More than 100 supporters of KU’s faculty union lined the stairs outside Wescoe Hall on Wednesday to chant across Jayhawk Boulevard toward Chancellor Douglas Girod’s office: “Girod, Girod, you’re one year late. When will you negotiate?”
The protest organized by the university’s faculty and academic staff union — the United Academics of KU, or UAKU — comes more than a year after faculty began negotiations with university administration. They have yet to sign a contract.
Union leaders say that’s because KU has stalled the negotiations process by taking months to respond to proposals and providing limited opportunities to meet.
KU spokesperson Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said KU leaders “welcome continued conversations with faculty and instructors about ways to move the university forward.”
After organizing and chanting in front of Wescoe Hall, the group marched in front of Strong Hall, where Girod and other university administrators work.
UAKU won its election in April 2024 with 86% of academics voting in favor. The union represents full-time and part-time tenured and non-tenured faculty — as well as teaching, research, clinical and online professors, lecturers, curators, librarians, scientists who conduct grant-funded research and other categories of faculty and academic staff. It’s affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.
“While we have a huge sense of urgency about getting this contract done so that we can move forward with doing the good work we do every day, management does not share that urgency,” said Emily Casey, a professor of American art and culture.
UAKU held a similar protest in February, where some faculty expressed optimism that a deal would be done soon. Now, months later, Wednesday’s protest featured a larger, and more frustrated, group.
“We need to show them our power,” Casey said. “We need to show them that we are in solidarity with each other. That when they sit across the table, it’s not just a handful of people that they’re dealing with, it’s all of us.”
Senior fine arts student Madison Seelye has encountered bats swooping down from the ceiling during dance performances, something she said contributed to an “unsafe learning environment.”
“We have been told they said they would fix it next year for several years now,” Seelye said. “While students struggle to make ends meet, KU management’s paychecks increase.”
She said KU needed to align its priorities toward academics and student success. She joined a few faculty members in voicing frustrations with KU’s multimillion-dollar football stadium renovation while academic infrastructure falls out of date and faculty pay stagnates.
“Wages have been going down so much,” said Stephen Politzer-Ahles, an associate teaching professor in linguistics. “We’re losing a lot of our colleagues. It’s hard to get people to come here. We’re teaching in buildings that are crumbling.”
He said the union wants to ensure their voices are represented in university decisions, because right now he said the decision-makers are shut off from much of the university and “it’s not obvious that they value the things that KU is trying to deliver: education and research.”
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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