The Bakke Case and the University of Pennsylvania (Meyerson) SPEAKING OUT " NEWS " GRANT DEADLINES LEAVES " United Way " THINGS TO DO SUPPLEMENT: Bakke Brief Published Weekly by the University of Pennsylvania Volume 24, Number 8 October 25, 1977 FREEZE ON HIRING The State appropriation request for the University includes million for On October 21, President Martin Meyerson put into effect the approximately $7 the Medical, Dental and Veterinary schools and million for student aid and first in a series of contingency actions to deal with the $10 general instruction, which is divided the rest of the appropriation and tax impasse in Harrisburg: a suspension of all among University's programs. The Senate has for hiring and internal transfer of staff. On the same day a group of already passed non-preferred appropriations Penn State. and Lincoln. The faculty Senate leaders and deans began a series of meetings with Temple, Pittsburgh Legislature meantime must still find a of the the Provost and the President on steps for dealing with the way funding appropriations. financial future. University's BAKKE BRIEF: IN ALMANAC HARRISBURG: CALL FOR REVERSAL In this issue Almanac publishes the full text of the Bakke Brief The Pennsylvania State Senate is expected to decide before (see supplement). There is also a statement by President Meyerson Friday whether to vote again on the $17 million appropriation bill explaining how the brief came into being and why he felt it was for the University. The Legislature is scheduled to recess Thursday important for the University to take this stand (page 2). evening until November 14. Last Tuesday, the Senate voted against the bill, which fell two NURSING: NEW DEANS votes short of the two-thirds majority of 34 needed for passing To lead several new programs as well as strengthen existing non-preferred appropriations. As the press has reported, the ones. Dean Claire M. Fagin has appointed three new deans to the University's labor dispute with the Teamsters Local 115 was faculty of the School of Nursing. instrumental in the outcome of the vote. The State House of Dr. Florence S. Downs has been appointed associate dean to Representatives narrowly approved the University's appropriation direct the new doctoral program as well as other graduate in late September. Continued on page 4 On Labor Relations and the State Appropriation The University of Pennsylvania has been urged by its Trustees, by the in force. We recently negotiated successfully with the AFSCME for legislature and the state executive, by the Federal government, and by our increased productivity, hence economy, in our dining services. We selected students and their parents to be frugal and reduce costs. We are asked to external maintenance contractors only when they assured us they save without reducing quality in education or in research. In response to this themselves have union contracts. steady pressure to cut expense, we are closing a diploma program and a In addition, we have taken steps to ease the difficulties for our school, and we have divested ourselves of one of two wholly owned housekeeping employees whose jobs were displaced. Besides severance pay, hospitals. Tuition has consistently risen, and our students, half of whom continuation of various benefits. and other assistance, we have offered already receive financial aid, have become more and more pressed to pay for placement help to all, and we have guaranteed comparable employment in their education. the University or elsewhere to those with any significant seniority. These But in universities, the only possible savings of substantial sums are offers are not being taken: the Teamsters are pressuring our former through personnel savings. Thus in 1975-76 we maintained a general salary employees from accepting our help or these jobs. freeze for six months; in recent years, the real wages of our faculty and State Senators who wish to withhold from the University the administrative staff have actually declined. Before the start of this past Commonwealth funds that we have received for generations have summer, we had laid off over 200 faculty and administrative staff. In short interjected the legislative process-designed to protect the interests of we have pared our budget in every way available to us, all the while Pennsylvania's citizens -into labor relations. absorbing vast increases in the costs of energy and fuel, books, insurance, If a claim is made that the University has not bargained fairly or financial aid and the like. sufficiently, the matter is properly a judicial one for the National Labor Despite these measures, we closed the last fiscal year in deficit. Even with Relations Board and perhaps ultimately for the courts. Such a charge has the full Commonwealth appropriation available to us, we still face the been made. The University has also filed against the Teamsters charges that prospect of.a $4-5 million deficit with which to cope in the year ahead. they have engaged in an illegal secondary boycott and have coerced present It is in this setting that we had been examining for several years the costs and former University employees. of our internal housekeeping operations. In the budgeting process these rhe recent Senate vote to block the University's appropriation is, quite costs were projected for the present academic year at over $4.5 million -far simply, counterproductive. It contradicts the demand for efficiency that higher by any unit of measure than housekeeping costs for any comparable Senators have joined others in voicing. Moreover, no jobs can be saved by institution in the region. Our estimates, later confirmed by our auditors, forcing the University to cut programs and services. Hundreds of staff, showed a savings of more than $750,000 a year from the use of professional many of whom are low-paid workers, will lose jobs if the University is maintenance contractors who are expert in management of such operations, crippled by this action. As the largest non-governmental employer in as we are not. We asked the Teamsters- -as we asked the independent Philadelphia. the University nowcontributes enormously to the economy of Building Service and Maintenance Workers before them if they would the city and the region. If a business of anywhere near comparable size and help us find savings that might develop an alternative to outside significance to the city's well-being were threatened, every area political contractors. We received no assistance from either, and in the case of the leader would rightly be working to preserve the jobs and other economic Teamsters we were presented not with possible economies, but with a benefits produced by that business. I am saddened that some do not seem to proposed contract that would have cost about $850,000 more than our realize these practical consequences to the loss of our State appropriation. present budget, for a total one-year difference between Teamster demands Above all, if the Senate action is not reversed, a unique Commonwealth and the service contracts of more than $1.6 million. When negotiations concentration of resources for education and health service will be reached an impasse, we accepted maintenance contractors' bids. decimated. Not only will students and staff suffer from its loss of quality, Our decision to discontinue internal housekeeping operations was but the Commonwealth will have undermined irreparably that advanced therefore a financial one and not an anti-union one. Over many years, we institution which makes an unsurpassed contribution, through its learning have developed an excellent record of working closely with unions on our and its scientific and technical research, to the economy, the culture, the -- Meyerson campus: II bargaining agreements with four different unions are currently health and the very well-being of Pennsylvania. Martin The Bakke Case and the University of Pennsylvania hr Martin Meyerson October 20. 1977 Throughout my academic life, 1 have opposed the notion that a constraints of a June 7 deadline for filing and the difficulties of university ought regularly to take stands on the issues current in writingjointly for institutions which, as the brief puts it, "differ in public discourse. Uniquely in contemporary society, a university geography and history, in size, in resources, and in structure."Thus ought to be an arena for the open presentation of views on varied they delegated to representatives of four institutions-Columbia, sides of public questions. The principle of neutrality should be Harvard, Stanford, and Pennsylvania-the task of preparing a modified, it seems to me, only when the issue under discussion calls draft. into question the fundamental values on which a university is During the drafting process, both through my interest in the founded. High among those values is institutional autonomy: the matter and through the involvement of Dean Pollak and Mr. acknowledgement of each university's right to decide for itself, as Burbank, I was kept apprised of the arguments to be presented. Felix Frankfurter said, who may teach, what may be taught, how it Any reservations that occurred to me were counterbalanced by the shall be taught, and who shall be taught. Such independence was central thrust of the brief: autonomy in educational functions must placed in the balance by the decision of the Supreme Court of be maintained for the independent university. Both the provostand California in the case of Allan Bakke. I read and approved the second draft of the briefin this light. The The question has been raised of how the decision was taken to brief in no way appeared to us toenunciate any concepts or policies join in an amicus curiae brief in the case. From time to time, new to Pennsylvania, rather quite the contrary. To search for occasions occur when I must decide how best to reflect the sense of consensus on the mode of expression of established principles our institution.