Tag Archives: University of Hawaii at Manoa

UH Manoa Chancellor missing in action during increasingly heated debate over budget, retrenchment

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It was a full house at Hemmenway Auditorium yesterday as hundreds of students and faculty jammed the hall for a briefing on impending budget cuts, including firing of tenured professors.

Conspicuous by her absence in the midst of the campus turmoil was Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, who has been on the mainland for the last two football games and apparently is still gone.

One flyer being distributed asked the pointed question: “Where is the Chancellor?”

For two weeks, while students, faculty, and administrators have struggled over the budget crisis–while UHPA has been handed an outrageously draconian “last, best, and final offer” by the Board of Regents–the Chancellor has been enjoying her travels with the UH Football Team to Seattle and Las Vegas.

What kind of leadership is that?

Although proposed pay cuts would again drop Manoa faculty salaries down near the bottom of the list of peer institutions, the real issue is proposal to eliminate restrictions on and strict procedures for retrenchment. The university’s “final offer” would eliminate the retrenchment clause that has been in the UH contract for nearly three decades.

An open letter to faculty by J. De Ste Croix, a member of UHPA’s board of directors who teaches at Leeward Community College, traces the history of the retrenchment clause.

The Retrenchment clause has been in the UHPA contract for twenty-six years and is its bedrock, its lodestone. It controls who stays, who goes, and when, how, and why. Now, for the first time in more than a quarter of a century, as a part of their fake ultimatum, the UH management wants it back. When the Retrenchment clause goes, if it goes, the right to fairly determine layoffs goes with it—probably forever. The Retrenchment clause was negotiated into the contract in 1983 by Dr. J.N. Musto, when his opposite number was then UH President Fujio “Fudge” Matsuda. Matsuda and Musto were also going through difficult economic times back then, and they both knew the score. They knew that faculty in the public university in Hawaii needed to be protected by solid contract language for retrenchment (layoff) because if it is not solidly in the contract, politics will out. In more general terms, the UHPA contract is a massive bulwark against the vagaries of politics in Hawaii and has been diligently built up over thirty-five years of constant effort and strife. It buttresses and protects all our professional rights and is without doubt the best higher education union contract in America. In exchange for a five per cent pay cut in each of the next two years, the current governor and UH administration want us to hand over the heart of it. The threat is that if we don’t give away our contractual rights they will come back and do something worse to us.

A story today in Ka Leo, the Manoa student newspaper, by editor Mark Brislin quotes David Stannard, chair of American Studies.

Stannard said the “simplest way to get the contract passed … would be to remove retrenchment officially from the contract … As long as that is in the contract I guarantee you the contract will be rejected.”

There’s at least one YouTube video about the UH budget crisis, with more promised, and a Google Group with additional information and resources (Preserving Hawaii’s University).

Finally, there’s an excellent essay making the rounds at Manoa which traces the historical roots of the argument over university education to the days of the “Big Five”, when educational opportunities were deliberately limited to keep children of plantation workers “from aspiring to vocations ‘above their stations.'”

The essay by retired UH Professor Robert Potter originally appeared in Honolulu Weekly a decade ago, during the last round of major budget cuts.

Faculty say UH crisis goes beyond the budget, citing a failure of leadership

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CrisisA flyer being readied for distribution at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus later today charges the UH administration with failing to be advocates for the system’s flagship campus.

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UH Manoa is being asked to eat 3/4ths of the budget cuts while consuming only ½ of the system’s costs. Why haven’t we heard a defense of Manoa from our leaders while this decision was being made?

The flyer notes that the state’s “final” contract offer will put UH at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting and retaining top teachers, scholars, and researchers.

The “last best offer” to the faculty will drop professors’ salaries to 17th of our 18 benchmark universities, and 38th of 50 state flagship campuses. What will happen to our ability to compete for the best and brightest in the country’s most expensive market?

It urges faculty and students to attend a teach-in on Wednesday, October 7.

Click on the flyer to see a full-size version.

Thursday (4)…UH chancellor takes administrators on dinner cruise while faculty face layoffs

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Update: Gregg Takayama, executive assistant to Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, responded promptly to this post as follows:

Yes, Chancellor Hinshaw did pay for it out of her personal funds so no state or UH funds were involved.

She hosted the cruise as a “thank you” for Manoa campus leaders who have worked very closely with her in a very trying period.



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Did you notice the comment left yesterday afternoon from using the name “newwife”?

Sep 9, 2009 at 4:39 pm

If UH is so short on money, what is Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw doing throwing fancy shindigs on a boat with food and free cocktails for her staff last night? Did she pay for that out of her pocket or did UH? Talk about bad timing and bad taste. Next time, when the State is THIS broke and you need to get to know your staff – try a potluck picnic!

Another faculty member later emailed about the same event, saying he had no direct knowledge but heard about the cruise from three sources.

Last night, Chancellor Hinshaw treated her deans and others of the “Manoa Executive Team” to a moonlit cruise on a catamaran in Honolulu Bay. Dinner was served. I haven’t a clue as to how it was paid for and I am sure it was all on the up and up. Given the lay offs of lecturers and all the cutbacks at UH Manoa, it does seem a tad in poor taste.

Agreed, if it was as described.

I emailed Hinshaw’s executive assistant, Gregg Takayama, to find out whether the rumored dinner cruise actually took place. I’ll post any reply received.

And from the Campus Beat column in Ka Leo, the UH Manoa student newspaper:

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 26

A resident of Frear Hall was caught with a hookah. Staff smelled marijuana coming from the room and found the contraband hookah pipe sitting on a table in plain view. Hookah pipes and other contraband should not be left around for housing staff to find.

Thursday…Kaaawa gets attention, UH on path to retrenchment, and more Morning Dogs

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Kaaawa was featured in a KITV weather report yesterday as the remains of the former hurricane, Felicia, slipped past the island.

And the Advertiser reports that Kamehameha Highway, our two-lane access to Kaaawa, was closed for five hours overnight when Waikane Stream overflowed.

Police reported about 3 feet of water on the highway after heavy rains fell throughout the evening. Officers began turning cars around at about 11:10 p.m.

The road was reopened shortly before 4 this morning. There were no reports of property damage or injuries, police said.

On K-5’s news at 9 p.m., a map purporting to show the location of Kahana Bay had it sitting about in Kaaawa, while the obvious bay sat off to the left of the marked location. Who checks these things?

Up at UH-Manoa, Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw sent out an email at 5:01 p.m. yesterday announcing plans to move towards closing programs and laying off faculty and staff, potentially including tenured members of the faculty, a process referred to as “retrenchment”.

It is a process that is likely to cause severe damage to our system of higher education, which in turn will undoubtedly reverberate further through the economy.

Several things come to mind. First, the Board of Regents and UH senior administrators have failed in their responsibilities to publicly advocate for the university system. They simply haven’t conveyed to the public the fragile nature of this system of higher education and the long-term consequences of dramatic short-term actions. Neither have they marshaled the university’s intellectual resources in this effort, demonstrating a lack of leadership.

Second, there’s a huge elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, and that is the continued development of a large new West Oahu campus.

While Hinshaw believes the university “cannot afford to continue all that we are doing”, the financial drain of building, staffing, and maintaining a whole new campus will further weaken the rest of the university system.

There is little question that there simply is no educational need for a new West Oahu campus of the size being planned. And it’s no secret that university administrators, while publicly clinging to the official line, have privately lobbied against further funding of West Oahu.

With the prospects of cuts that will diminish the stature of the University of Hawaii for years, perhaps decades, it’s time for those concerned about its future to stand up to the landowners and developers and, yes, politicians who want to profit even at the expense of the university as a whole.

And that reminds me–all those folks who pushed so hard to retain the Act 221 tax credits need to take a hard look and see that their interests are directly involved here. With a scaled back and damaged university system, their high tech hopes cannot be sustained. Under those circumstances, why should the public continue to pour resources into the pockets of investors while at the same time defunding the intellectual and educational infrastructure necessary to sustaining an expansion of the technology sector?

In any case, venting aside, it’s also worth taking a look at the retrenchment provisions of the UH faculty contract.

Although Hinshaw’s email announcement said layoff notices will go out as early as September 1, it looks like that deadline can’t be met, at least regarding positions subject to the retrenchment process because proper notification of the union and a required 45 day waiting period.

When the Board of Regents determines that retrenchment may occur, it will so inform the Union and will provide whatever information that is available, including a list of Faculty Members expected to be retrenched, and a list of vacancies for which active recruitment is occurring throughout the UH System. The Union may submit its assessment and/or recommendation within thirty (30) days of such notification. The Board of Regents will not proceed with its retrenchment action until forty-five (45) days after its notification to the Union.

And “bumping rights” apply to faculty as well according to the contract.

A tenured Faculty Member who is retrenched according to the provisions of this Article shall have employment rights to any position within the locus of tenure for which the Faculty Member is qualified and which is occupied by the Faculty Member with the least seniority, provided that the provisions of this paragraph shall not be applicable to the Faculty Member who is displaced.

“Locus of tenure” typically does not refer to the specific department or program in which a faculty member teaches, but to the college, a much larger unit, meaning that the process is going to be much more difficult than it appears.

And much of this pain is triggered by the Lingle administration’s ideologically-driven refusal to seek additional revenues and instead go the Herbert Hoover route.

HokuWith all that going on, I’ll end with an upbeat look at more of our Kaaawa morning dogs. This is Ms. Hoku, age 10. She’s been part of our morning walks her whole life, although at first she just begged to be petted and only later discovered the joys of the dog biscuit.

So click on Hoku’s photo for more dogs.