Berklee Faculty Union

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Union notes from Union / Management Meeting

Present – Michael Abraham, Prince Charles Alexander, Dennis Cecere, Peggy Codding, Peter Cokkinias, Marti Epstein, Danny Harrington, Helen Lewis, Margaret McAllister, Jeff Perry, Wendy Rolfe, Tom Stein, Jackson Schultz, David Scott, Elizabeth Seitz, Will Silvio, Denise Pons, and Jeri Sykes.

Management – Jay Kennedy, Kari Juusela, Darla Hanley, Mac Hisey, Betsy Newman, Andrew Murphy, Mark Louney, and Carl Beatty

1. Jay opened the meeting. Evacuation procedures throughout the college were discussed at length. Active shooter trainings have been going on with 22 so far and more in the works.

UEC: There is a tremendous lack of training throughout the college; faculty and students don’t know where to go, the entire population needs to be trained. The new windows make us sitting ducks for an active shooter scenario.

Management: In regards to confusing fire drills – we learn from that, we need to know where the training is falling short. Industry best practice – this is our focus. There is a lot of complacency with the population – we need to engage the community at a higher level.

UEC: what about bringing someone from Public Safety to come to department meetings and discuss evacuating the college. What about a day of the semester to work on these concepts – no classes, just safety training, active shooter, fire drills, etc.? Including these ideas into student orientation is a good idea. We discussed students that have been banned from campus for whatever reason – faculty/staff need to know.

UEC: This should be mandatory training for all faculty/staff/students – we need to know what the procedure is for all possible events.

Management: We are all on the same page we just need to get it all figured out.

2. Carl Beatty is here to discuss the commencement ceremony.  We need to shift the culture of the college on a number of levels, sexual harassment, etc. Faculty should be at commencement to experience the students and their parents to receive the thanks that they deserve. We should really not just encourage faculty but if we can stand up and require faculty to go it will be better – right now we are at about 200 faculty – more will be better.

We discussed the ceremony at length.