Everyone, keep something in mind.  There were a few (10%) faculty that didn't get raises this time because they were in the mid-year pool this January.  In my college, these people were almost all "cronies" of someone, either at the college or university level.

I argued that they be included this time as well, to no end.  My argument is this:  when January rolls around, SFT will distribute some raise money (probably).  The 90% of faculty that got raises this week won't be included, only that 10% will.  They will share a small pool of raise money, but there are so few of them that their raises will be bigger.  They are winning even more under this deal than ever before.  My argument for including them this time, even though that would have garnered them even more for this year (2004), was to get everyone back on the same track. 

The raise practices at USM are becoming more and more cronyistic than ever before, and with all the faculty/staff turnover there will soon be no institutional memory on how raises are an annual event, with evals done in the spring and increases in pay carried out in the fall, all above board.  The way things stand, raises could be given out at any time of year, to anyone, using any kind of eval scheme imaginable, and starting at any point in someone's base pay.  Have you ever seen a period at USM where "retroactive increases" were used more frequently.  SFT has passed out raises 4 times in the past 2 years, and all but one was done "retroactively."

This place is a mess.  A good place to start over again is with establishing better practices for determining/implementing raises.

Just my $0.02