Well, this is truly the Chicago State Clown College. The final draft of the computer use policy has not been provided to the UPI bargaining team by the administration. In addition, Ellie Sullivan has discovered that neither Eastern nor Western Illinois include a signature page with their policies. Thus, the matter is still being bargained, at least in my estimation. However, it seems apparent that this information has not been disseminated to the appropriate administrators. Last night, I sent e-mails to Laurie Walter and to the Ethics Office. The e-mail I sent to the Ethics Office reminded them that this policy was currently being bargained. Perhaps we should send e-mails to other persons in the administration (the President, for example) asking if this threat will actually be carried out.
Are we really in a Mel Brooks film here?
Does cutting off any faculty member's access to the network disrupt that faculty member's students' ability to learn? For example, if class materials are regularly posted on Moodle and students turn in their work via the drop box, affected faculty members could not access their course shells or student work to assess it. Many students who do not come to campus regularly depend on email to communicate with their professors. How will they be affected? What will happen with the classes that use iPads. Will those instructors who haven't signed the computer policy be replaced by others at this point in the semester? Why are the units at the university whose job it is to support instruction working to impede it?
ReplyDeleteRB I think your last question is one that needs a blog by itself. "Why are the units at the university whose job it is to support instruction working to impede it?"
ReplyDeleteWhere are those administrators who saw themselves as there to do things to make things easier and smoother for faculty AND students? There are many who do not see faculty and students as the enemy, but there are a lot who see administrative problems that faculty and students need resolved to be deserving of condescension and rudeness (talk to the students about this). I'd give a shout out to our old registrar Lois Davis who never made me feel that I was disturbing her no matter what tangled advising problem or question I had. Many of CSU's administrators seem to think those titles of Vice President This or Associate That give them carte blanche to make policies without consulting the people who will be affected by them. There are a lot of puffed up individuals who forget, as one of my colleagues said, that a faculty member could do their job, but that they could not do the faculty member's job. Of course this is what we get working at a patronage pit for Illinois politicians.