From the FWC Executive Committee

Hello everyone,

Welcome back, or welcome to Fairfield if you're just starting! If you haven't yet joined the Faculty Welfare Committee, which is our campus branch of the American Association of University Professors, you will be hearing from us.

Why join?

• When you're a member of the FWC, you are also a member of the national AAUP, and your dues help support activism to save higher education and academic freedom, among many other issues. AAUP has been taking on the Trump administration on multiple fronts. You get many resources including a quarterly magazine and political analysis of the current moment in higher education.
• You'll also become a member of the American Federation of Teachers, which gives you access to benefits from mortgage assistance to professional insurance and many others--click on the "benefits" link for an extensive list on our website.
• Most importantly, every member means more power to fight for what matters. The majority of faculty on campus are FWC members--70 percent of returning tenured and tenure track faculty, and 30 percent of NTT faculty! Ask a mentor or fellow faculty member why they are a member.
• To join, just full out this web form, and your dues, listed on the form, come out of payroll deduction.

On April 17, 2026, we held elections at a chapter meeting after the GF. Elected officers for the next two years are:

Sonya Huber, President (shuber@fairfield.edu)
Gwen Alphonso, Vice-President (galphonso@fairfield.edu)
Bill Abbott, Secretary (WMAbbott@fairfield.edu)
Paul Baginski, Treasurer (pbaginski@fairfield.edu)
​At-large members:
Mehmet Cansoy (mcansoy@fairfield.edu)
Elena Rosario (erosario@fairfield.edu)

Tanika E. Simpson (teaves@fairfield.edu)
Vishnu Vinekar (vvinekar@fairfield.edu)

We were so happy to honor Jen Schindler-Ruwisch with the George Lang Award, Silvia Marsans-Sakly with the award for Colleague of the Year, and Steve Bayne with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

I attended the AAUP biennial meeting in Chicago this summer on June 10-13. A key topic was the Blueprint for Strengthening Higher Education. Among many other topics, I attended a deep dive workshop into campus financials. AAUP staff provided each attendee with an in-depth profile of their campus, and I learned that the average clerical support staff salary here at Fairfield in 2024 was $54,000. What?! Given that the area median income in Fairfield County is $104,000, this seems alarmingly low. If there are staff or faculty that want to take action on this issue, please email me at indigomission@gmail.com (use your off-campus email). If anyone is interested in seeing the financial statements, please email me.

We wanted to share that a longtime Connecticut AAUP activist, Flo Hatcher, passed away this summer. Flo was a professor at Southern Connecticut State University and Executive Director at the Connecticut State Conference of AAUP for twenty-five years, "strengthening connections among chapters across the state and ensuring that faculty voices remained organized and heard." She was a trusted resource who would help with any thorny issue we might have faced.

We are beginning the subcommittee on workplace safety; I'd like to hear from anyone who has concerns that relate to this topic. If you are interested in immediate resources, you can download the LiveSafe app on your phone and sign in with your Fairfield email address. Using this app, you can immediately access a safety escort, find an AED or EpiPen on campus, and request DPS assistance.

On the issue of surveillance, we've been notified by a faculty member that there is a license plate reader on campus directed inward from at the south entrance to campus off Barlow Road, so you can alert any privacy-conscious guests to use the main entrance. We will inquire with the safety committee about where those records go. Flockhopper is one app among many that reveals where a lot of these cameras are.

Finally, we're compiling a list of one FWC member per department who will be a "steward," which just means that you'll be available to reach out to members in your department as needed and be available to answer any questions about the FWC. Let me know if you'd like to volunteer!

All the best,

Sonya Huber for the FWC Executive Committee (indigomission@gmail.com)

Trainings, Meetings, & Events

Join us for something new! FWC lunch in the Staff and Faculty Dining area upstairs in the Tully at noon.

• Wednesday, Oct. 7
• Friday Nov. 13

Meetings:

• Oct. 21 after the General Faculty meeting
• Dec. 2 at 3:30 on zoom
• Nov. 3 at 7 pm: all-member AAUP National Zoom meeting . Register​

Take Action

The Trump administration is pushing alternate accreditors for higher ed that will lower academic standards, introduce ideological purity tests, and increase oversight from people who have no knowledge of higher ed, driven by the Heritage Foundation and Ron DeSantis. In a training on Sept. 14, AAUP shared that the current strategy is to have as many people as possible write comments about the proposal by Sept. 21 at midnight. There's a full guide here for your comment, along with templates. Regulators have to respond to each substantive comment, so the more personal you can make your objection, the better.

On Aug. 3, Linda McMahon of the Dept. of Ed. issued a call for a Compact 2.0, directed to University administrations and governing boards, asking them to make prominent statements on their websites, which has been called "a trap" in the New York Times that "still implies that core academic decisions should be overseen by the federal government." AAUP described this as asking "colleges and universities to align themselves with a far-right agenda at the expense of students’ education and the public’s well-being." For more information, see the Compact 2.0 Toolkit (includes resources for fighting back on campus)

​SUNY University Faculty Senate Storm tracker​

​AAUP Analysis of Dept of Edu Compact 2.0​

​Stand Up for Science Campaign​

Please save the date for May 1, 2028: This will be a national day of action for multiple unions and organizations, including AAUP. We are asking you to mention this in your planning and professional organizations, and where possible, plan to not hold work events that day.

Social Justice and AI

Many faculty have been expressing concern about different elements of the rapid embrace of AI in the classroom and beyond in spite of stories about unreliability, surveillance, and the effects on students and users. AAUP national will be hosting a series of webinars to support the Toolkit for Activism on AI, as a key unknown and concern is the way this technology affects the well-being of workers. When these are announced, we are hoping to host a watch party and conversation. We'll let you know!

Other resources

"Bringing the Fragments Together," a piece in AAUP's Academe magazine about AI on campus and employee issues.

​Rutgers AAUP-AFT AI Impacts and Syllabus Statement ​
​Example Syllabus Language on AI Use ​
​Rutgers English Department Statement on AI​
Critical AI @ Rutgers. Teaching Critical AI Literacy.
Critical AI @ Rutgers. Critical AI Literacies: A Guide for Students.

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We promote faculty welfare, broadly defined, through chapter programs and activities designed to advance academic freedom, advance the economic and professional status of the faculty, encourage faculty participation in governance, and inform the community about AAUP standards and policy statements to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.