Interim President Dolan has sent a letter to twenty-one of our colleagues, all of them on temporary contracts, informing them that the college will almost certainly not have the money to rehire them for Fall 2016 and urging them to look for other employment. The upcoming Board of Trustees meeting, which will be on Tuesday, May 10th, is our best chance to speak out about this situation. For that reason, the NCCFT Executive Committee is calling on our membership to attend that meeting en masse and for as many of us as possible to sign up to speak. First and foremost, we need to support our colleagues who might lose their jobs; but we also need to remind Dr. Dolan and the Board that an investment in full-time faculty, perhaps especially in difficult times such as we are now facing, is a wise investment in the future of Nassau Community College.
When: May 10th
Where: Tower, 11th Floor
To Speak: Call Anne Brandi, 2-4013
(The public session is scheduled to resume at approximately 9:30 PM)
It’s important to remember that we’ve been here before. In 2011, facing a budget deficit he claimed could be closed no other way, then-president Donald Astrab summarily fired all 66 faculty members who were then on temporary lines. We responded to that decision by packing the very next Board of Trustees meeting to capacity and speaking out in protest. We found a collective voice at that Board meeting and we spoke with that voice at almost every subsequent Board meeting for the next two years. We knew we could not turn back the clock on Dr. Astrab’s decision, but we made sure that he and the Board of Trustees knew we were paying attention. In short time, 38 lines were restored. This demonstrates the power of persistence and being united.
The current situation is a little different. As far as we know, a final decision has not been made about the fate of our twenty-one colleagues, and that turns the May 10th Board of Trustees meeting into a window of opportunity we cannot afford to miss. This is our chance not just to let the Board and administration know what we value about the colleagues we are on the verge of losing, but also to ask Dr. Dolan and the Trustees to join us in those values, to reimagine the budget in terms that will both protect our colleagues’ livelihoods and renew the college’s investment in us as a full-time faculty. Each of us has at least one story to tell about the positive difference we make as full-timers in the lives of our students and in the life of this institution. We’re calling on you now to tell those stories to the Board.
Because the Board’s agenda includes the interviewing of presidential candidates, the public session—when we will have the chance to speak—is scheduled to resume at approximately 9:30 PM. It will, in other words, be a late night, and so we’re asking you to make it a late night. To sign up to speak, contact Anne Brandi at 2-4013, and if you don’t want to speak, come show your support. The simple fact of our presence in the room makes a big difference.
When: May 10th
Where: Tower, 11th Floor
To Speak: Call Anne Brandi, 2-4013
(The public session is scheduled to resume at approximately 9:30 PM)
We look forward to seeing you there!