Sexual harassment is increasingly in the news. It probably isn't that sexual harassment is a growing problem or even that we are growing more aware of it. Most likely, it's that we are taking it more seriously. As a matter of policy, USF takes sexual harassment very seriously. By now, USF employees should have received an email from the USF Division of Human Relations advising employees that they are required to complete an online module on sexual harassment and discrimination by October 31.
There are 33 days until the General Election on November 6. Are you registered to vote? There are five days until the October 9 deadline to register. UFF strongly encourages all eligible and registered voters to vote. For more information, consult the Florida Division of Elections or, for information about voting in your county, consult your friendly neighborhood supervisor of elections:
The USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida will meet tomorrow Friday at noon on USF Tampa in EDU 261. There will be sandwiches, snacks, drinks, and sweets. On the agenda: bargaining, consolidating USF, recruiting new members, political action (this is an election year), and the sexual harassment quiz. Come join the movement.
This fall, we will meet on October 5 & 19, November 2, 16 & 30. The The November 2 meeting is on USF Sarasota / Manatee. The other meetings will be on USF Tampa in EDU 261. Come and check us out.
UFF invites everyone to an Autumn Social on Thursday, October 23 at Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill at 1320 Central Ave, St. Petersburg, northwest of USF St. Petersburg. We will be in the upstairs room. Come talk to union bigwigs about the hot issues, like consolidation.
Mark your calendars: the USF Chapter will hold a Hallowe'en Party on October 31 on USF Tampa in the Marshall Student Center, in the Sabal Room, on the third floor, to the right and around the corner from Top of the Palms. Free buffet lunch; costumes optional.
Download, fill in, and mail the membership form. Benefits of membership include the right to run and vote in UFF chapter and statewide elections; representation in grievances (UFF cannot represent a non-member in a grievance or litigation); special deals in insurance, travel, legal advice, and other packages provided by our affiliates; free insurance coverage for job-related liability; and the knowledge you are supporting education in Florida. Come and join the movement.
If you have been the victim of a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, you have thirty days from the time you knew or should have known of the violation to file a grievance. If you are, and at the time of the violation were, a dues-paying member of the United Faculty of Florida, you have the right to union representation. To contact the UFF USF Grievance Committee, go to the online contact form. For more information, see our web-page on grievances; see also the main article (left).
The USF Chapter of the UFF will award six $ 500 Travel Scholarships for next spring and summer. This will be for travel for participation in a professional activity. All applications are due by November 27, and only UFF members are eligible. In addition, no recipient of the Fall 2017 or Spring 2018 cycles of travel grants is eligible to apply. The five recipients shall be selected by lot at the November 30 chapter meeting. For more information, see the Travel Scholarship Flyer.
This initiative is part of our membership campaign. If you would like to become active in the UFF USF Membership Drive, contact the Membership Chair, Adrienne Berarducci (click here).
Visit the United Faculty of Florida at USF Facebook page. This page is a place where UFF members can exchange thoughts and ideas. The page is "public", but only dues-paying UFF members are eligible to post items on the page. If you are a UFF member, ask to join on the page, or contact the Communications Committee. The Committee will invite every UFF member that asks to join. So check us out. UFF members are welcome to join, and non-members are welcome to look.
Last summer, partly in response to recent events, the UFF Biweekly ran an issue on gender discrimination and another on sexual harassment. The issues may be related: some harassment is bullying, and some bullying is aimed at maintaining or manipulating a pecking order, so harassment and discrimination could have the same goal, even if the harasser or discriminator is not consciously aware of any goal.
But if living in a civilized society is our conscious goal, we have to pay attention to what we are doing and what we see happening around us. That may be the idea behind an online module that recently arrived in everyone's inbox. A letter from the provost, the vice president of USF health, and both regional chancellors advised us of our "roles and responsibilities in the prevention of discrimination, harassment and retaliation..." Further, as "Periodic employee training is an important component of this duty," employees are required to complete a 45-minute module by October 31. And "the completion [of the module] will be recorded in ... GEMS."
A few days later, emails went out for an online module for supervisors and and an online module for employees. The online module for employees (which uses pop ups) consists of three components:
Three comments.
Thomas Pluckhahn is a professor of Anthropology at USF Tampa. He received a $ 500 UFF travel scholarship to go to the Smithsonian Institution to conduct a test on a Native American artifact. Here is his account.
The archaeological site of Kolomoki, in southwestern Georgia, is a Native American mound site occupied primarily during the Woodland period (1000 BC to AD 1000) and preserved today as a Georgia State Park. Mound A, the site's largest mound, is one of the largest earthen mounds in North America. The Smithsonian Institution conducted extensive excavations in Mound A in the 1880s, and there were later excavations of more modest scope in the 1950s. Unfortunately, this work was completed before the advent of radiocarbon dating, and there have been no modern excavations owing to the wishes of descendant Native American tribes. As a result, the mound has never been precisely dated, and there has long been skepticism that a mound of such substantial size could date comparably early (most mounds of this size and rectangular form were completed during the subsequent Mississippian period, from AD 1000 to 1500). Fortunately, the Smithsonian excavations were conducted by a botanist, who collected samples of charred wood (probably burned posts) from the mound. With financial assistance from UFF, I traveled to the Smithsonian Institution, retrieved a charcoal sample, and submitted it for radiocarbon dating. The resulting date confirms that the mound was constructed around AD 750, during the Woodland period. The results formed a portion of an article published in American Antiquity, the premiere journal for archaeologists working in the Americas.
Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, October 4, at noon, on USF Tampa, in EDU 261.
We will have lunch at the meeting. All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. Come and join the movement.Our website is http://www.ourusf.org and our e-mail address is uff@ourusf.org.
About this broadcast: This Newsletter was broadcast from uff.ourusf.org, hosted at ICDsoft.com, and is intended for all members of the UFF USF Bargaining unit (USF faculty and professionals at most departments). A (usually identical) version will be broadcast to USF-News and USF-Talk from mccolm@usf.edu.
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