Some 400 full-time and adjunct professors have been locked out of classrooms at the school’s Downtown Brooklyn campus since September 3 after negotiations for a new contract to replace the pact that expired August 31 broke down.
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The university announced that they are continuing negotiations with the Brooklyn Faculty Union on their contract, but that they would return to teaching their regularly scheduled classes. Samantha Capers says grad school alumni with little or no teaching experience are leading her classes.
In a press release, the AFT says the Long Island University Faculty Federation “secured an end to an unprecedented 12-day faculty lockout imposed by the LIU administration”.
The university, which has about 8,000 students, has remained open, but some students say they have arrived for classes that were taught by replacement teachers who only took attendance or didn’t know their subjects. “I think this is not a good mark on her record”.
Nashrin Akter, 19, a nursing major from Bangladesh, said she skipped a Muslim holiday on Monday to attend classes that were not taught by “real teachers”.
A university spokeswoman said the professors have rejected a proposed contract that would cut salaries for new adjunct professors, while offering existing faculty average raises of about 13 percent over five years.
“I’m very disappointed”, she said, noting that tuition at LIU-Brooklyn runs about $35,000 a year.
Hundreds of students on campus staged a walk-out Wednesday to demand the school’s approximately 400 locked-out professors and staff come back to work.
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“It’s never happened in the history of higher ed so why should it be happening here now?” says Rebecca States, a locked-out professor.
