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Faculty Senate moves to hire legal counsel

by Dick Peterson
Public Relations
Good fences make good neighbors, they say, so a Faculty Senate decision to hire an attorney should only strengthen already improving relations between the MUSC administration and faculty.

“Faculty Senate and administration relations at the moment couldn’t be better,” said Faculty Senate chairman Adrian Reuben, M.D. “We’ve worked hard during the past few years to ensure that faculty rights and concerns are upheld with the administration, but we’ve done it in ways that strengthen our relationship, not tear it down.”

So why hire an attorney to look out for faculty interests?

“The basis for this now is that the Faculty Senate is being asked to review, approve and suggest policies that can be incorporated into the faculty handbook,” Reuben said. “That handbook governs all the duties, benefits and professional work relationships between the faculty and the university.”

Reuben explained that the faculty handbook has always been the “unsigned contract” that guided faculty-administration relations. But now, with faculty signing a letter stating that they accept the handbook as their contract, the document takes on a greater legal significance and with implications that touch on issues like promotions, tenure, income and retirement at a time when budget cutbacks could put livelihoods in jeopardy, it is in the interest of both the faculty and the university to know precisely where their legal boundaries lie.

University counsel Joe Good agrees: “Over the years, the faculty handbook has become like a house with one added-on room after another. Handbook add-ons have at times made the document difficult to understand. There are some policies which may appear to conflict with others.”

Good also explained that it would be a conflict of interest situation for him to represent the interests of the university and the faculty in an issue where there may be disagreement.

“And we can't use university counsel to write our documents,” Reuben said. He added that Good, vice president for finance and administration John Sutusky, and internal auditor Paul Taylor have been helpful guiding the senate through the process of hiring an attorney when they find one who would understand the faculty-administration issues that exist in the academic setting.

“Several attorneys we've heard about appear to understand the issues and are interested in participating,” Reuben said. The University Affairs Committee will be interviewing the candidates.

Reuben said that payment for the attorney’s services will come from the voluntary contributions of faculty members who are encouraged to donate $50 a year. The money will be kept in a separate external account. For the first year, the senate will return the money “if the plan fails,” Reuben said. Thereafter, the money will be given to the Health Sciences Foundation for unrestricted use in the event that the process cannot continue because of lack of support.

As badly as Reuben wants to see the arrangement succeed—“I’ve worked hard for this and this is the closest we’ve ever come to realizing it”—he remains philosophical about the outcome. “If a large number of the faculty are not contributing, it will only show they are not interested.”

But he speaks optimistically about the senate’s present state and its future. “We are now more visible and effective than we have ever been. We have excellent relations with the administration and we are not hesitant to bring up issues that touch faculty interests. The timing is opportune too, since we are also undertaking a major coordinated revision of the handbook, and this is long overdue.

“I'm the sort of person to be actively pursuing what I think is right rather than simply stand back and complain,” he said.