opinion

Faculty Union elects a pair of Tallahassee professors

Two Tallahassee women will take over leadership of the union representing university faculty members his summer, with a goal of building its membership and strengthening the voice of educators in Florida’s Capitol.

Florida State University communications professor Jennifer Proffitt will become president of United Faculty of Florida next August. Florida A&M professor Elizabeth Davenport will be first vice president of the union.

In an interview, Davenport attributed her election to solid support from her FAMU colleagues.

“I’ve been a member 14 years and I haven’t seen any African-American or Hispanic people in the UFF administration,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I think FAMU supported my campaign. I told them it was my Jackie Robinson moment.

“In fact, I even put in my newsletter, ‘Thank you, FAMU, you made me feel like ’42.’ ” (For those who didn’t see the movie, that was Robinson’s number with the old Brooklyn Dodgers.)

UFF represents about 22,000 employees at nine universities, but only about 7,000 are members of the union. That’s where Davenport wants to start building what she termed “diverse voices on common issues” on issues.

“We have to increase our membership. Our membership has stagnated to the point that there’s no growth,” she said. “I believe in a multitude of voices going to the Legislature, not just one or two.”

Davenport teaches public-school and higher-education law, curriculum and education policy at FAMU. She got her Ph.D. at Michigan State (“They disappointed me last weekend,” she said), was an adjunct professor and practiced law for a while, and was an instructor at a 76 percent Hispanic college in Texas, before deciding to try a historically black school.

Proffitt, who got her Ph.D. at Penn State and has been at FSU since 2005, agreed on the importance of increasing union membership.

“My primary goal is to give faculty a voice at the legislative-political level,” she said. “I think we can incresae our visibility. The legislators shouldn’t see just the union, but a lot of experts in different fields who can help make this a better state.”

Proffitt has been active in the Faculty Senate and as president of the FSU chapter of UFF, prior to her election to the statewide post. Davenport, chief negotiator and a seven-year president of the union’s FAMU chapter, oversaw an increase in union membership from 26 percent to over half the faculty at FAMU.

Bargaining for faculty since 1976, UFF was the first public-sector union registered when government workers got union organizing rights four decades ago.

It has been prominent in the opposition to two major bills this session. One would allow concealed-weapon permitholders to carry their guns on campus, while the other would conceal the names of applicants for university president and provost positions from public disclosure until late in the process.

Both bills have reached the House floor, while their Senate companion are still in committees of both chambers. With three weeks left in the session, they appeared stalled, but not dead.

The election of two educators from the same town was not entirely unprecedented. In 1983-85, the head of UFF was from the University of South Florida and the VP worked at Hillsborough Community College.

“Florida’s higher education system is one of the most important public institutions we have and I am determined to work with thousands of other faculty members to make sure we have the resources, the policies and the tools we need to provide the best possible education for our students, and to conduct the highest quality research that Floridians can be proud of,” Proffitt said of her election.

Footnote: In last week’s column about ethics complaints being filed against some university employees who testified against the concealed-weapons-on-campus bill, I tossed out a flippant remark about how an Ethics Commission finding of “probable cause” is mainly a matter of opinion. I still think all legal rulings are one bunch of lawyers’ opinion vs. some others’ judgments, to be decided by the lawyers with the black robes. But a lawyer friend and former colleague here at the paper informs me that Ethics Commission PC findings are bound by set legal procedures and statutes, not the opinions of the commissioners (most of whom aren’t lawyers anyway).

I meant no disrespect to the commission, which does good work trying to keep ’em honest, against often daunting odds.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Democrat reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be contacted at bcotterell@tallahassee.com.