With this e-mail I am pleased to provide you with a link to online copies of the current versions of the three new constitutions we will need to implement restructuring.
We are planning to create three interlocked entities under one AAUP umbrella. This change will better align our legal status with our evolving activities, our evolving membership, and our ambitious aims for future programs and services.
That said, the constitutions do not, we believe, include any surprises, since AAUP governance remains fundamentally the same. Nonetheless, and even though the constitutions will be published in the March--April issue of Academe , we want to be sure our members have ample time to read and review them before the June 2008 annual meeting. Hence this e-mail. At the annual meeting in June, members will vote on whether to adopt the constitution of the AAUP. The delegates to the Collective Bargaining Congress’s June meeting will vote separately on the new AAUP-CBC constitution. The decision to create the AAUP Foundation rests with your elected national Council, the body with financial oversight responsibility for the Association.
The principles behind restructuring were outlined at the June 2007 annual meeting and in a series of pieces published in Academe.
The constitutions themselves come to you after extensive review, revision, and approval by the Restructuring Task Force, our standing Committee on Organization of the Association, the executive committees of the AAUP’s Assembly of State Conferences and Collective Bargaining Congress, the AAUP's Executive Committee of Council and the Council as a whole. The draft constitutions were also extensively reviewed by staff and by outside counsel. We distributed them to all those attending the semi-annual CBC meeting in November.
It was clear from the outset that the Restructuring Task Force was not charged with suggesting major changes in how the AAUP is governed or funded. It did not alter how our elections are done. It did not propose changes in our dues structure. Any of these or other issues can be fairly opened for discussion later, but the task force did not address them. We wanted to deal with legal necessities first.
Of course, constitutions do not address every operational issue. Over the next few months, we will be working in consultation with the CBC and other constituencies to develop agreements dealing with funds transfers and other administrative protocols. We will keep you informed.
Meanwhile, all of us in the leadership welcome the opportunity to hear your views and answer your questions. If you mention the constitutions to your colleagues, it should help assure that everyone gives them some thought. Given the rather detailed review the constitutions have received, we do not at this point anticipate major changes in them, but if useful changes are suggested, we will let you know.
--Cary Nelson, AAUP President
December 13, 2007