We are in the final stretch of the semester and it is time to have one last AAUP meeting for the year. THIS YEAR WE ARE GOING TO HAVE ELECTIONS SO SEND IN YOUR NOMINEES NOW! Our election date is the meeting, April 28 at 4:15 pm in 203 Trotter. We will conduct the election by both email and ballot box during the meeting. Please see our meeting announcement.

Another project for this year has been our Child Care commitment. We have had our symposium and we will be having another faculty meeting with another Child Care report. But two other projects are in the making: first, I am working on making the Child Care committee a permanent committee at least until we get other changes made and second we have a committee making child care buttons for us to wear to keep the issue out there.

We also continue to report on the ad hoc salary negotiations with the Board. Most of the time we are presented with the two alternatives of either salary plus retirement or total compensation. Mark Kuperberg presented this to the faculty and some of us have been talking about finding a way to get salary equity without punishing one cohort of faculty for the benefit of another. We have been talking about a salary benefit grading that reflect the life cycle cohorts of faculty from entry to retirement. We all want a system of equity that does not just mathematically balance one group against another, but addresses the real financial and compensation of every level of a career. Hopefully we will get on with this discussion next year.

Now it is time for you to nominate and self nominate a new slate of leadership for the AAUP. We are building momentum and we need to continue. Carr Everbach has kindly agreed to be our webmaster for another year, perhaps we can get you to self-nominate. We need someone to come in to meetings and take notes and we need someone to help us keep up the membership list and send out meeting notices. So bring someone with you to the meeting on April 28, plan on having some wine and cheese. Celebrate the end of the school year and plan on voting for some new AAUP leadership. The AAUP only exists with your effort so plan on coming to meetings and working with a pretty god team and a voice of the faculty. Marjorie Murphy