To the Editors:

I feel compelled to respond to a couple of points made by Henry Gonshak in his article "Conversing about Tenure with the Board of Regents," which appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of Montana Professor.

First, Professor Gonshak's conjecture that "the absence of participants from Western...was due more to disinterest on the part of the faculty. than to any plot to exclude them" is only half right. It is true that we were not excluded. In fact as the regular representative of Western Montana College's faculty to the bimonthly Board of Regents meetings, I participated in most of the discussions with respect to organizing that particular session, including soliciting input from fellow faculty and compiling information about the substantial benefits the tenure system has yielded for our school, its faculty and students. Unfortunately, my father passed away suddenly and I was out of state in the weeks immediately preceding that BOR session, and as a consequence was not available during the last stages of organizing the panel that presented the faculty perspective. I was, however, in attendance at the meeting and offered several comments from the floor both in support of material presented by the panel and to express some of the unique features of how tenure works at Western. Perhaps if I'd been less disoriented by personal circumstances, I would have arranged for a substitute to take my place during the last phases of composing the panel, but frankly it wasn't very high on my list of things to think about just then. In any case, I would like to assure the readers of Montana Professor that the issue of tenure and concern for maintaining its benefits (in all forms) are very much an active priority for Western's faculty.

That brings me to my second point, which addresses Professor Gonshak's frustration at the minimal attention given to academic freedom during the discussion. This was a conscious decision made by the various representatives several months prior to that meeting. The most compelling reason (from my perspective) had to do with issues related to the collective bargaining process. On those campuses that have collectively bargained agreements with the state (a list which I understand does not include Montana Tech), both the definition of academic freedom and the conditions of tenure are negotiated points. In the context of a discussion where bargaining representatives of faculty would not be present or participating, the prospect that faculty might concede something--even informally, even just a minor point--to the Regents had the potential to provide ammunition to be used against faculty in subsequent, formal bargaining sessions. I don't know how common this was, but in the not-too-distant past, our bargaining team was faced with an effort by the Commissioner for Higher Education's representative to whittle away at the protections we had secured earlier through the bargaining process. We were able to withstand that threat and keep intact the broad outlines of academic freedom that we've long enjoyed. Any indication to the Regents that we considered those protections subject to debate (however "informal" those discussions were supposed to be) would likely insure that we'd have to fight that battle again in the next round of negotiations, and possibly with more handicaps than previously.

The above notwithstanding, I believe the general ideas and ideals reflected in Professor Gonshak's article are to be commended, and I hope that Montana Professor will continue to serve as a forum for examining such important issues.

Cordially,

John Hajduk
President, Faculty Association
UM-Western