Letter to the editor: A-T needs to balance its coverage

As an academic staff member who plans to be a part of the debate on campus about collective bargaining rights, I'd like to comment briefly on your story in the October 22, 2009 A-T titled: "Faculty, staff to talk rights"

1. Presently the Senate of academic staff (SAS) represents all Academic Staff in the governance process on campus.  Why wasn't the president or other representative of the SAS interviewed for this article?  The academic staff, its governance representatives and "rank-and-file" members, are in many ways a different group of employees than faculty.  For this reason, it is not appropriate to assume the positions and opinions of faculty or individual faculty members are that of academic staff.

2.  Dr. Simmons is not a spokesperson for academic staff. Dr. Simmons is a faculty member and has long been involved with faculty governance on campus. An academic staff member would be an appropriate source for comments about how the academic staff feel regarding collective bargaining.

3.  There is language in the collective bargaining rights provisions, which identifies that faculty and academic staff from a campus might or might not form one bargaining unit. If or until there is any collective bargaining unit that forms at Oshkosh, it would only be fair that the A-T balance the coverage of opinions and positions about collective bargaining to include both academic staff and faculty.

Thank you for letting me express my comments.

Greg W.