Help Keep USM Safe for Academic Freedom - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Feb 11, 2005

Help Keep USM Safe for Academic Freedom

Date: Feb 11, 2005

kick

Date: Feb 12, 2005

"Earlier this week I joined and paid my national AAUP dues online at www.aaup.org. It required only a couple of minutes. Yesterday I mailed a check for my local (AAUP-USM) dues."

I am a member of the national AAUP. I did not know there were two separate dues. Why are there two separate dues? It seems to me most of the people here on this board and going to the meetings are not members of the local AAUP chapter. From what I can tell the local AAUP chapter does not do anything to make a local dues necessary, so why join locally?

Date: Feb 12, 2005

Albert,

I just paid the first installment on the bill for the AAUP faculty Sound Governance Survey. I paid for photocopying and for most of the on-campus mailing. That cost $90.12. I still need to pay for part of the mailing (when I finish collecting the surveys, I will count them and pay the on-campus postage again). Then I will need to pay for the forms and for the analysis of the completed surveys. I haven't gotten that bill yet. We got lucky this year in that a generous faculty member donated all of the 600 envelopes used for this survey.

I often do mailings that cost in the neighborhood of $10.00 a month. For example, I am sending rather large packets to national AAUP (with copies to the IHL board commissioner) requesting for an investigation.

There is also some talk about inviting a speaker from outside the state to come to USM and give a talk about shared governance.

Local dues are $10.00 a year. Not much money, but I think, worth it.

Amy Young

Date: Feb 12, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
"so why join locally?"

Albert, its just fine if you want to continue to be only a "member-at-large" at the national level. I held that status for several years, and the same was the case for my Sigmi Xi membership. Nonetheless, local AAUP chapters need all the support they can get. I'm not referring to financial support - $10.00 seems rather reasonable (about the price of two megafatgram meals from a fast-food restaurant). A local AAUP chapter has numerous miscellaneous and incidental expenses, some of them unanticipated. Events at USM during the past couple of years have demonstrated unequivocally that all faculty members should allign themselves with the local AAUP chapter. And I am definitely including department chairs in this admonition to join AAUP.