|
|
CANDIDATE STATEMENTS
President (Interim position; 2 candidates; vote for 1)
Colleen Carroll
Senior Research Assistant: Community Research Partnerships Coordinator, Urban Studies & Planning. Fixed Term Faculty
I am ready to build a winning union with you. We can’t protect public education as a public good and prevent working conditions from deteriorating if our participation in the union is limited to opening an urgent email that tells us to “take action, click now!”
Are you interested in building the kind of union where every member is supported in learning the skills necessary to exercise collective power? The type of union where we use the times when we are not actively bargaining to train members, form caucuses, hold open meetings - where we actually talk to each other, and move our goals forward - not eat cake while we “get an update from leadership”. What would you need in order to make this kind of union not only possible but sustainable? Not only possible but exciting? To weave this into the fabric of your life?
That’s what I want to find out and begin to build as the next president of PSU-AAUP.
[This statement was submitted by the nominee]
Bill Knight
Associate Professor, English. Tenured Faculty
The PSU-AAUP presidency is a labor of love. Though that labor and that love are ours to share, the president has an outsized impact on how our collective action animates PSU-AAUP.
Even after we all organized a successful contract campaign, 2025-6 will demand every bit of our vigilance. We’ll see budgetary crisis, plans to reorganize the university, the possibility of layoffs, dangerous impositions by the Trump administration, and continued political conflict that will threaten academic freedom and campus solidarity. From my ongoing work as VP for Grievances and Academic Freedom and EC member, I know I have the academic and political insight, personal tact, and capacities of stewardship to help us navigate crises well and direct us to plan ahead. But those capacities are matched by desire: I want a campus vibrant with union energy, cross-union solidarity, multilateral community, and authentic investment in the life of our academic mission. I want to steer past the alienation and mistrust that cast a shadow on the love that animates what we do. And I’m ready to give my own energies, empathies, and action to the life of the union that can animate us all in such powerful ways-- if we want it to.
[This statement was submitted by the nominee]
END OF BALLOT
How do I vote?
Voting starts today, May 7th, at 9am and ends on May 22nd at 5pm. PSU-AAUP members will receive an email ballot from ElectionBuddy to vote for the PSU-AAUP President. Ballots are unique to each voter. If you have not received a ballot, please contact the AAUP office at aaup@psuaaup.net.