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TFA Lawsuit Claims Texas A&M University-Kingsville Violated Faculty Member’s Right to Grieve The Texas Faculty Association (TFA) today filed a lawsuit on behalf of Melody Yarbrough in the State District Court for Kleberg County against Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Yarbrough, a TFA member, was denied the right to grieve an annual evaluation she received from Dr. Mike Daniel, the chair of her academic department, in May 2003. Yarbrough sought to contest and refute Daniel’s evaluation, which significantly discredited her work at the university. Although Dr. Daniel informed Professor Yarbrough that she could appeal the evaluation, her attempts to appeal it were rebuffed by the administration. Throughout her efforts to obtain a fair and impartial review of the evaluation, she complied with applicable policies and procedures of the Texas A&M system generally and the Kingsville campus specifically. When informal efforts proved unavailing, she commenced proceedings before the Faculty Grievance Committee. The committee accepted the grievance and established a hearing date. However, on November 12, 2003, less than a week before the hearing, Dr. Kay Clayton, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, informed the committee chairman that pursuant to Texas A&M University System Regulation 32.01.01, “…the Faculty Grievance Committee does not have the authority to consider a complaint regarding allegations of a negative evaluation of a faculty member’s professional work.” She advised the Committee that if it insisted on proceeding with a hearing on the matter and continued to exceed the scope of its authority, the administration could not participate. Dr. Yarbrough’s lawsuit asserts that Texas A&M University-Kingsville has violated her right to grieve under Chapter 617 of the Government Code which grants to public employees the right “to present grievances concerning their wages, hours of employment, or conditions of work either individually or through a representative that does not claim the right to strike.” The Texas Attorney General has given this provision an expansive interpretation and has stated that “…the term ‘conditions of work’ should be construed to include any area of wages, hours or conditions of employment, and any other matter which is appropriate for communications from employees to employer concerning an aspect of their relationship.” TFA President Janet Schmelzer said, “TFA’s position on this matter is very simple: we believe that Texas A&M University System Regulations do not trump state law. The right to grieve evaluations is of tremendous importance to professors in the state’s public universities because their careers depend in large measure on what their supervisors have to say about the quality of their work. It is imperative that professors have a right to challenge the veracity of those evaluations through the grievance process.” |
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