GTAs demand a vote for faculty hires
Graduate students write provost to reinstate voting privileges
Eight GTA organizations sent a letter to the provost regarding their loss of voting privileges in new faculty hires at the University of Kansas. Prior to the Fall 2006 semester, graduate students were allowed to vote to recommend prospective faculty to academic administrators. University officials changed the policy in an attempt to create a more uniform hiring process.
By Nathan Gill
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Eight graduate student organizations at the University of Kansas sent a letter to Provost Richard Lariviere on Wednesday, expressing discontent about the loss of voting privileges on committees that hire new faculty to the University.
The organizations sent The University Daily Kansan a copy of the letter by e-mail.
We serve the University in so many different ways, and we don’t always get respected like we’d like to be.
-Erin Questad, Lansdale, Penn., graduate student
Lynn Bretz, University spokeswoman, said that before Fall 2006, some academic schools and departments let graduate students vote, along with faculty, to recommend prospective faculty to academic administrators. She said that early last fall, Lariviere, who was concerned that the University’s academic departments did not have a unified hiring system, met with University officials and decided that graduate students should not vote to recommend new faculty.
The organizations’ letter asked Lariviere to reinstate the graduate voting practice.
Erin Questad, Lansdale, Penn., graduate student and president of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Student Organization, signed the letter. She said that graduate students offered a valuable perspective to the hiring process. Some graduate students seemed disenfranchised and less involved since losing the vote, she said.
“It is something that is really important to graduate students,” Questad said. “We serve the University in so many different ways, and we don’t always get respected like we’d like to be.”
Lariviere was unavailable for comment, but Bretz said his decision was not being reconsidered.
“It’s a provost’s prerogative to make that decision and he did,” Bretz said. “It was done in full debate and with a lot of discussion.”
Bretz said that the current interpretation of the University’s code was that graduate students could vote on policy issues within their departments, but not on personnel issues, which include hiring, promoting or giving tenure to faculty. She said that last fall’s change, which made the hiring process more uniform across the University, helped promote fairness in the hiring process. She also said it protected the University from potential lawsuits
“Faculty vote on faculty,” Bretz said. “It would not be appropriate for graduate students to vote on faculty.”
Bretz also said that since faculty advise and grade graduate students, some students might feel pressure to please existing faculty by voting for some hires over others.
Bretz said that in many academic departments, undergraduate and graduate students were involved in recommending faculty hires — but not voting. She said that such students were involved in the recommendation process by listening to presentations made by potential hires and by giving their opinions to voting faculty.
“That doesn’t mean that a student’s opinion wouldn’t be influential,” Bretz said of last fall’s change. “Student input is part of that process, and it’s important.”
Kansan staff writer Nathan Gill can be contacted at ngill@kansan.com.
— Edited by Kelly Lanigan
Discussion
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If you're here for a while, you learn it's all lip service. Why does the provost want to "protect" those of us that probably only had half a vote anyway?
Regarding "personnel issues":
The crap I've seen that goes on at KU is ridiculous--all you have to do is lie, and things will get swept under the carpet. That's the proper KU way to handle possible lawsuits.
“It’s a provost’s prerogative to make that decision and he did,” Bretz said. “It was done in full debate and with a lot of discussion.”
Wrong. It was done with NO debate with graduate students, NO debate with the wider faculty body, and, as far as I am aware, NO debate with department chairs. The Provost unilaterally chose to overturn this decades-old policy. Not only the decision, but moreso how the decision was made, is a shame to the culture of our university.
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