Faculty have been getting a lot of questions from students on how to contact the Board of Education and let them know their thoughts. Here for you are the contact emails for the 7-member MHCC Board of Education and for Dr. Ski. Make your voices heard! Ask that they come back to the table to settle this contract!
Contact the Board of Education:
Ralph Yates: ryates@tpcllp.com
Beverly Russell: Beverly.Russell@mhcc.edu
Board Chair – Brian Freeman: brianjfreeman@msn.com
Dave Shields: dave.shields@comcast.net
Duke Shepard: dukeshepard@hotmail.com
Senator Rod Monroe: pogomonroe@aol.com
Bob Morris: BnBMorris@comcast.net
Contact MHCC President John Sygielski:
I wrote an e-mail each member of the board, this is the response I received:
Susan,
I understand that you are concerned about completing your program of study. If your instructors do their jobs you should have no problems. If you want to be better informed about the contract negotiations please visit the MHCC web site and go to the bottom left corner of the home page and click on negotiations updates. I think you will then understand that the board has been very willing to listen to the teachers. They have rejected every proposal we have made.
Brian J. Freeman
Chair, MHCC Board
Thank you for this information! I have e-mailed them and I am sure many other students. Fellow students, if you are reading this I urge you to do the same! Mount Hood would not be the same without the amazing faculty members that we all know and love.
We wrote a letter of support for faculty signed by the majority of students in the Natural Resources Technology program, and we didn’t receive any response at all, as far as I know. This whole situation makes me sick.
I sent the hard copy letter below today. I wanted to share that I am another student standing by my instructors:
Dear Dr. Sygielski, Mr. Freeman and Board Members:
I am writing today to you as a student of Mount Hood Community College enrolled in the Hospitality and Tourism Management program. I came to Portland from Seattle after carefully reviewing all my options for community colleges to begin what I hope to be a successful preparation to return to the workforce – better armed with knowledge and experience to work my way up the chain. I chose Mount Hood for its obvious advantages in the instructional staff as well as its commitment to the community at large.
My first term here I find myself an innocent bystander of what appears to be a violent civil war within the confines of this institution between the Administration and its Full Time faculty. I am well aware of the issues involved with these types of negotiations coming from a union family and having participated in a union myself in the past. I will be honest with you, by and large, I think unions have passed their point of usefulness and are more concerned with their own well-being than that of the people they serve… except for this group.
The faculty at this institution is beyond compare as far as experience and expertise in their fields. It is clear that they are dedicated to turning out the best and the brightest people to the industries they represent. I am honored to be associated with this institution and am confident that I will succeed and prosper as a result of the education here.
However, there is a bit of sour grapes involved as well. I am an intelligent, educated person and have better than average critical thinking skills. I’ve reviewed every scrap of data on the Internet and in the media provided both by the College and by the Faculty and something isn’t adding up at all. Somewhere someone is fudging numbers or using creative accounting techniques or something to make their case seem stronger. On this one, it’s plainly obvious that the Administration is to blame and is negotiating in some of the worst faith I have seen in my 35 years on the planet.
You have to see the writing on the wall, don’t you? Your case is so weak that that Faculty is right to stand up to you and say, “enough is enough.” The Administration of this institution has so much overhead attached to it that the education which I am paying for is being harmed. I think it’s great that each classroom has built-in media services, but it only works so well with the mediocre portal to the Internet available. It’s wonderful that the furniture is in good repair and the rooms and campus are decent, however I haven’t seen a chalkboard in a classroom since I was in middle school (that’s the late 80s for reference) and a building that hasn’t been retrofitted for an obviously impending earthquake, heaven forbid, seems to be almost criminal.
Yet here we are. The faculty is willing to negotiate to save my educational experience, are willing to give of themselves to help out. The Administration is too concerned with lining their own pockets to give a damn about what their own purpose is. You are here to help me succeed – nothing more, nothing less. You don’t have any right to make me live under a specter of a work stoppage that could conceivably screw up my financial aid or add any other host of problems when you yourselves aren’t willing to give for the benefit of the college. I have yet to see any indication that the President wishes to give back half (or all) of his exorbitant salary for a few years while the economy stabilizes. I have yet to see any indication that whatever stipend the Board Members receive for their elected duties be turned back over to the college for instructional purpose. In short, the Administration is doing nothing to show the students (who are the only important piece of this institution in the end) that we are even really on the radar, except for the weak lip service you pay to us via your cryptic and inflammatory statements you post on the college website (another show of bad faith since the Faculty isn’t allowed to post their own rebuttals, etc. on the same site).
The students are with the Faculty – I know it, the Faculty knows it, you know it. You can keep squeezing the Faculty to fund your unimportant pet projects and salaries all you want and you’ll find yourself devoid of the rich experience available to the students here. Following that, you’ll find your school has no students as we all migrate to other locations that seem to be able to keep it together.
I urge the Administration to stop stonewalling and start listening. Negotiating doesn’t mean throwing firebombs and then retreating behind the walls of “impasse”. Come to the table honestly as the Faculty have and meet them halfway. There are cuts to be made to be sure, I will probably have to pay a bit more per credit and parking will probably become a new fee each quarter but these are all things we understand and will live with – but you have to help too and so far, you’ve done nothing but make everyone angry and wonder idly when you are all up for election next.
Thank you for your time.
Kevin,
Thanks very much for your insightful and passionate commentary! Only one thing I would quibble with you about: that unions are past their usefulness. As a historian, I have to say that unions are no longer useful only if capitalism itself is no longer useful. To say that some unions are corrupt or inefficient (and this has been much exaggerated by the anti-union forces) therefore unions are obsolete, is like saying because some businesses are corrupt and inefficient, therefore capitalism is obsolete. Unions are democracies, and if the union leadership is not serving the interests of their members, the members can get involved and vote to replace them. Try doing that with Exxon Mobile, Monsanto, Halliburton, or any of the other massive multi-national corporations that impact our daily lives and outspend unions 50 to 1 to insert themselves into our politics. You can’t have a stable and prosperous working and middle class without the workplace protections and political voice of working people (whether they are union or not) that unions have provided. In fact, the American working and middle class has declined in earning power and workplace protections as unions have declined over the last thirty years. Sorry for the history rant –its hard for me to control myself!
Thanks again very much for your support!
Elizabeth Milliken
MHCC History professor (currently on sabbatical)
Elizabeth:
Fair enough, and I accept that as your opinion and that you may be correct. I only know what I know and what I’ve experienced in life so we will probably always agree to disagree on this one. However, I’m not so close-minded that I don’t listen to every argument.
I highly suggest if you haven’t read it already, Joe Klein’s column in the March 7 issue of TIME. Its more along the lines of the way I think – http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2053510,00.html …
That is a conversation though that we should take private as I don’t want to take anything away from this particular issue the Faculty is involved with.
I like my teachers. I don’t want replacement teachers. Give them a fair contract.
Oh and I was thinking the other day….
Would members of the school board & the president be willing to take a pay-cut like the teachers are being asked to? As a certain person I know would say….rhymes with “not a chance in hell!”