Richard Levy, Brad Hubeny and Dan Mulcare Dec 14, 2020
Dec 14, 2020
Furloughs for faculty, librarians and support staff are incredibly harmful to students in so many ways. As such, they are bad policy per se.
However that, there is a particularly insidious angle to what has happened at Salem State University. Because he arbitrarily and unilaterally decreed all faculty and librarians members take a furlough outside the legal contract process, President Keenan is breaking the law. Instead of uniting the campus during this uniquely stressful year, President Keenan instead chose to violate Mass General Law 150E, undermining an already overworked faculty and librariansâ ability to adapt to pandemic teaching and leading to an unfair labor practice complaint with the Department of Labor.