On June 16 UFF-FAU President James Tracy sent a letter to Congressman Ron Klein of Florida’s 22nd Congressional District to inform him that FAU President Frank Brogan and the FAU Board of Trustees were laying off tenured faculty in violation of the BOT’s contract with UFF while at the same time taking in over $12 million in federal stimulus money. Congressman Klein has yet to provide any response to Tracy, even though Tracy followed up with a telephone call to Klein’s office one month later, on July 16.
Klein’s avoidance of the issue contrasts sharply with the actions of his counterpart, Congressman Robert Wexler of the 19th District, who provided a very prompt response to a letter from Tracy that cited identical concerns. Wexler expressed his empathy with FAU’s faculty and informed Tracy that he had forwarded the letter to Florida State Senator Ted Deutsch who could more readily deal with a situation involving a state-funded university. UFF subsequently sent a letter to Deutsch but has yet to receive a response. Further, Governor Charlie Crist dealt with a June 18 letter from Tracy on the issue by promptly referring it to Florida’s Board of Governors, the body that oversees Florida’s State University System.
Perhaps Klein’s silence is due to the fact that he is a chum of Frank Brogan, at least to the extent that Klein has allowed Brogan to use him as a reference on his credentials. Or, it could be the many thousands of dollars in political contributions Klein has received from the area’s well-heeled Republicans, including some who sit on FAU’s Board of Trustees according to records kept by the Federal Election Commission, and are particularly instrumental in that body’s affairs. Indeed, Klein appears to be one of the few Democrats who can successfully pull on the purse strings of some of the area’s true dyed-in-the-wool right wingers.
FAU officials contend that this matter has been resolved, because the laid off faculty have been given new positions, or even the ones they were deprived of in the first place. This provides little comfort, however, since these faculty have been placed in the same “functional units” containing solely tenured faculty that were haphazardly designed by FAU’s administration as a pretext to get rid of them in the first place. Nor does it make the strong commitment toward protecting tenure and respecting the Collective Bargaining Agreement that would begin the long process of repairing the University’s seriously damaged national reputation.
Congressman Klein shouldn’t allow political cronyism or monetary contributions to stand in the way of condemning what is a very serious case of mismanagement at the only public research university in his congressional district. If he truly cares about the well being and future prospects of all of his constituents–not just the powerful and affluent–he would take a public stand supporting FAU’s faculty and protecting FAU’s academic integrity and reputation. After all, higher education remains the foremost avenue for those constituents to regain an economic foothold so they may see their way out of extremely difficult times.