An investigation by the American Association of University Professors has determined that the administration of Vermont Law School violated AAUP principles and standards by imposing a major restructuring plan on faculty last year.
Now the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance will decide whether to recommend to the association’s annual meeting that the school be sanctioned for “substantial non-compliance” with AAUP-supported standards of academic governance as set forth in AAUP’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, which was jointly formulated by the AAUP, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and the American Council on Education.
VLS could not be reached for comment on the report, which was released Thursday.
According to the AAUP investigative committee, the governance structure at the South Royalton school, which does not have a faculty senate, raised some concerns.
“After conducting lengthy interviews with more than 20 faculty members and administrators, the committee became aware that while a form of shared governance has existed at VLS since its founding, it has not always been robustly practiced or fully understood,” the report stated. “This is so even though most full-time faculty members — regardless of tenure status — serve on committees and are eligible to vote.
“The right to participate means little, however, when such participation contemplates, as it did in the case of the restructuring process, only the solicitation, compilation, and communication of data and not the analysis, assessment, and application of it to the crisis at hand by appropriate faculty bodies. Similarly, the right to vote means little if the voting faculty, as a body, does not actively participate in deciding essential matters — such as the future of the school, the retention of various faculty members and program offerings — on which its input should presumably be desired and sought.”
AAUP launched the investigation of VLS, the state’s only legal education institution, when the administration decided to restructure the faculty in an attempt to address major financial challenges last May and June.
