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AAUP Responds to Katrina’s Impact on New Orleans Universities
By Jordan E. Kurland
The damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina late last August on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region has been called the worst natural disaster ever experienced in the United States. The damage to institutions of higher education and their faculties, in New Orleans alone, has been immense. No major institution has closed down permanently, but all had to cease operating in their New Orleans locations during the fall 2005 semester. Some were able to resume in January, either in their previous locations or in makeshift facilities, while others will not be able to function on campus again until fall 2006 or even later.
At both private and public institutions, large numbers of faculty members, many of them with tenure, have suffered termination of appointment. Others have been placed on furlough, some for a fixed period but some apparently indefinitely. Yet others, spared thus far, are potential victims of massive layoffs to be announced this spring with the adoption of next year’s budget. The total number, still growing, of college and university faculty members involuntarily released exceeds anything ever before experienced in higher education. The AAUP is providing what advice and assistance it can, calling when feasible for corrective action, in this ongoing volatile situation. A status report follows.
Tulane University
Tulane University, with its highly regarded research activities and its comprehensive graduate and undergraduate programs, was the largest academic institution in New Orleans and, indeed, the city’s biggest employer. Reaction at the university to Katrina’s devastation came in dramatic fashion in early December, with the issuance of a detailed “plan for renewal” that had been formulated under the leadership of president Scott Cowen. The plan reduces Tulane’s annual budget by some $60 million, largely through massive layoffs. Fourteen doctoral programs are being eliminated, as are five undergraduate majors. The school of engineering is ending as a separate entity, with all but two of the engineering specialties discontinued. Hardest hit is the school of medicine, particularly its clinical operations, with faculty and staff redundant for the two hospitals continuing to function in the heavily depopulated city. A substantial majority of the layoffs has occurred in the medical school, which is losing an estimated 35 percent of its faculty. The loss elsewhere in the university has been estimated at 10 percent. The total number of full-time faculty members being released was estimated in the plan at 230. Cowen informed the AAUP in early February that the correct number is 166, but a new medical school dean in March set the number at 211 for that school alone.
Upon the announcement of the plan, Cowen telephoned AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen to inform him of what was being done, expressing an intent to proceed in accordance with applicable AAUP-supported guidelines. The Association’s staff, after examining the plan and receiving information from the AAUP chapter officers and others on the Tulane faculty, wrote to convey sympathy over what Tulane and other Gulf Coast region universities and colleges have had to endure and to invite Cowen’s comments on faculty concerns regarding the adequacy of faculty involvement in the formulation of the plan and of available procedures for individual professors to contest their having been selected for layoff. Responding to the staff’s letter, the president described the consultation with faculty representatives and others in formulating the plan, and he stated that to his knowledge no one being released has been denied access to the review procedures provided in Tulane’s faculty handbook. The staff in February notified the president that it was compiling further information from faculty members and monitoring particular cases where notice of termination is being challenged. A staff letter a month later conveyed continuing AAUP concern regarding shared governance and due process. The staff remains in close touch with the Tulane AAUP chapter, which has also been pursuing the issues of concern, and a March visit to the campus by Bowen featured a series of discussions with faculty individuals and groups.
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center is the New Orleans home for the medical school and other health-related programs of Louisiana’s flagship public university. Like Tulane’s medical school, the health sciences center was affected by the massive exodus of the city’s residents after Katrina, which left far fewer in need of medical care. Late in November, the LSU board of supervisors declared the existence of “force majeure” at the health sciences center, thereby enabling the administration to place on furlough those faculty members deemed to be redundant. Up to 277 professors, or approximately 19 percent of the faculty, have been adversely affected, according to published reports. Many of them were furloughed, without pay, as of December 1, with a furlough defined as a temporary leave that “may lead to eventual termination.”
The Association’s staff, having heard from furloughed health sciences center professors and having examined applicable institutional policies, wrote in January to the center’s acting chancellor, Larry Hollier, and to LSU system president William Jenkins. The staff’s letter conveyed an array of concerns: the administration selected professors for furlough without apparent consultation with any faculty body; nontenured faculty were in some cases retained while similarly qualified tenured faculty were furloughed; and an opportunity to contest the action was available only by carrying the burden of appealing (within five days) to successive administrative officers, with the final decision resting with the system president (who had initially approved the action being appealed).
A February reply from Jenkins referred to the difficulty of the situation, thanked the Association for providing its views, and commented on a recent exchange of views with local AAUP leaders that he found productive. The staff wrote again in early March, noting that furloughed faculty members who submitted appeals had yet to hear back from the administrators to whom they were addressed and inviting the president to confirm a reported statement by him, at his meeting with the Louisiana AAUP group, that a professor’s having tenure was not a significant factor in determining whether the person was to be retained or released.
Southern University at New Orleans
Southern University at New Orleans, a branch of Louisiana’s large historically black land-grant institution, suffered devastation of all of its campus buildings. It reopened in January with nineteen of its thirty-seven programs eliminated. English, physics, chemistry, and mathematics are among those that have been dropped. The institution was to function during the current semester in clusters of trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), some serving as classrooms and others as administrative offices and student housing. Prolonged delays in arranging for electricity and plumbing, however, have left many trailers, as of this writing, still not ready for use. Late in the fall, like the LSU board of supervisors, the SUNO governing board adopted “force majeure” policies enabling the placement of redundant faculty members on unpaid furlough. As of February 1, 45 of the 163 full-time members of the faculty, over 25 percent, had been placed on furlough.
As at LSU’s health sciences center, furlough decisions at SUNO appear to have been made exclusively by the administrative officers, with little heed paid to tenure rights. Also as at the health sciences center, stated provisions for contesting specific furloughs allow only for appealing to administrators. Appeals from furloughed professors initially went unanswered, but expressions of concern from AAUP staff have apparently resulted in an appeal process being scheduled.
University of New Orleans
The University of New Orleans, a public institution that began as a branch of LSU, was spared heavy damage to its classroom buildings, and full-time members of the faculty (but not all staff members) continued to be paid during the fall semester when the university was closed. Its reopening in January was marred by a Katrina-caused lack of habitable housing in the neighborhood for faculty, staff, and students. As with SUNO, trailers promised by FEMA were not ready on schedule; 489 units were supposed to have been delivered and operating by the end of January but are now not expected to be available until at least late April.
The student body of UNO has consisted primarily of New Orleans residents. With the city’s depopulation, projections are ominous for student enrollment in the years immediately ahead. In anticipation of a major shortfall in the institution’s 2006–07 budget, chancellor Timothy Ryan told faculty members late in February to expect layoffs of faculty and staff, including tenured professors, effective at the end of the current academic year. On March 13, the chancellor announced that a widely distributed proposed restructuring plan was not the final version. A final plan will require the approval of the board of supervisors.
Xavier University of Louisiana
Xavier University of Louisiana, the only Catholic institution among the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, suffered severe flood damage to its campus but managed to reopen in January with a reduced faculty and staff. A declaration of financial exigency was followed at the end of October with notice of layoff for that semester and the next. A month of severance salary was provided, and health insurance was continued until December 31. From a faculty that numbered 246, 73 were released.
Writing to president Norman Francis late in January, the AAUP staff conveyed concerns that included a lack of procedures for contesting the layoffs and releasing tenured professors while assigning work they are qualified to do to nontenured professors who are being retained. President Francis, writing in response, called “totally inaccurate” a report that having tenure was a negative factor in the decisions on retention. He stated that the percentage of tenured faculty currently is higher than it was before Katrina.
Dillard University
The campus of Dillard University, another historically black institution, was damaged so severely by the hurricane that it will not be functioning again before next fall. Meanwhile, classes have been held and students housed in the city’s Hilton Riverside Hotel. Approximately 60 percent of the institution’s employees were laid off initially, including 89 of its 132 full-time faculty members. Some of the faculty members are reported as having been offered reinstatement, presumably when the campus reopens in the fall. How many will be brought back and what courses will be offered remain to be determined.
Loyola University
Loyola University, the Jesuit-managed institution that is the city’s largest private university after Tulane, survived Katrina with no major damage to any of its buildings. A few staff members were released and two nontenured members of the faculty were issued notice of nonreappointment, but otherwise all have been retained with salaries paid in full during the fall semester when the university was closed. The students by and large enrolled at other universities for that semester, with 92 percent of them returning to Loyola for its January reopening (a still higher rate of return than Tulane’s 89 percent).
Loyola’s AAUP chapter officers report that the university benefits from a relatively large endowment and that the faculty has protection through current official policies on academic freedom and tenure that closely track AAUP-supported standards. The chapter officers caution, however, that the present highly positive situation may not last, that the years immediately ahead may bring a sharp drop in student enrollment because of the loss of population in New Orleans (traditionally the source of over 20 percent of the student body) and the expressed interest of some board members (perhaps influenced by developments at Tulane) in discontinuing academic programs that do poorly in producing revenue. The national AAUP staff concurs in the chapter’s belief that the situation calls for close monitoring by the faculty in the weeks immediately ahead.
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