Walkout threatens semester at UH

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

As the strike by University of Hawai'i professors threatens to drag into a second full week, the possibility increases that the slow pace of negotiations could threaten the completion of the semester and the future accreditation of the university.

On the picket lines, in the dorm rooms and especially at the administration's Bachman Hall on the Manoa campus, people are counting the days of the strike and checking the university calendar. The end of the spring semester is zooming closer, with the start of summer school close on its heels.

Administrators say they are working on ways to finish the semester on time, including scheduling classes on Saturdays and Sundays. But if that is to happen without losing days of instruction, state negotiators and the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly need to settle in the next few days so people can return to class by midweek.

And if the Manoa campus cannot complete 15 weeks of instruction, it will have to explain why to the accrediting agency that issued a blistering report against the campus in 1999.

The strike started April 5 — the 12th week of school if spring break is not counted. The last day of classes before finals is May 2, the 16th week of school. More than one week of school is already lost.

Settling the strike is becoming increasingly urgent not only for the university calendar, but also for the faculty union, which could see an erosion among the faithful next week if no progress is made in contract talks over the weekend.

"People want to see a reward for all of their hard work," said UHPA President Alex Malahoff.

Strike participation has been strong, holding at about 85 percent on the flagship Manoa campus and between about 80 and 95 percent on the other campuses, but university professors are notoriously independent. A handful more cross the picket line each day, and yesterday marked the first missed paycheck for faculty members.

The threat of crossing a picket line isn't as strong at the university as it is for the public schools, where just 1 percent of 13,000 teachers have crossed the line. "Faculty are independent thinkers," Malahoff said. "We would expect some defections. If it becomes uncomfortable here they'll just go to another university."

That's why UHPA has made a strong push to keep students off campus as well. To make a strong impact, the campuses would have to appear as empty as possible to push the state into talking. Fliers circulating around campus urge students to go home if they want a quick end to the strike. And some overzealous professors have shouted down students attempting to cross the picket line to get onto campus.

The slow pace of negotiations and the fact that it took a full week for the state to agree to meet with the union could be strategic for the state, said Richard Heurd, professor of labor studies at Cornell University.

"It could be part of the governor's strategy — to test the faculty," he said. "Certainly if the administration seems to be holding things up, they think they have something to gain from that. Either the union can't hold its membership together or may back off of its expectation."

However, UHPA members have consistently expressed disdain not for their own salaries, but for the decline of the university and the inability to hire new faculty members at competitive salaries.

Julius Getman, professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said University of Hawai'i professors could continue to hold strong at the picket lines. As a former president of the American Association of University Professors, Getman said he knew UH to be a more militant campus than most.

"Once you get into a strike situation, very often this sense of solidarity among teachers surprises even them. There's a sense of community, a sense of being involved. The first part of a strike is very exciting. It brings out this solidarity, this sense of surprise. It changes your self image. It has all of these elements of surprise and excitement that are rare in the life of faculty members."

So far, six days of instruction have been lost.

If the strike lasts through Friday, it will take nearly every weekend day plus the week in between the spring and summer semesters to make up for lost time. That would give students no days off between the end of classes and final exams for studying.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges sets the standard for a college semester at 15 weeks. While it's not a hard and fast rule, if UH deviates far from those norms, it must explain why.

An accrediting team from the association last visited the campus in 1999 and renewed the school's accreditation, but blasted its communications, planning, administration and governance. Association officials plan a return to Manoa next spring and have been in touch with administrators regarding the faculty strike.

Students in the vocational and technical programs at the community colleges, who often have several hours of class time daily, have already felt the adverse affects of the strike. Programs that train students for cosmetology, airplane maintenance, auto mechanics and other trades require hundreds of hours over the course of a year before students can take licensing exams in those areas.

Paul Allen, associate professor of automotive technology at Ho-nolulu Community College, said the 75 students in his program may not be able to accumulate enough hours by the end of the semester for certification. "Students have to be there for a certain number of hours," he said. "We lost that a long time ago. It's very sad."

Diane Caulfield, a counselor at HCC, said students in the cosmetology program spend eight hours a day in class and must accumulate 1,800 hours of class time by May when the state examination is scheduled. "Every day we're on strike they're losing those hours," Caulfield said. "It's really critical. What happens to those students? There's a lot of question about whether students are going to be able to make up the credit. That's really uncertain right now."

Students who miss the May exam will have to wait for the next one in October, she said.

Before the strike, Kimberly Bagg spent four hours, five nights a week studying to be a skin-care specialist in the esthetician program at Honolulu Community College. Students need to accumulate 600 hours in a year to be able to take a state licensing exam in May.

With each day of the strike, Bagg loses valuable hours she needs to complete the semester, which, as an out-of-state student, cost her $2,400 in tuition. "At this point, I really don't know what to expect or think," Bagg said. "I'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best."