An Open Letter On Shared Governance

To: my HCC colleagues, including admins and Trustees but primarily faculty
Re: Shared Governance

“David, why is shared governance eroding?”

Shared governance is eroding because there are those in the administration who believe that faculty will always do what is mandated, without complaint. If the mandates were mostly reasonable, or could be shown to produce demonstrably positive outcomes, that would be one thing.  But increasingly they are not so.  Yes, the Senate speaks out when we see questionable things, but there is a distinct impression that we are merely rabble-rousers.

I really don't want to get into personalities, because multiple fingers can be pointed at multiple people.  Ultimately, though, it comes back to "rank-and-file" faculty basically not speaking up.  Leaders believe it's just the same group of people, always causing problems and making mountains out of molehills.  Yes, I speak loudly and often, perhaps too much so.  I'll own it.  But if I don't speak, who will?

The Board, I feel, sometimes believes faculty are only self-interested, and have begun to ignore us. Again, part of this is because they are used to seeing the same people making the same complaints. This must end.  The Board will eventually meet in-person once again. When they do, we need to be there, and not just “the usual suspects.”

Those of us fighting the fight for shared governance are not in this for our own hind ends, or to advance our careers.  We are in this because at the heart of shared governance is the a priori tenet that faculty are the experts in dealing with students, and that the things we bring forward are going affect the students at some point.

True, HCC has traditionally been an exemplar in shared governance. Faculty here have had a louder voice than at our neighbors' joints.  Yet our peers also teach us something: happy faculty mean better outcomes.  No, that's not a demand to "pay us or we'll do lousy jobs." Being happy faculty is more than just being well-compensated.  It's about feeling valued as part of the institution. 

When you love going to your job (or, pace Covid, logging in to your job), you can accept certain trade-offs.  One of the trade-offs we at HCC have historically made is that we aren't paid as much as our friends at Austin CC, or Tarrant County, or Alamo.  But we can't do all of the giving here.  We can't lose our voice in helping run the college AND be paid less AND be made to do things which will ultimately hurt our students, all good intentions notwithstanding. 

If regular faculty sit by and let these things happen, or rely on the same folks to fight their fights, it's all going to keep going downhill.  And I cannot fight alone.  I'm tired.  I should be up at the lake, doing a lot more fishing and cigar-smoking and grading.  

But not yet. I will be heard instead. Here I stand, I can do no other.

Join me.

--David