IN THIS ISSUE

Talking to Politicians

The primary policy-making body of the United Faculty of Florida is the Senate, which meets twice a year. Senators are elected by dues-paying UFF members, and any UFF member can run for a senate seat (something to think about next spring). The Senate met last week to hear reports, set policy, and wrestle with the online platform.

The UFF Senate Meeting I: The Legislature and the Academy. From restrictions on anti-pandemic measures to undermining academic freedom, the Legislature has been busy lately. For a description of the reports to the Senate, see below or click here.
Government Relations. Influencing legislation means talking to legislators, and legislators are more readily influenced when it is their own constituents doing the talking. For details on how UFF proposes to accomplish this, see below or click here.

Meanwhile, the USF Presidential Search Committee has fixed its timeline for finding a new president, which it hopes to accomplish by January. The Committee sent out a survey to the USF community about what we hope to see in a new president, and UFF encourages everyone to fill it out. (And you can follow the effort on the Committee's website.)

Coincidentally, US News & World Report has just issued its annual ranking including 392 "National Universities." USF was on rank # 103 among National Universities, # 62 in Best Colleges for Veterans, # 46 in Most Innovative Schools, and # 24 in Top Performers for Social Mobility. USF's Newsroom promptly observed that USF had climbed further in the rankings than any other institution. Considering its prominence among parents, politicians, and the public - all of whom are very concerned about undergraduate education - US News & World Report probably gives a better picture of how the world sees individual institutions than any other ranking, so perhaps in choosing the next president, the Committee might keep the magazine's priorities in mind.

Chapter Meeting Tomorrow on Zoom

The USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida will meet tomorrow Friday at 12 noon on Zoom. On the agenda: desiderata for a new president, the UFF demonstration on September 30 (see below), government relations, and more. And here are the minutes for the previous meeting.

Any employee in the Bargaining Unit may attend, but you must have an invitation: contact the Chapter Secretary to get one. This fall, we are meeting on September 24, October 8, October 22, November 5, November 19, and December 3. Meetings this semester will be online.

Meetings and events are posted on the Events Calendar of the UFF USF Website. Come and check us out.

Rally for Health and Safety on Thursday, September 30

USF's pandemic mitigation efforts are not sufficient for the current crisis, and faculty, graduate assistants, students, and supporters are calling on state and local education leaders protect our communities from further harm.

Join us Thursday, September 30th, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, at the Tampa campus next to the Library for a public demonstration (here are google map directions). Don’t forget to wear black and comfortable shoes!

Read our our call for action, and our RSVP form.

Can’t attend our action in Tampa? Here's 3 ways to help support our action…

Wear black to work (in person, or virtual) next Thursday, September 30.
Attend our Poster making party at the St. Pete campus Friday, September 24th 3:45-5:45pm in H. William Heller Hall, 2nd floor. Please bring your own mask.
Please share our action invite with your colleagues and ask them to participate.

Join UFF Today!

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. Here is the membership form. Come and join the movement.

Professional Scholarships

The UFF USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida will distribute six $ 500 Professional Scholarships to UFF (USF System) members for professional travel (e.g. to attend & present at a professional meeting), equipment for classroom / hybrid / online teaching, or page charges during this academic year. But you must be a UFF member. If you are a member, you can submit a 200-word proposal for professional activities during Fall 2021, Spring 2022, or Summer 2022 by November 30 to the chapter secretary by November 30. Be sure to include your name, title, address, the details of the professional activity, and a brief description of its importance. For more information, see the program flier.

Grievances

If you have been the victim of a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement or the recent Memorandum of Understanding, 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 Grievances Page.

USF United Support Fund for Food Pantries

Many of our students are struggling during this crisis, and the USF Foundation is supporting the USF Food Pantries to help out. They are accepting non-perishable donations, but one can also make monetary donations for the pantries at St. Petersburg, Sarasota / Manatee, and Tampa.

We are on Social Media

Yes, we are on social media.

We have a Facebook group: see United Faculty of Florida at USF. 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, and the moderator will invite every UFF member that asks to join. Non-members are welcome to look (but you need a Facebook account to do that). So check us out.
We have a blog: see The USF Faculty Blog. This has news items as they come up.
We are twitter-pated: follow us on Twitter via @UffUsf.
We even have a You-Tube channel: check out our videos

If you want to help with media matters, contact the Communications Committee chair.

The UFF Senate Meeting I: The Legislature and the Academy

The UFF Senate is the primary policy-making body of the United Faculty of Florida, and it meets twice a year, usually in February and September. The Senate met virtually last week and was chaired by our new president, Andrew Gothard of Florida Atlantic University.

President Gothard opened the meeting with a description of the battles UFF conducted in last spring's legislative session. "... [W]e defeated attempts to shatter our union through minimum membership requirements and the removal of employer dues deductions. We shot down efforts to limit Florida students access to bright future scholarship funds. We kept guns off campus, and we kept the sunshine pointed directly and squarely at higher ed presidential searches. And though we did not stop the "Viewpoint Discrimination Law," HB 233, we have since taken the state to federal court over its attempts to coerce student and faculty speech across our campuses. All of this and more was achieved not through the efforts of an individual, but by all of us joining together, and raising our voices and hands in defiance of a system that has forgotten the power, and the importance of public education in this state."

Academic freedom was very much on the agenda, and in particular HB 233, which its sponsors dubbed the Viewpoint Diversity Law, which UFF called the Viewpoint Discrimination Law, and which was described in the 12 August Biweekly. This is the law that mandates surveys of faculty and students and permits students to record lectures. The law is already on the books, and since UFF litigating, we would like to hear from you; if you believe that your teaching was impacted by this bill, please contact the Chapter Secretary.

On a related note, senators got a heads' up about "critical race theory." The State Board of Education has barred teaching what it thinks is "critical race theory" in K-12 schools, and of course, higher education is next. House Bill 57 - mischievously entitled Racial and Sexual Discrimination - "Prohibits state agencies, counties, municipalities, & public K-20 educational institutions from providing mandatory training for employees or students which espouses certain concepts..." including that "The United States is fundamentally racist or sexist" (which raises the question of what "fundamentally" means). Although Florida Politics reported that the bill "would outlaw critical race theory" although there is no explicit reference to Critical Race Theory in the bill - just a bunch of verbal nudges and winks. At any rate, whatever one might think of Derrick Bell and Critical Race Theory, the Legislature is now thinking about dictating what is taught in Florida university classrooms, which raises the intriguing question of what they will think of next.

Government Relations

There are four things to remember about talking to politicians.

We elected them, which means that they work for us, not the other way around.
They are just like other people, so it is possible to talk to them (in fact, that's part of their job).
Like us, they have their habitual sources of information, which means that they may be uninformed about some things (such as higher education), and if responsible people don't educate them, they will remain uninformed.
They hear from lobbyists and donors all the time, but the bottom line is that whether they keep their jobs depends on their constituents, so it is their constituents that they want to hear from.

With all this in mind, UFF is asking UFF members to talk to legislators. If lots of us talk to legislators, then they get the message that these are issues that lots of their constituents are concerned about. To facilitate this, UFF has launched a Higher Education Regional Outreach (HERO) program in which participating UFF members undergo training on How To Talk To Politicians - including How To Prepare For a Talk With a Politician. Members form teams (we usually have a team of three or four members visit a legislator) and prepare for the meeting once an appointment is made (yes, how to get an appointment is part of the training). Preparation includes what is going to be said and who is going to say it and what materials (brochures, pages of bullets, etc.) will be given to the politician - and what will be done to follow up on the meeting.

If you are interested in participating, please fill out the HERO form.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, September 24, at 12 noon, via Zoom. All UFF USF members are welcome: for the Zoom link, contact the Chapter Secretary.

All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. To get the link to Zoom, contact the Chapter Secretary. Come and join the movement.

Membership: Everyone in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out the membership form.

NOTE: The USF-UFF Chapter website is http://www.uff.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.

If you do not want to receive the UFF Biweekly, you can unsubscribe below or contacting the Chapter Secretary. If you do not receive the Biweekly, but want to, contact the Chapter Secretary.