AMANTE: Fall semester could be problematic
Faculty members are working without a contract, which isn’t truly noticeable by students until the start of the fall semester when the status quo of summer classes ends.
A lot of speculation is floating around as to what exactly will happen this fall if the faculty and the university are unable to reach an agreement. Administrators have refused to comment to me as far as what will happen and what their plans are, leading me and others to simply assume what will happen come August 22 without a faculty contract.
It has been proposed to me that classes will be canceled this fall without a faculty contract, which is indeed possible. The ripple effect from this will be catastrophic for both CMU and the city of Mount Pleasant.
The financial aspect of this alone would be horrifying for faculty members and the university alike — we’re talking the loss of tens of millions of dollars.
Without classes, students don’t move in, they don’t pay tuition and don’t forget that the fall semester is football season, which would, of course, end up being the real tragedy in all of this: no football.
To my knowledge, this chain of events is unprecedented.
Another, more likely situation would be akin to what happened at Eastern Michigan University in 2006. Without a faculty contract, more than 50 percent of classes were canceled until an agreement was met between the university and faculty members. The university continued operations, save for half of its classes.
A friend of mine attended EMU at this time. He said most of his classes ran without interruption because he was “lucky to have professors who care enough to show up” during the faculty strikes.
“It was annoying,” he told me. “We paid tuition and classes weren’t going on for some people.”
Students received no refunds for the weeks of classes they missed at EMU, he said.
To my understanding, the divide between tenured and tenure track faculty (members of the Faculty Association) and lecturers formerly known as adjunct faculty members (members of the Union of Teaching Faculty) is pretty evenly split, with a slight edge to the Faculty Association.
In theory, the university can run at half-speed, if EMU is their example and precedent they intend to follow.
I am unsure if EMU is as fiscally stable as CMU. I am sure that losing tuition dollars by canceling classes is something the university does not want to do; tuition dollars equal more than two-thirds of total revenue, and losing that would likely threaten the university's fiscal stability.
What’s more, I’m sure there is the potential to lose state dollars without classes or even at half-capacity, another big chunk of the university’s revenue stream.
Then again, Eastern Michigan students did not see refunds for missed classes, so perhaps this is not a concern for CMU.
What will happen this August without a faculty contract? I have no idea. But there is precedent for this and in Michigan.
