By KELLY KULTYS

NEWS EDITOR

Regarding their salaries and contracts for the current 2012-2013 school year, the Faculty Senate and the University finally came to an agreement on Nov. 9, 2012, about seven months later than usual.

The Faculty Senate announced in its Nov. 9 meeting that “the Senate accepts an offer from the administration of a total for salary increases for 2012-13 that the Senate will allocate as an across the board increase of 3.25 percent of the average for each rank, merit of $800 for half the tenured and tenure-track non-law faculty, and $400 in one-year research funds for those receiving merit.”

This agreement came after many months of contract negotiations. The Faculty Senate had to take many crucial steps to come to these terms. In their minutes from Sept. 19, 2012, the Faculty Senate announced that they had “suspend[ed] negotiations with John Lordan, senior vice resident and chief financial officer, and request a meeting on salary matters with Fr. Joseph McShane, S.J, president of the University, and Robert D. Daleo, chair of the Board of Trustees.”

The Senate also announced at that meeting that they would “hold an emergency faculty forum, open to members of the university community, in order to alert the faculty to the status of salary discussions” and that they would “make public to the University community the relevant data presented by the Salary and Benefits Committee to the Senate.”

Both sides went back and forth on the issue as shown in their Oct. 12, 2012 minutes, where the Senate announced that they “reject[ed] the administration’s counter-offer on salary negotiations as insufficient for a reasonable across-the-board increase equivalent to cost of living and a reasonable merit increment.”

Eventually, both sides came to an agreement regarding the terms as stated above. Not all issues were resolved, however. As an article published in The Observer on Dec. 8, 2012, mentioned, after the contract agreement was settled, faculty members submitted a petition to the Senate to address the fact that the University did not compromise on a number of issues. According to The Observer, these included “higher merit raises, the implementation of a new maternity leave program and on-site child care facilities as well as fighting cuts to academic programs.”

The Faculty Senate also passed a motion at their Nov. 9 meeting stating that “the Faculty Senate moves that the Administration shall not allocate money from better than budget tuition revenues to fund campus facility reserves or any other capital fund reserves.” The Senate stated that “in the context of the President of the University’s priority on faculty development and program development, the Senate believes that it is the responsibility of the University to raise adequate funds for the endowment through traditional fundraising, and that it is irresponsible and harmful to the University to allocate tuition- generated surpluses now and for the foreseeable future to supplement capital reserve funds.”

This coincides with many other statements from the Faculty Senate regarding the importance the faculty has to the students and to the University itself. For instance, at their Oct. 12 meeting, the Faculty Senate also announced how it “[felt] strongly that the administration’s offer devalues the faculty’s contribution in all three mission-consistent areas, teaching, service and research.”

Also, according to the article in The Observer, Dr. Andrew Clark, associate professor of French and comparative literature and former head of the Senate’s Salary and Benefits Committee, said that students could potentially be harmfully affected if the University and faculty continue to be far apart on issues regarding contract negotiations. He said students could possibly see more cancelled courses, due to lack of professors and less faculty presence on campus.

Many students agreed with Clark’s beliefs when asked what they thought of the faculty contract negotiations.

“They have to be happy [with their contracts] to be happy with what they’re doing in order to teach well, and good teachers make it much easier to learn,” Maria Buck, FCRH ’15, said.

“I think having the faculty paid well is important because if you don’t have a happy faculty, you don’t have great service, and that hurts the students of Fordham,” Gabrielle Vella, GSB ’15, said.

The Fordham Ram reached out to Dr. Falguni Sen, vice president of the Faculty Senate. He responded via email stating, “specifics of contract negotiations are confidential in nature.”