Mark Young

    Students at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) recently became unwilling pawns in a faculty versus trustee salary chess game when at least one professor suggested withholding students’ grades until the dispute could be worked out.
    The faculty at UNH has been working without a contract since June 30, 1998. Professor James Farrell, associate professor of communications, describes the morale among faculty members as “rotten” because of the lengthy contract dispute with the Board of Trustees.
With no end to the dispute in sight, faculty members have put forth creative ideas on how to come up with a resolution. One plan is to withhold the grades of students until the Board of Trustees caves in to the demands of the faculty.
    Farrell, himself, later advocated the idea of withholding the students’ grades in an attempt to “speed [up] a contract settlement” with the Board of Trustees. While grades have not been withheld as of yet, Farrell’s comments ignited a firestorm among the student body.
    Heather Martel, a freshman at UNH, expressed outrage in an editorial in the student newspaper that Farrell could even consider such an aggressive ploy: “The environment that you [Farrell] and a few other select professors are creating is far from conducive to such scholarly activities as education.”
    As Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bruce Keough told Campus Report that the faculty, by threatening to withhold student grades, seems at times “to be as disruptive as they can to bring attention to their story.” According to Farrell, no grades have been withheld as of this writing, though they could be if the faculty or even individual members decided to in an attempt to force the Board’s hand. At the very least there will be a boycott of the summer school program by the faculty and in all likelihood a strike before the end of the spring semester. If a strike does take place—all parties involved have indicated one probably will (in September the faculty voted, 258 to 8 in favor of a work stoppage)—then students could very well see their grades withheld as part of the strike.