Issues + Actions

Below you’ll find our current actions (with links to participate). You can also scroll down to the end to see our annual GMU-AAUP Win Sheets. These sheets describe the actions, big and small, that have helped Mason’s faculty and students over the past few years.

Current Actions

Sign the petition – Mason’s faculty, not political appointees, must set Mason’s curriculum

It’s a red alert moment. Political appointees on the BOV are poised to impose their will on Mason’s curriculum and perhaps even the tenure review process as well. These board members seem especially focused on eliminating the new ‘Just Societies’ tag from the Mason Core. Apparently they have a problem with students discussing ideas related to equity, inclusion, and diversity. GMU-AAUP believes only faculty and qualified administrators should play a role in assessing the scholarly contributions of faculty. We also believe that faculty, not political appointees, must set Mason’s curriculum. Sign our petition to the BOV to defend shared governance and the academic freedom of faculty! Click here for more background on the issue.

Statement on Israel, Palestine, and Academic Freedom

In this statement, we defend the fundamental academic freedom rights of faculty and students in times of crisis, with a focus on the rights of students and faculty to express their views on state and militia violence in Israel and Gaza. We also reiterate AAUP’s Statement on Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom, which warns university leaders and state legislators against equating legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and its policies with antisemitism.

Demanding budget transparency

Mason faculty were shocked to learn that, despite growing enrollment, GMU faced a $35.1m deficit in the “education and general” budget in FY24. We have been demanding answers, transparency, and faculty participation in budget decisions ever since. We especially want to get access to detailed budget data and conduct our own analysis of how best to close the FY24 budget gap. To join our Budget Investigation Committee, email us at aaupmason@gmail.com.

Making connections, building faculty power

American higher education is under a sustained political attack, and we know that Virginia could be next. We need to get organized and build power NOW to protect the values of public university education. If you support faculty control of the curriculum and the principles of academic freedom and free inquiry, please complete our “making connections and building power” survey. This survey asks our members and friends to share their connections to organization and to strengthen their ties to their colleagues at Mason #Solidarity

Tenure for contract (term) faculty

In response to a GMU-AAUP motion, the Faculty Senate established a Task Force to explore opening pathways to tenure for teaching-intensive faculty. The Task Force’s recommendations fall far short of demanding tenure for term faculty; in fact, they offer only vague promises to explore “continuous contracts,” a term that is never defined in the report. Please read our full statement on the Task Force report, and stay tuned for more actions in support of universal tenure.

Reduce faculty workloads in feedback-intensive courses

Exhausted and burnt out from working through every weekend and holiday? Do you always feel behind with grading, advising, and research? Are you tired of feeling stressed and stretched at work and home? You are not alone. Chronic overwork and burnout are produced by decisions that put the bottom line over the needs of faculty and students. But we can pull together and restore reasonable workloads. Please sign our petition calling on the President and Provost to reduce course caps in all writing- and feedback-intensive courses to no more than 15 students per section.

Supporting Mason’s contract workers

As part of the GMU Coalition for Worker Rights, we have supported the unionization efforts of contract workers at Mason. This effort has focused on our custodial staff who have been subjected to repeated violations of their labor rights–for example, intimidation, overwork, wage theft, and slow-walking paychecks. We stand in solidarity with all workers on campus, and with our friends in the NoVa labor movement, including the NoVa Labor Federation and SEIU Local 82BJ.