Adjunct Faculty Association at

Nassau Community College

VANGUARD

Charles Loiacono, Editor                                                  Vol. 38, No.10  June 2011

WE GOT TROUBLE, I SAY TROUBLE, RIGHT HERE IN GARDEN CITY

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Inside This Issue:

 

The Union's Position
 Viewpoint

Announcements

Sexual Harassment

   

        During the past 37 years, we have been aware of and involved in everything going on hereat NCC. Never in all those years have we heard such criticism and discontent on campus. The AFA has been fighting a war with the Board of Trustees, and there is a war going on between the full-time faculty and the administration. These simultaneous conflicts have created turmoil on campus.

            For our part, we are confronting a dysfunctional Board of Trustees led by a candidate for the Peter Principle prize. The full-time faculty, on the other hand, is confronting an intransigent administration. For the first time, the student body has entered the fray led by the editor of the student newspaper.

            Here are some relevant quotes from recently published writings. The first is from Lynn Mazzola, the chairperson of the academic chairs, who communicated her feelings with the entire college community through the college e-mail. There is not enough space in this issue to reprint both pieces in their entirety, so we here share the relevant core of the messages. This is Lynn Mazzola telling it like it is:

“We, the Academic Chairs, have deep reservations and concerns over recent administrative actions and policy decisions that disregard contractually based governance procedures established under AAUP guidelines and codified within the NCCFT contract and Academic Senate bylaws…a recent series of administrative actions demonstrate a general lack of communication and collegiality through unilateral actions that have resulted in an unprecedented number of grievances and an absence of student, faculty, and chair input.

 

     

 

 “The mutual respect and trust that historically were the hallmark and foundation of shared governance at NCC have been replaced with profound distrust.”

            After describing a litany of wrongs, Mazzola concluded, “The current atmosphere…is causing discord throughout the college community.”

            The editor-in-chief of the VIGNETTE, Richard Bailey, concluded a recent editorial with this:

“Show us that you give a damn. I would like my degree from Nassau to be worth more than the paper it is printed on, which won’t be the case if you keep neglecting the people that matter. The students and the faculty are what make this a top-rated community college. Stop viewing us as customers and start recognizing us as students.”

            Yes sir, we got trouble and it’s not in River City, and it’s not spelled P-O-O-L. The trouble is in one of the tarnished jewels in the County’s crown. The County Executive and the County Legislature must be awakened to the fact that the County is a joint employer as well as the sponsor of this college. The County has a major responsibility to check a Board of Trustees that is not elected and composed of laymen that don’t have a clue about how a college is run. County officials are elected by the people they represent. Those people pay state tax which comes back as state aid, they pay property tax which accounts for the county’s share, and they pay the tuition. That’s the freight. The people are the owners. Elected officials represent them. Ergo, the County must take a more active role as sponsor and joint employer.

            To neglect what is happening at Nassau Community College is to preside at its demise.