Union notes from Union / Management Meeting

Present – Prince Charles Alexander, Michael Abraham, Dennis Cecere, Peggy Codding, Peter Cokkinias, Marti Epstein, Danny Harrington, Margaret McAllister, Jeff Perry, Stephanie Reich, Wendy Rolfe, David Scott, Jackson Schultz, Will Silvio, and Jeri Sykes. 

Management – Larry Simpson, Jay Kennedy, Kari Juusela, Mac Hisey, Camille Colatosti, Joe Bennett, Betsy Newman, Eileen Alviti, Chris Kandus-Fisher

Larry opened the meeting. The Boston Globe is poised to write another article to come out … next topic is BoCo. Another body blow. Jackson and I have been having regular conversations about this topic and we are going to continue this conversation in this venue.

Let’s talk about the equity policy. First, one thing we need to get the current policy OUT of the faculty contract. We are working on this to happen as soon as possible. We have been in contact with our counsel and want to get this meeting set-up as soon as possible.

Betsy Newman discussed the equity policy and the history since she took over. Equality related to employment, race, gender, gender ID, age, etc. Federal and state law guides us to certain extent – Title IX. The policy took about a year to develop and has been in place for about a year.

Diversity is valuing differences of all kinds and equity is fairness for all regardless of difference. Equity deals with things after they happen; diversity is regarding our culture – clarifying the values and terms of this community.

Larry – since November 8, this college has been involved in a very specific focus. In the early years of this administration we had a very different approach and how we treated these issues – since Betsy has arrived we have changed our approach for the better. Do you have questions about the process – we want to be on the same page and present a unified front publicly.

Jackson – there needs to be official training for faculty and the entire community. The message needs to get out to the entire community.

Larry – the Globe article only addressed faculty issues, yes they are across the entire college but we are here talking with faculty leadership. People sometimes don't even know they are offending with micro-aggressions in the classroom.

We discussed bullying at length – from chairs to faculty or superiors to faculty, student to student, etc. This is a real thing at Berklee. Evaluations need to take place from faculty evaluations of chairs, etc. Students evaluate up to faculty – and faculty are evaluated by chairs. Faculty need a voice to evaluate UP to chairs as students are evaluating faculty.

Kari – I used the faculty evaluations of chairs from a few years ago in all of my meetings with chairs.

Larry – these are informal evaluations and we need to treat them as such. Back to our main subject of sexual misconduct, we want to give faculty tools to have conversations with students about all these important topics.

Jackson – evacuation procedures, active shooter scenarios, ADA issues, etc. these issues must be addressed at length very soon.

Mac – one thing we are working on is putting windows in doors that don’t have them.