The University of Mississippi Faculty Senate held a meeting in the School of Law on Tuesday, Oct. 8 — their first in-person meeting since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place — to discuss a number of policies.
They discussed the establishment of an Anti-Retaliation Policy Ad Hoc Committee, which would oversee the protection of faculty against retaliation for reporting workplace misconduct. They also considered updating senate bylaws, naming new committee members and other changes.
The most contentious topic discussed at the meeting was the proposal of a deal with Barnes & Noble called First Day Complete, a deal that would change the way both undergraduate and graduate students buy their textbooks as soon as next semester.
Students typically are able to purchase textbooks from the online bookstore or in-person based on their final schedules. With the First Day Complete program, students would be charged a flat rate based on credit hours, regardless of whether a class requires a textbook or not. Although students would have the option to opt-out of this program, it would require them to personally email Barnes & Noble each semester.
Barnes & Noble would then decide whether each book would be a hard copy or e-book, and students could pick them up at the bookstore or have them shipped to their house by the first day of classes. Many senate members expressed their opposition to this program, citing concerns about research-based courses, internships and other classes where textbooks may not be used.
Some members also expressed that the opt-out policy was too hidden and that many students would be oblivious to it.
George McClellan, a professor of higher education, thought students should be aware of the proposal.
“My colleagues in higher education feel very strongly that the program as proposed is not a good fit for students at the University of Mississippi,” McClellan said. “As we understand it, the proposal would require them to be charged on a per credit hour basis for books, regardless of whether a course requires books. The proposal might be right for some campuses, but our faculty overwhelmingly believe that is not the case for the University of Mississippi.”
Faculty Senate President Hans Sinha wanted to ensure students were well informed and would be able to form their own opinions about the possibility of this deal becoming a reality in the upcoming semester.
“Uniformly, faculty don’t like it, but I hope (students) look to the future with an open and critical mind, because I think once they look at it, students will have a critical voice,” Sinha said.
Another action taken during the meeting was the decision to establish a Faculty Grievance Pool by Nov. 1. This would be a jury-like group of faculty members that carry out the evaluation process for job-related grievances.
As defined by the Faculty Grievance Policy, job-related grievances, can pertain to misapplications of policies regarding working hours, conditions, leaves of absence and promotions, among other conditions.
Each of the schools on campus, alongside the J.D. Williams Library, will elect three members of their faculty to be in the Faculty Grievance Pool. One member must be tenured, the other non-tenured and the third would be elected.
“If there’s one thing we have to do this semester, it’s to successfully implement this policy … and we have a lot of work to do to ensure that,” Sinha said.
Executive Committee chairs were voted on during the meeting, resulting in John Lobur, Jamie Wagner, George McClellan, Kristin Austin and Kristen Swain being sworn in.
There was also overall support for a resolution regarding faculty titles, wherein the use of “support” and “regular” faculty was discarded and replaced by new titles of tenured and non-tenured. During the discussion for this resolution, Sinha brought up the proposition of implementing multi-year contracts for more faculty at the spring semester review.
Aside from the aforementioned policies discussed, the Faculty Senate also appointed Sen. Chad Russell as senate parliamentarian and Dan Durkin as senate representative to the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics.
The Faculty Senate also passed one resolution making the UM salary budget available in an online digital format.
