On Friday, September 25th Provost Chilton sent out a statement about the University’s utilization of ProctorU to “monitor tests administrated remotely.” As a faculty member and librarian, this statement felt wholly insufficient to address real concerns held by students, parents, and other stakeholders. Not only did this statement insufficiently address issues of privacy and surveillance, but it directly ignored concerns surrounding the inequities that proctoring technologies uphold.

These concerns include, but are not limited to:
– Exacerbated mental distress during testing
– Utilization of racist, ableist, and transphobic technologies
– Inaccessibility based on technological needs and ability to have an adequate space free of noise, background movement, and distraction

Some of these concerns are inherent to the way that proctoring tech functions while others are a more intrinsic aspect to the coding and software that is employed during testing. President Chilton’s statement urged readers to review the ProctorU’s privacy policy. I have done so at length and find issue with how ProctorU values users (utilization of vague language that is institution/instructor focused instead of student focused) and in its extensive use of biometric technologies.

There is a lot more that can be said here, and I am prepared to discuss at further length if necessary. I am also able to provide relevant literature on the subject as needed.

The memo sent by the Provost proposes to start two weeks later, which means January 25th, 2021.
However, the memo mentions Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a day off.
What’s the “official” beginning of Spring 2021 semester date that the Provost is using to base the proposed change on?
According to the Registrar, next semester starts on January 11th.
Could you please clarify?
Thanks!

I came to WSU in 1970, since then I’ve seen the social, cultural, academic, and athletic contribution from African-Americans, a minority that has fought for the rights of other minorities such as mine (I am Mexican). I believe that now it is time for WSU to come to the front in this matter by adding to the WSU logo painted on Pullman’s streets a “Black Lives Matter” sign, or a sing on Stadium Way. A letter from the President (as is the usual response) is not longer enough to give support to that important movement. I as a member of a minority, WSU faculty, and member of the WSU Naming Committee, would like to ask the Senate to go for this proposal. Thank you for your attention.

According to our guidelines for tenure and promotion, candidates must submit a notebook, and paper colors are specified. Modifications may be made because of Covid-19 (awaiting updates), but when will modifications be made to make the process fully digital? The current process is inconsistent with our drive to modernize, and needs to reflect our 21st century setting.

While WSU has implemented a variety of accommodations to help students succeed during this difficult semester, very little has been implemented for career-track faculty with heavy teaching loads that have suddenly become much heavier. The university should consider an extension for the final grade submission deadline. Some career-track faculty have a teaching load of five classes with enrollments of up to 40 students per course without grading support. Additionally, we have been encouraged to use alternatives to multiple-choice exams to limit proctoring costs, and to be lenient with students who need additional time or resources. Career-track faculty with the highest teaching loads are disproportionately women, who are statistically likely to disproportionately bear caregiving and educational responsibilities at home while daycares and schools are closed, as well as higher expectations of emotional support from students. These faculty members do not benefit from the tenure clock extension, which is the only university-level response offered to faculty so far. This teaching workload crisis requires a university-level response. A extension for final grade submission would also benefit graduate students who teach classes, another group that has stepped up to fill teaching needs across the university as positions were left unfilled in recent years to meet fiscal health goals.

On March 9th, a message was sent to WSU’s student body with a section heading of “Facts not Fear.” I’m concerned about both facts and fear as it relate to the roll-out of messages from WSU administration.
1) On Friday, March 6th, President Schulz tweeted one message that I believe to be lacking proper context and retweeted something that included misinformation about COVID 19. His first tweet was about how WSU will be in session after Spring Break and that students should plan to return. No mention was made of making decisions with current information, or on the basis of wider public health. More alarmingly, President Schulz retweeted a tweet that included the false claim that COVID 19 is no more worrisome than the flu (I’ll grant the speaker was speaking for themselves “I would much more worry about influenza”), but COVID 19 is projected to be at least 10 times deadlier than the flu, if not significantly more. Together, I believe these messages erode trust in the decision-making process and authority of administration. (I’ll also grant that a March 8th tweet — with significantly lower engagement — said that WSU would continue to monitor developments.)
2) It’s my understanding that multiple questions about COVID 19 from the last Faculty Senate meeting went unanswered, most pertinently: what would trigger a move toward the social distancing step of moving classes online? It’s a great concern that WSU would wait until a case showed up in Pullman (multiple cases have been reported in Spokane in the past two days), which would cause fear and anxiety that we didn’t move online sooner. There are multiple examples of universities taking this proactive step in the past few days. Additionally, in the student email, moving towards online classes was given no connection to the benefits for public health

I have had several concerns expressed about the way in which the entire burden of certain expenses is placed on the department. Global campus expects departments to be prepared to fully fund course redesigns. Departments are expected to fund all expenses for disability-related accommodations, interim measures for CRCI reports, temporary teaching for family and medical leave. These costs are especially onerous for smaller departments, and sadly, many of them might be incentivized to ignore responsibilities because they can’t afford to pay out of their already strapped budgets. These kinds of expenses should be funded centrally, so that all employees and students have access to the same degree of support.

I am very concerned about the changes that say “some service and little or no scholarship.” My contract is 80% teaching, 10% service, 10% scholarship. I am very concerned that these guidelines will be used to discount my creative and scholarly activity when it comes to promotion. I believe the wording should take the scholarship of career track faculty seriously, allowing us to be evaluated based on how well we fulfill our contract. I’m also very concerned that this will be used as a way to offload service from tenure track faculty to career track faculty, even though tenure track faculty often have 20% service as opposed to 10% for career track.

On 2/6/2020 we received notifications from WSU Transportation Services proposing that parking rates should increase. The justification for this increase was centered around a need to generate an additional $4.8 M over 8 years to cover “capital maintenance and repair projects”.

I have several concerns:
First, according to transportation’s publicly available budget, they already account for costs associated with maintenance ($536,109 / yr) as well as depreciation ($619,992 / yr accounted for in real dollars). Why then, is there a need to spend more on maintenance and repair projects?

Second, in the budget there is a ($989,450 / yr) line item for “Debt Service”. It is unclear to me what “Debt Service” entails. Is this transportation paying down its own debts? The university debt? Something else? If transportation is able to take on debt, then should they finance their 8 year maintenance and repair project over the projected lifetime of the resulting parking spaces so as to equitably defer the cost among all parking users both present and in the future?

Third, what is the ($491,452 / yr) “Administrative Service Charge”? Is this salary for administrative positions that is separate from the other wages ($1,566,240 / yr)?

Overall, since the proposed rate increase seeks to generate an additional $600k / yr – I would like to know what is the projected increase in yearly revenue that will result from the rate increase? Has transportation services considered cutting expenses in the areas of debt service, administrative service, or positions (wages) to save this amount rather than increase parking rates?

This was forwarded to me about the recently announced increases in parking rates on Campus:

“I know faculty senate loves parking issues; However, it seems to me that faculty senate is the only way there is push back on raising prices. When the university is providing 1.5% raises and then raising parking in some instances more than 10% something seems off. Add to that the amount of extra money they are making with tickets on the backs of students https://dailyevergreen.com/61732/news/parking-fines-resulted-in-over-half-a-million-dollars-in-2019/ ”

“…At the end of the day, this won’t adversely affect me, but there are people who work here that this will be a bad change that will significantly impact them. Add to this the budget freeze over the last 3 years as well and the morale impact is potentially even higher”