Faculty raise blasted at Trustee meeting

The faculty liason to the University Trustees' Budget and Finance Committee blasted the administration at the group's campus meeting yesterday for not reinstating faculty salary increases after the state restored the University's appropriation this summer. Bioengineering Professor Solomon Pollack said at the Faculty Club meeting, which was attended by some of the University's highest-ranking officials, that the administration was damaging its relationship with the faculty because of the move. He said although the faculty "agreed to help" the University during last semester's crisis by accepting lower raises, the administration did not grant even a small additional increase "at least to say thank you." "What happens the next time the University asks the faculty to take a pay cut?" he asked administrators, suggesting faculty may be less willing to accept lower raises. President Sheldon Hackney said he understood the faculty's concern, adding the administration would try to "make up any ground that we lost" by building the difference into future salary increases. But he also defended the administration's decision not to restore the increases and suggested faculty were fortunate the administration decided not to "zero out" faculty increases altogether "as many schools would have." In other business at the meeting, Senior Vice President Marna Whittington told Trustees about the plan for the University to join a group of other not-for-profit institutions in lending Philadelphia $90 million to help the city ride out a cash crisis. Trustees asked Whittington probing questions about the plan, including how secure the investment would be for the University. Whittington assured the Trustees numerous times that the money which the University may loan the city -- which could amount to $10 million -- would be safe, because liens totaling the value of the loan could be placed against future city revenue. Whittington said the security of the investment would be further ensured because the University could always reduce payments of its city wage taxes by the amount the loan the city could not repay. One Trustee expressed some concern that if the University and the other not-for-profits start making such loans to the city annually, the University earn less of a return on the money than with other long-term investments. Whittington said the University would make sure the money would be lent at competitive rates and would try to negotiate a discount wage tax rate. Such a possible long-term relationship would benefit both the city and University, Whittington said, because the city often runs short of money in the fall until property tax revenue begins arriving in the early spring. She said the University, which does have cash this time of year in the form of tuition payments, would benefit because its cash reserves usually run low in the spring, when the loan would be repaied. Trustees also discussed the administration's failure to restore faculty salary increases to levels that were planned last year but abandoned during the budget crisis. The Committee on University Responsibility spent over an hour discussing the University's current policy prohibiting investment in companies that do business in South Africa. Some committee members suggested the 1987 policy be amended at some point to include a "sunset clause," which would end the policy after a certain period of time unless conditions in South Africa worsened before then. The current policy includes no such provisions and calls for the white minority South African government to begin substantial power sharing with the black majority before the University can re-invest in companies which have business ties to South Africa. Trustee John Harkins said it was his "gut instinct" that there has to be economic activity in South Africa to help solve many of the problems facing blacks there, which include housing shortages and inadequate educational opportunities. He said the committee should consider ending its continuing debate on the morality of the issue, especially now that much of the legal structure of apartheid has been dismantled. Steven Heyman, the committee chairman, said he would support adding a sunset clause only if contingencies were also included to ensure that divestment would continue if reforms in South Africa do not proceed. He said he wants to be sure the University is making the right choice, adding the University would not be the first university to abandon its divestment policy.

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