The Faculty Senate met, voted on, and unanimously passed a bill concerning faculty and staff pay raises on March 21. The bill requests that no members of Armstrong's administration receive raises until there are enough funds to allow for raises among the faculty and staff as well.
The bill was created in reaction to several administration members receiving pay bumps for fiscal year 2012 after faculty members were required to take six furlough days in the 2009-10 school year. Between eight members of the administration, the president distributed $70,000 in merit raises. Seventeen police officers also received small raises at that time.
The bill was originally going to be presented to the Senate as a resolution. However, many faculty members suggested it be changed to a bill instead.
"The reason that we changed what we were originally trying to do from a resolution to a bill is because a resolution is just a statement of our opinion," said Faculty Senate Vice President Suzanne Carpenter. "It's the way we let the president know how we feel on the subject whereas a bill is something that requires her to respond."
After receiving the bill, University President, Linda Bleicken, has 30 days to respond. She can approve it, veto it, remand it to the Senate, or otherwise defer action. If she chooses to do anything other than approve the bill, she must provide the Senate with a reason for her choice.
"Hopefully she will approve it, but if she doesn't then at least we will know where she stands, which is part of the reason we wanted to do this," Carpenter said. "We wanted her to know how the faculty felt, and we wanted to know what she thought about how we felt."
Despite a unanimous vote to pass the bill, the majority of the faculty members contacted to discuss this matter declined to comment.
Associate Professor of History, James Todesca, presented the bill to the Senate and firmly believes that faculty raises are necessary for the benefit of Armstrong.
"The reason the faculty is so upset is just that they are not getting salary raises and would like to get salary raises," Todesca said. "Our system professors who have been here for three years have never seen a raise."
With the recent economic recession and increased cost of living, Todesca doesn't think that the current faculty salaries are sufficient.
If you've got two kids, you can't afford to live on that," he said. "You just can't do it. We're not talking about everybody has got comfy salaries, but some are richer than others. We're talking about people living on fairly next to nothing."
The bill not only focuses on ensuring that faculty members get raises when the budgets become available, but also suggests the implementation of a way to evaluate and recommend deserving faculty and staff members for raises.
Carpenter said faculty members were not so much upset Bleicken awarded members of administration raises, but that she had no way of evaluating whether the faculty and staff deserved raises as well. Bleicken, who could not be reached for comment on the matter, presented the faculty with a list of administrators who received raises recently along with the reasons she felt they earned those raises.
"We're not saying that those people didn't deserve raises," Carpenter said. "That's not it at all, but there was no mechanism for her to be informed of people all over campus who maybe were deserving of raises."
Todesca and Carpenter believe the current faculty salaries are having a negative effect on the hiring capabilities of Armstrong.
"We lose talented faculty because they come here and our wages are far below other states, so they get other jobs, so over the past five or six years, we've seen all sorts of talented people go," Todesca said. "And finally, now it's getting to the point where not only are we losing people, but we can't hire people."
Todesca said while recently trying to hire a new faculty member, three of the university's first choices turned down Armstrong because of the low salaries.
"When we interview new faculty, they usually are interviewing at multiple schools, so we are trying to make them believe that Armstrong is the best place for them, and one of the things that the new faculty looks at is salary," Carpenter said. "And I'm afraid that the salaries at Armstrong sometimes do make the difference."
Carpenter also believes that the lack of raises is negatively affecting the morale of the faculty and staff.
"It's a tangible way that you're being told that you're valued," Carpenter said. "I'm still excited about coming to work, but it is a little depressing to have less resources than I have in previous years."