On May 7, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education voted down contracts for faculty and graduate assistants at the University of Rhode Island. Agreements on the contracts were reached nearly two months ago by negotiators for the board and the University of Rhode Island faculty union and graduate student union, both chapters of the AAUP. The contracts were the result of over eight months of difficult negotiations, in which both sides made concessions. The board's about face came after Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee publicly criticized the financial aspects of the contract, 3 percent raises each year for three years, as being too generous.
