Strategic Plan he has proposed. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all share his desire to make UF the kind of university to which the world's very best faculty and graduate students want to come. We all want to move UF into the top tier of research institutions nationally. And we all want to ensure our opportunity to serve our students and the State of Florida to the very best of our abilities.

Many faculty and administrators have expressed some concern about one or another element of President Young's proposals. The union does not wish in any way to belittle those legitimate concerns. Members of the university community will, of course, sometimes differ over how best to achieve the excellence we seek-people of good will often do differ. However, in our opinion there is no reason why these differences should be irreconcilable. UFF sees very little in the Strategic Plan that should prevent people who are acting in good faith from reaching agreements which address these concerns satisfactorily. We simply have to be willing to work together.

Indeed, under the law, we must work together. Many of the elements in the Strategic Plan will affect faculty working conditions. For the past twenty-five years working conditions for a majority of this university's faculty have been protected under a Collective Bargaining Agreement (what we call "The Contract"), which has established a significant level of rights and benefits. Under the law, no matters relating to terms and conditions of employment can be changed unilaterally. All changes affecting faculty in the bargaining unit must be negotiated with their union. Thus, under the law, the Strategic Plan cannot be implemented without modifying the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

So let's set about making those modifications without delay. We must not delay if we want to compete not only with the rest of the nation, but even with some institutions in our own state-universities that are also intent on improving their status and will not hesitate to do so at UF's expense. This is not the time for delays, diversions, or distractions. We need to get down to business and move ahead.

We are fortunate that three separate factors have converged at UF to create a moment of unprecedented opportunity to do just that. Dr. Young's select Presidential Task Force has courageously identified a core set of clear goals and outlined general directions for achieving them. The mission of this administrative task force has been a difficult, controversial, but undeniably indispensable, one. President Young and his administrative staff should be commended. They have galvanized the university's energies and given us a focused plan with which to work.

Equally indispensable have been the labors of ten faculty task forces. More than 100 faculty from every part of the campus volunteered their time to examine how specific sections of the Collective Bargaining Agreement can be improved. For more than a year they researched policies and practices at the nation's top universities. They consulted colleagues at other institutions to find out what works and what doesn't. They met with benefits officers, attorneys, and a host of academic specialists. They sifted through input from the many additional UF faculty members who contributed specific suggestions, observations, and insights. Finally, after over 400 hours of discussions and deliberations, they developed and posted detailed recommendations for modifying each section of the Collective Bargaining Agreement in ways key to moving into the top tier of the nation's research universities.

Underpinning everything, of course, is the third element of this important triad, the assumption of major governing authority by you, the UF Board of Trustees. The State's reorganization of higher education has, for the first time ever, set the University of Florida free to adopt policies and practices appropriate to a top research university, without having to accommodate the demands of all the other state universities. The administration has articulated a strategic plan. The faculty have researched the specific practices and policies that will enable the university to reach top-tier status. And now we finally have a governing board that can provide the leadership to bring it all together.

Unfortunately, in the past the Board governing UF has not always accepted that responsibility. Just this summer, for example, the State ruled that the Florida Board of Education was guilty of violating the collective bargaining laws when it failed to bargain in good faith with the UFF over this year's faculty salaries.

If we want the University of Florida to be a truly great university, we will have to achieve that goal together. No university has ever moved into the top tier by fighting with its faculty. Likewise, while faculty may be the lifeblood of any great university, no university's faculty have collectively made it into the elite ranks without intelligent and enlightened leadership.

It is no secret that some of the other universities in the State will probably try to use the State's reorganization of higher education as an excuse to abrogate their collective bargaining responsibilities, even if it means wasting some two years re-fighting battles that have been fought and settled many times before. Faculty across the nation will undoubtedly interpret such maneuvers as an effort to turn back the clock and leave the faculty at those universities with fewer rights and protections than they had before the reorganization. That hardly seems the way to attract the nation's best faculty-or the best administrators, for that matter-or to encourage them to send their best new PhDs. It's divisive. It's destructive. It's no way to move forward.

Faculty in the difficult business of breaking new ground intellectually don't like distractions. They need a stable environment relatively free of turmoil, so they can concentrate on their work. The Collective Bargaining Contract guarantees this kind of stability and continuity by ensuring the workplace rights, benefits, and protections necessary to attract and retain quality faculty.

These are volatile times. It is important that we maintain continuity. It is crucial that we quickly allay any fears that UF's trustees intend to truncate the rights and protections faculty have traditionally had under the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

As you know, UFF has asked to begin informal negotiations on a successor Collective Bargaining Agreement immediately and to begin formal negotiations within a month. The present Contract expires the day you are given fuller authority to run this university, January 7, 2003. That gives us much less time to bargain a Contract than the parties have had in the past. That means we need to begin negotiations as soon as possible.

The union looks forward to joining with you and the administration in taking the concrete steps necessary to become a truly great university, a top-tier university, a world-class university. We see ourselves as your allies in realizing Vision 10/20. Together we must begin. It's time.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Board. It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to again address you on matters of concern to the faculty and the university as a whole.

Our efforts to become a truly great university are moving forward on several fronts. President Young has reviewed one of those fronts. I wish to remind you of another front, that of the negotiations for a new Contract which will begin this fall and will involve both you and my organization. The success of those negotiations will send a signal to national and international academic communities that the University of Florida is serious about its goal to be counted among the top tier research universities.

The "collective" in "collective bargaining" is all of us, both the legal representatives of the faculty, UFF, and the employers, this Board. UFF's positions are already being made known to the public (and you) through the on-line presentations of the results of the ten faculty Task Forces whose recommendations are the basis for the bargaining positions of our side. Much of the effort involved draws upon the practices of those top tier universities to which we aspire.

Although the process looks adversarial it need not be and since we have common goals it should be a breeze.

Since this is a gargantuan task it behooves all of us to become familiar with the issues. I urge you to consult our web site, especially the portion presenting the recommendations of the task forces. There you will see color coded summaries of the problems and the recommended solutions. This is followed by much more detailed specific recommendations.

Not all of them are cost items. Most are not. Some are the natural consequences of the new spirit of faculty governance initiated by President Young soon after he came to UF.

I look forward to the bargaining ahead and am confident that both sides will bargain in good faith and with the interests of the University of Florida always in mind.

One other matter I would like to comment on in the spirit of the Florida Sunshine law and its implicit commitment to make the decision making bodies of the state accessible to its citizens. This requires that meetings are not only open but the actions of those bodies be made known and disseminated. To that end I'd appreciate it if you could publish full minutes of this body and all its committees as expeditiously as possible. The last posted minutes of this board are for the December meeting, and no minutes of any of the committees have ever been posted, as far as I know.

Thank you.

Chairman Criser and members of the Board:

For the past ten months ten task forces involving over 100 UF faculty from throughout the university have been comparing the provisions of our Collective Bargaining Agreement to that of other top-tier universities. This effort was organized by the United Faculty of Florida in preparation for our upcoming contract negotiations and included faculty from inside and outside the collective bargaining unit, both union members and non-members.

The first batch of these recommendations were released last week. These task forces recommendations deal with those Articles in the current Agreement relating to traditional faculty rights (i.e. academic freedom and responsibility (including a new section on shared governance), nondiscrimination, appointment (including summer compensation), promotion procedure, tenure and permanent status, leaves, professional development program and sabbaticals and inventions and works (intellectual property rights). There will be three additional sets of recommendations released at approximately three-week intervals between now and mid-May. Those recommendations will deal with the Articles in the current Contract relating to salaries and fringe benefits, due process and procedural protections, and finally rights of representation and technical matters.

The product of this enormous project will serve us all well in outlining what we must do to compete effectively with the other top-tier universities in the nation. These recommendations will be the explicit basis for the formal proposals that the UFF Faculty Bargaining Team will present to the negotiators for you, our Board of Trustees. We look forward to beginning this important task.

I hope that the entire university community will take some time to examine these recommendations available at our web site [http://grove.ufl.edu/~uff]. And I especially encourage the entire faculty to give us feedback including suggestions for specific improvements in one or more of any of the Task Forces' recommendations.

One other matter. The Graduate Assistants United, the UFF chapter representing the graduate assistants, have been working hard to gain health benefits for the thousands of graduate students they represent. We support them in this effort and we would like to bring their concerns to your attention. Ten of the twelve research universities we have identified as peer institutions provide their graduate students good health insurance packages, as we should.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Board.

The Presidential Task Force for the Future of the University has been working since January, under the chairmanship of Dr. Joe Glover, acquiring and digesting much information related to possible ways to restructure the University of Florida. It has a gargantuan task on its hands. Its mission is "to consolidate the university's resources", "to structure programs", and "to recommend areas that should be strengthened, consolidated, redeveloped, reconstituted, or de-emphasized" all with the goal of helping UF become a "truly great university" over the next decade.

The faculty share that goal and appreciate the difficult task ahead.

But the task of raising UF into the top tier of universities involves a lot more than determining the future nature and structure of the academic programs, as important as that is.

We can only become a top-tier university if we attract and keep outstanding scholars. To do that

o will require that we not only offer nationally competitive salaries but do so under a stable and predictable salary structure that assures faculty that they really will be rewarded commensurate with their meritorious performance.

o will require that we offer an environment guaranteeing full academic freedom to explore new ideas and express diverse opinions, independent of outside political forces that could threaten faculty research and teaching.

o will require that we safeguard that freedom by reaffirming our commitment to grounding the university in the traditional tenure system, where a process of rigorous scrutiny of junior faculty results in a stable work force of tested, quality faculty.

o will require that we recognize the collective wisdom of the faculty and give them a sense of being true stakeholders in UF by establishing what every great university in this country has, a true system of shared governance.

o will require that we attract the finest graduate students not only from Florida but from the entire world. Such talented minds will be the apprentices of our faculty and their presence will stimulate both the faculty and the undergraduate student body. Attracting the finest graduate students will require stipends and health benefits equivalent or better than those offered by the institutions we aspire to emulate.

o will require that over the entire range of traditional faculty life--from sabbaticals to assignments to how we respect intellectual property-- we provide a stable, secure, and predictable environment, free of any discrimination, that will assure prospective faculty members that the University of Florida is a safe place in which to invest their futures, that this is no Enron they are joining.

Of course, later this year we faculty and you Trustees will together be trying to address productively many of these same issues in collective bargaining. We all know, especially given the significant amounts of press coverage Florida has received recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, that university faculty and graduate students throughout the nation will be watching those negotiations to see whether the Governor's reorganization of higher education has been a good thing or a bad thing for faculty here.

We look forward to working together both then and now to forge a new, positive spirit for the University of Florida. The President's Task Force is doing its work, but there is other work that needs to be done. We invite you to work with UFF and the Faculty Senate to make sure we achieve our common goal of making UF into a truly great university.

Thank you.

Things didn't turn out all that well in the last legislative special session. A lot of our legislators need educating about how important an investment in higher education is to the State of Florida.

We are having to face some new realities and reexamine what we do at the University of Florida. Some hard decisions may be in the making.

The administration has announced that they intend to consider reorganizing the university. It is important that the process of determining any reorganization of the university be an open and fair one. It should include all those who have a stake in this university, especially the faculty.

A loyal, dedicated faculty is essential to the success of any university. Their sense of "ownership" will grow out of their involvement in making decisions that affect the academic future of their university. Therefore it is vital that the process be open and the faculty be at its forefront. Our path to becoming a top tier university requires it.

Finally, I want to wish you and yours a happy Holiday and wish all of you, as well as the University of Florida, a prosperous New Year.

I am pleased to talk with you again. It has been a busy and anxiety-filled fall semester for all of us.

The UF Trustees and the faculty union have an immediate and common concernthe financial well being of higher education in general and the University of Florida in particular. Both you and the union want to elevate UF into the top tier of public universities, which will require vibrant and attractive graduate programs. The protection of those programs requires graduate student tuition waivers. We enthusiastically endorse the Administration's absolute commitment to protect our graduate students and their programs. Properly funding our graduate students and their programs is essential.

To do this we must ensure that the Legislature adopt appropriate priorities. We know that many of you have contacted those who could help the University. We thank you for that. We especially applaud the lobbying efforts of Trustee Dianna Morgan.
We also take pride in the work of the state United Faculty of Florida, working closely with its parent organization, the Florida Education Association (122,000 members strong), in convincing the Legislature that our "seamless" educational system requires all of education from kindergarten through graduate school be treated equitably and with care. But that was the last special session. We didn't know it was just a "practice" run.

Now we come to the real thing. And this time the cuts will be even larger. The union will again be there and I know you will be there too. Fighting for the same things. I am reaffirming the offer the union made the last time I talked with you: if you would like, our affiliates would be happy to try to coordinate our lobbying activities with you. If ever there was a time to join forces, now is the time.
The union will be informing the faculty how they can contact legislators of both houses, both parties, local and elsewhere, to communicate the importance of protecting Florida's investment in higher education.

I was inspired listening this morning to the strategies outlined by Trustee Morgan. I believe the faculty can play essential roles in those strategies. Call on us.

We are looking forward to working with you as you acquire the power and authority to make the policies and decisions that will be necessary to raise UF into the top tier of major research universities. We will need to work cooperatively to make that happen, and the faculty union stands ready to join forces with you in this crucial upcoming special session and beyond.

Chairman Criser and members of the Board of Trustees.

I would like to comment on two matters.

1) The United Faculty of Florida supports the continuing and prodigious efforts on the part of UF's administration to enhance the diversity of its campus. We deplore those who have unfairly criticized such efforts.

2) The UFF is well aware of the economic straits in which UF finds itself. We recognize the seriousness of the situation and the potential it has of undermining the mission of this university. We support you in your efforts to find that fine balance between identifying the possibly necessary budget cuts but at the same time ensuring that the university continues to progress towards becoming a top-tier research and teaching institution.

We have many goals in common, the achievement of which are being constrained by recent economic realities. We are ready to lend our cooperation and hard work (and that of our state affiliates and allies) in bringing the priorities of higher education to the attention of the public and their representatives.

Chairman Criser, Vice-Chair Morgan and Members of the Board of Trustees.

As a member of the Faculty Senate and President of the University of Florida's faculty union, I welcome you to the UF community. We, the UF faculty, are looking forward to working with you, our new trustees, towards achieving the goal that you and our administration have expressed, and which we share: that of elevating UF to the top tier of the nation's major research universities. If UF is going to be one of the premier universities in the U.S., it will be in part because you, as trustees, have the vision and the will to emulate those at the top.

These are times of great change. They are also times of great opportunity.

The United Faculty of Florida is not among those who believe that the new governance system will be a disaster. On the contrary, we think the Governor may have done a great service by giving more freedom and flexibility to the individual universities. Releasing these institutions, with their differing talents and missions, from "the pack" is an opportunity for each to realize its individual strengths. If the new governance structure succeeds in freeing us from legislative micro-management and provides necessary funding, then UF will be free to become one of the nation's best, pace-setting research universities.

As research scholars, we, the Faculty, develop and disseminate new knowledge, new ideas-that's our business. Central to that enterprise is the ability to both attract and retain top-notch colleagues. Historically, UF has had a difficult time retaining many of our excellent faculty; instead, we have too often served as the farm team that trains and develops "stars," only to have them plucked away by the Michigans and Berkeleys, not to mention the well-endowed private universities. We need to change this situation. The nation's best faculty should want to come here, and stay.

Successful universities, like successful businesses, succeed because they give proper respect and support to the talented people who create their products. No university in this country has ever achieved top tier status with a discontented faculty. Faculty must be guaranteed an environment tolerant of diverse opinions. They should expect job security for excellence in scholarship and teaching. And be appropriately rewarded.

We, at UF, have
o a magnificent physical plant
o outstanding teachers and scholars
o the brightest and most talented students in the state
o loyal and generous alumni and
o a President with a clear vision of what a university is and ought to be, and who has demonstrated his concern for ALL those who work at UF.

However, we still have a long way to go to reach our goal to be a UCLA or a Wisconsin-Madison.

We pledge our talent and energy to help you achieve this goal and the United Faculty of Florida stands ready to work with you.