In May 2023, Fourth Estate reporter Viviana Smith wrote this story about our rally to stop union busting at Mason. GMU’s subcontractors have repeatedly engaged in illegal union busting actions (intimidating and firing workers trying to unionize). Mason knows this and does nothing. We delivered a petition to President Washington calling on the administration to stop all union busting on campus and to adopt a responsible contractor policy.
In their recent op-ed in the Fourth Estate (Mason’s student news source), GMU-AAUP members ( + friends) Lisa Lister, Courtney Adams Wooten, Jennifer Messier, Anna Habib, Virginia Hoy, and Carlos Chism called on the Mason administration to reduce the punishing workloads of faculty who teach multiple writing-intensive courses. Our students deserve to have professors with the time and energy to provide extensive and timely feedback.
GMU-AAUP leaders Bethany Letiecq and Tim Gibson recently co-authored an article on faculty organizing and building faculty power in the Winter 2022 issue of Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors. The article, co-written with other faculty organizers from across the nation, provides guidance for new advocacy chapters as they attempt to build faculty power and improve working and learning conditions for faculty and students.
GMU’s Board of Visitors has raised graduate student tuition twice during the pandemic, increasing the financial burdens of grad students during a time of economic uncertainty. In September 2021, Carol Petty and the Graduate Committee of GMU-AAUP called on the Board of Visitors to reverse these tuition hikes in GMU’s student news source, The Fourth Estate.
In July 2021, GMU-AAUP leaders Tim Gibson, Bethany Letiecq, and Jim Finkelstein published a a co-authored essay in Health Communication. The essay describes GMU-AAUP’s investigation into problems with GMU’s pre-arrival COVID-19 testing in August 2020, our effort to publicize these flaws, and our members’ collective push for improvements. (Click here to read the authors’ version if the link above hits a paywall)
Click here to read our The Washington Post op-ed detailing allegations of worker mistreatment and intimidation and calling for a Responsible Contractor Policy at GMU. Published February 19, 2021. (Image credit: Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
In January 2021, GMU-AAUP joined with students, contract workers, and labor leaders from 32BJ SEIU in a spirited car caravan. We drove past Merten Hall to call on President Washington to adopt a Responsible Contractor Policy that protects front-line workers and pays them a living wage. Click here to read Angela Woolsey’s article in the Tysons Reporter. (Image credit: 32BJ SEIU)
Click here to read Kate Masters’ article in The Virginia Mercury. It details how AAUP leaders in GMU and VCU discovered serious problems with the at-home testing kit sent by Kallaco to GMU and VCU students in July 2020.
Published in Academe Blog, the online companion to Academe Magazine, this article by GMU-AAUP President Bethany Letiecq and AAUP member Dr. Judith Wilde discusses the high financial and organizational costs of secret presidential searches. (Image credit: GMU-AAUP)
In this opinion piece, GMU-AAUP leaders Tim Gibson and Bethany Letiecq discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of Mason’s recent search for a new President. Click here to read it in GMU’s excellent student newspaper, The Fourth Estate.
Fairfax Times reporter Angela Woolsey covered GMU-AAUP’s rally for an open and public presidential search in late 2019. Click here to read her article. (Image credit: Angela Woolsey for the Fairfax Times)
After years of struggle, the administration finally released over 30 secret agreements between Koch network donors and GMU. Shockingly, these agreements gave donors a role in shaping curriculum and hiring faculty. In this article, members of Transparent GMU and GMU-AAUP’s Bethany Letiecq discuss their joint struggle for transparency in donor-university relationships.