Oswego Faculty Assembly met again on Feb. 26, to discuss the motion to change the rules used by the Calendar Committee when deciding the college academic calendar for each year.
Casey Raymond, lab coordinator and associate professor for the chemistry department, authored the motion out of concern that academic holidays significantly impacted chemistry lab requirements and jeopardized the accreditation of the chemistry program.
Raymond believes the proposal is a question of inclusivity, explaining to the Assembly that he felt it was important to bring the topic back to the floor of the Faculty Assembly and allow students and faculty members to speak about their beliefs on the topic of allowing observance of all religious holidays, not just those recognized by the college.
Under current rules, Jewish holidays, Labor Day and Good Friday are explicitly prescribed as days off. This motion instead prescribes no specific holidays, and instead is mindful of national holidays, but keeps religious observances on an individual level rather than campus-wide. State law protects the right for student and faculty to be excused from class to observe religious holidays, but not all Faculty Assembly members feel students would be comfortable approaching professors.Assembly members feel students would be comfortable approaching professors.
“Discrimination is real,” Eve Clark of the sociology department said while drawing on her experiences studying her field.
Even though Clark felt sympathetic for the goal of the proposal, she also said she felt conflicted that discriminatory or dismissive professors could abuse it. Several faculty members offered stories of their students facing discrimination, sometimes from faculty.
“It breaks my heart,” said Liz Schmitt, professor in the economics department, while recounting Muslim students sitting down with her because they felt unsafe
presidential election.
Both Clark and Schmitt agreed that if students had to come forward individually for observances, they may still be vulnerable to “bad actor” faculty that may not comply with campus policy. These bad actors could be hard to bring to task, Schmitt said, as the university must balance academic freedom for faculty with its ideals of inclusivity and equality. Academic freedom is the idea that professors have large discretion over how they conduct their classes to form the healthy environment for the exchange of ideas colleges are built upon.
Academics were a major concern for some at the meeting.
“Our students deserve to go to class,” said Sandra Bargainnier, department chair for the health promotion and wellness department.
Drawing on her experience at Syracuse University, Bargainnier explained Syracuse closed classes on Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays, but that meant students were hardly in class.
“Our students might not be paying $70,000 per year in tuition, but to many of our students, $7,000 might as well be $70,000,” Bargainnier said.
Oswego students deserve to get the education they paid for, Bargainnier argued.
A college-wide system where students and faculty can declare their observances in advance could be an option, Bargainnier said. This system would allow the college to protect students from dismissive professors while reassuring faculty that students are not abusing the system to avoid class the night before.
Regardless of the decision, Associate Provost Rameen Mohammadi did not believe such a system or policy should fall to the Calendar Committee. The purview of the committee is solely to create a calendar compliant with Faculty Association rules, not to create the enforcement process around such rules, Mohammadi explained. Any rules would have to ensure students make up the work instead of simply missing it.
“I don’t know how we can say ‘just don’t come to class,’” Mohammadi said.
Concerning the nature of the Calendar Committee, each academic calendar is approved four years in advance, as the committee approved the 2021-2022 calendar last semester. Without making the rules retroactive, any decision reached by the FA would not go in to affect until 2022-2023 at the earliest, possibly too late for the chemistry students affected by the issue and the chemistry program’s accreditation.
Some attendants feel the college’s handling of this matter is a reflection on its commitments to inclusivity. This is a chance for the college to “move further along the path towards inclusion,” said Cynthia Clabough, professor of art. “We say it a lot, but it doesn’t get down to our [college] culture.”
For others, broader inclusion comes at the cost of specific exclusion, as no longer observing holidays campus wide seems to be primarily at the expense of Jewish holidays. Jen Kagan, assistant professor for curriculum and instruction and advisor for Jewish Life, put to verse to voice her disagreement for the motion. Another Jewish professor, Peter Rosenbaum of the biology department, expressed concern that the motion was unfair. Rosenbaum argued that the traditional academic calendar is fundamentally a Christian one, and that self-identification has led to discriminatory practices toward the Jewish community throughout history, leading to his reservations about the changes.
Ultimately, this motion impacts students as well as faculty, which is not lost upon the assembly. Scott Steiger of the meteorology department asked that the assembly should hear from the students, finding that asking his classes their thoughts led to an insightful dialogue and that they really appreciated being asked for feedback.
Dalton Bisson, the Student Association president, agreed that students should get involved. Interested students can email him at sa.president@oswego.edu to learn more. Bisson said he was willing to “sit down with a list” of student concerns if students would prefer to remain anonymous.
The meeting concluded without the motion coming to vote and will return to the floor next meeting. That meeting will take place after spring break at 3 p.m. on March 19 in Lanigan 105.
Photo: Rachel Futterman | The Oswegonian
