Friday, April 1, 2011

My Letter to the Honorable Steve Crisafulli

I am sharing my email to my Florida House Representative, Steve Crisafulli, in case anyone wants to see it.  Feel free to use parts of this for your own letter if it makes things easier for you.  You might want to leave the blog address out of your posts, or you may want to include it.  Either way is fine, but please be sure to mention its purpose appropriately if you do.  Here is my letter.


Thank you so much for taking the time to read this email.

I ask you, on behalf of all present and future students in the State College System, to oppose House Bill 7193.  If tenure is eliminated at colleges in Florida, faculty will be limited in their abilities to challenge students to think critically and ask tough questions.  Without tenure, faculty would not have protection surrounding academic speech and would be able to be dismissed for discussing controversial topics in their classrooms.  This does not serve students in any way. 

I have created a blog for faculty, staff, students and families in Florida to discuss the bill and formulate plans to oppose its passage.  You are most welcome to visit and view what people have to say.  In only 48 hours, it has generated quite a bit of activity.  The address is:

http://academicfreedomflorida.blogspot.com

I urge you to learn more about tenure before voting on this bill.  Tenure is not a guarantee of "forever employment" for faculty.  Faculty can be dismissed at any time due to inappropriate conduct, ineffective teaching, and program reduction.  Tenure simply protects faculty against being dismissed for exercising academic speech, which has long been upheld as a crucial foundation of higher education.  If students don't learn to think critically at state colleges, where will they learn to do so?

Thank you for your time and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my email.

Sincerely,
Lisa Macon, Ph.D.


I don't know much about Crisafulli.  I was able to establish that he did not sponsor the bill that eliminated tenure for K-12, and he does not serve on the education committees.  I don't know how he voted on the K-12 bill, but I intend to call him Monday and find out.  If I can get a dialog going with him, even better.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to make things personal, but Rep. Fresen of Miami doesn't even hold a degree of high enough rank that would allow him to teach at a Florida college. He holds a B.S. in Finance and International Affairs from F.S.U. So other than being an elected official who can propose legislation, what authority or experience does he have to make such a proposal about Florida college faculty?

J.D. said...

FYI - Crisafulli voted "Yea" on Bill 736. I believe that all Republicans voted for it and all Democrats voted against it.

Unknown said...

I figured as much (about Crisafulli) but I"m hoping since he wasn't a leader of the pack, he can be reasoned with. I can only sleep tonight if I have some optimism.

J.D. said...

For a little more optimism with regard to academic freedom, you might want to read the statement by University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin in response to the open records request of Dr. William Cronon's emails.

Anonymous said...

I suspect that most of the state legislators don't hold high enough credentials to teach in the state college system. That's a problem. Really though, if you have a PhD, do you WANT to be a state rep? I don't. There aren't many reasons to do it that I can think of. Public service? Glory? A stepping stone to something else?

I also suspect that most reps are not actually reading these bills, let alone understanding what the impact of them is, or even writing them. They are just going along with them. I DO think that taking some action will help.

Calling and writing in reasoned voices. Thanks for getting us started.

-Colin

Charlotte Pressler said...

Excellent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the conditions under which community college faculty must teach and the "students as customers" model. http://chronicle.com/article/Educating-our-Customers/126916/#disqus_thread

Adjunctivization of the profession has contributed to this problem, because adjuncts are not rehired if the "customers" are unhappy. Stripping away tenure turns us all into "customer satisfaction experts."

It is possible that our state legislators do not know what conditions we teach under. I am sending this article to my state legislator, Denise Grimsley. Just a thought.

Charlotte Pressler

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing all the links, Charlotte and J.D. I'll do some reading and editorialize.

Colin - I am glad I'm not the only one thinking a reasoned voice may be best. I do take the points of others and try to learn from that. But it's not my nature to be the radical. I do feel very strongly about this issue, though.