The following message comes from the Chapter President of United Faculty of Florida/UCF Chapter
Dawn Trouard Chapter President, UFF-UCF Dear Colleagues- If all goes as planned in the Florida House and Senate, your freedom as an academic expert in your field ends July 1, 2005. I'm writing to inform you of a current bill circulating in the Florida House and to offer a plan of action, which I hope you'll join me in implementing. The Academic Bill of Rights-Bill 837, brainchild of David Horowitz and sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, under the guise of protecting academic freedom, is headed at sonic speed into our classrooms. If this bill passes, and it is expected to pass unless we do something to prevent it, Florida will find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain quality professors. This bill gives students the right to sue their instructors if they aren't happy with what they are taught or the grade they receive. Of course, the timing couldn't be worse, as all of us are mired in paper and racing toward the end of the semester. However, please take a peek at this website: http://studentsforacademicfreedom.org. If this bill succeeds, none of us will have time to teach or publish-we'll be calling lawyers to make sure we didn't offend anyone with a controversial "idea" in class. The UFF website will very shortly house several documents explaining its implications, and I have provided several links below. Because the bill is fast-tracked in Florida (vote tentatively scheduled for end of April) and because it has traction and is expected to pass the House, members of the UCF community are urgently needed to help thwart it in the Senate. UFF President Tom Auxter and UFF-USF Chapter President Roy Weatherford testified against the bill, presenting the UFF faculty position at the Florida House of Representatives Education Council Workshop. However, this bill is so sweeping and its ramifications so threatening to the values of intellectual inquiry and to our own work in the classroom that we must all work together to defeat it. This is a moment for union and non-union campus citizens to work side by side and fight for what we hold dear; I invite all of us to begin talking and working together. The plan of attack is two-fold: 1. Informing regional senators in person of our position. At the state level, UFF recommends that we begin with Senators, since it appears to be moving rapidly through the House and our best chance of defeating it appears to be the Senate. The statewide UFF has identified seven Senators in our region for UCF faculty and administrators to contact. These seven senators need to be visited by a team of concerned faculty/citizens urging them not to support the bill. Your colleagues listed below have "adopted" the senators listed and seek 2-3 other colleagues to join them on a house call to their Senators' regional offices. This action does not require UFF membership or particular experience--you simply have to care about academic freedom. This action need not be confrontational or highly rhetorical-we need simply to present our best selves to persuade Florida legislators to tend to their jobs and let us do what we have trained all of our lives to do. The team leaders are liste d below. If you are willing to join a team already working with a particular senator, please contact the UCF team leader directly. 2. Letter-writing campaign. For those who won't be visiting a senator, we need a letter-writing, email, and phone campaign to the Senate offices explaining to them why this bill is ruinous for education. All of us need to pull together for the cause of academic freedom over the next few weeks. If any of you want to draft and circulate petitions in your department or unit and then send them along to these senators, that would be helpful too. To this end, please visit the links below and the UFF-UCF website for sample letters, important phone numbers, talking points, and editorial essays from around the country. Go to http://www.uffucf.org and click on Academic Freedom Bill 837. As we face the possibility of the end of academic freedom in Florida, I hope that faculty and administrators will join in a campaign of words and actions and ensure the defeat of this bill. Thanks so much for your time and support. In solidarity, Dawn Trouard Chapter President, UFF-UCF Plan 1 Teams: (7) Evelyn Lynn: 140 South Atlantic Avenue, #201, Ormond Beach, FL 32176 (386) 676-4000, Legislative Assistants: Kathy Campbell, Charlyn Thompson and Kathleen Roe. 3330 S.E. Maricamp Rd., Ocala, FL 34471-6248, (352) 694-0160 Legislative Assistant: Jeanne McIntosh, 200 South 7th Avenue, Room 1-C, Palatka, FL 32177-4612, Statewide: 1-866-831-2665 Legislative Assistant: Jeanne McIntosh, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UCF Team Leader: Contact Luis Martine-Fernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ (9) Daniel Webster: 315 South Dillard Street, Winter Garden, FL 34787 (407) 656-0066 FAX (407) 297-2064. Legislative Assistants: Ann Drawdy and Cindy Brown. No email listed. UCF Team Leader: Contact Ossama Mikhail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (19) Gary Siplin: 1436 North Pine Hills Road, Orlando, FL 32808 (407) 297-2071 FAX: (407) 522-2153 Legislative Assistants: Jose Bosque, Shannon Currie and Carlton Cosby, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UCF Team Leader: Contact Kevin Meehan [EMAIL PROTECTED] (20) Carey Baker: 301 West Ward Avenue, Eustis, FL 32726-4024, (352) 742-6490 FAX (352)742-6492 Legislative Assistants: Gale Bass, Renee Strong, Vilma Tucker and Thomas Hammons, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UCF Team Leader: Contact Barry Mauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] (22) Lee Constantine: 378 Centerpointe Circle, Suite 1268, Altamonte Springs, FL 32701-3442, (407) 331-9675 Legislative Assistant: Avery Coleman, Abby Souders and Susan Datres, Email: constantine.lee.web@ flsenate.gov UCF Team Leader: Contact Rose Beiler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (26) Mike Haridopolos: 2955 Pineda Causeway, Suite 215, Melbourne, FL 32940-7307 (321) 752-3131 Legislative Assistants: Lori Scott, Rosalind Clark, Nancy Bernier and Bonnie Rhodes. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UCF Team Leader: Contact Jeanne Leiby [EMAIL PROTECTED] (24) Bill Posey: 1802 S. Fiske Boulevard, Suite 108, Rockledge, FL 32955-3007 (321) 690-3484 Legislative Assistants: Patrick Gavin and John Mac Iver. Email: posey.bill.web@ flsenate.gov UCF Team Leader: Contact Bill Gaudelli [EMAIL PROTECTED] About the Bill Florida House of Representatives/House Bill 837. http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/bills_detail.aspx?Id=16495 Senate Bill 2126 http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/index.cfm?Mode=Bills&SubMenu=1&Tab=sessi on&BI_Mode=ViewBillInfo&BillNum=2126&Chamber=Senate&Year=2005&Title=%2D% 3EBill%2520Info%3AS%25202126%2D%3ESession%25202005 If these links don't resolve cleanly, search for the bills at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/bills.aspx http://www.flsenate.gov/Welcome/index.cfm Contacting your Legislators The UCF Library's website includes a resource page for legislative contacts http://library.ucf.edu/govdocs/contacts.htm including links for the following: Florida Senators by County http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/index.cfm?Members=By+County&Tab=legi slators&Submenu=1 Find Your Legislators by ZIP+4 http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/index.cfm?Mode=Find%20Your%20Legisla tors&Submenu=3&Tab=legislators Leadership Directories provide Yellow Book listings for legislative committees and staff. http://ldi.bvdep.com/ (UCF library provides access via EZProxy) http://library.ucf.edu/Databases/OffCampus.asp Drafting Your Editorial Letter/Talking with Legislators and the Public AAUP Position Statement on the Academic Freedom Bill offers excellent talking points, especially that the bill aims to place enforcement of academic freedom in the hands of students. http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/Statements/billofrights.htm Response from Russell Jacoby (The Nation): http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050404&s=jacoby Paul Krugman's response (New York Times): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?ex=1113364800&e n=308b64641f4c3ed4&ei=5070>Op-Ed Effective Communication With Your Legislators provides useful tips for writing, calling or visiting your legislators. http://www.flsenate.gov/cgi-bin/View_Page.pl?Tab=info_center&Submenu=1&F ile=communicate.html&Directory=Info_Center/about_legislature/&Location=a pp Why this Bill has Traction >From David Horowitz's own FrontPageMag: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Content/read.asp?ID=50 David Horowitz's essay in The Chronicle Review http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i23/23b01201.htm Columnist David Limbaugh agrees: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/dl20030920.shtml Read what the students have to say about those nasty "liberal" professors: http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
