When Professor Juan Rojo was denied tenure at Lafayette College (Pennsylvania), he announced at a August 30 faculty meeting his plan to protest the decision … by going on a hunger strike.
As noted by ABC News, a committee had voted to grant Rojo, who teaches Spanish, tenure, but school President Alison Byerly overruled the recommendation saying he “didn’t exhibit ‘distinctive’ teaching abilities.”
Then, according to The Morning Call, after the college board of trustees returned Rojo’s case to the faculty committee for reconsideration, it again recommended tenure — whereupon President Byerly again said “no.”
Rojo’s hunger strike lasted a week, during which he drank only water and Gatorade. He ended the protest Monday by downing a couple of tacos. He hoped the college board of trustees would see it as “a gesture of good faith.”
“Even now that it’s over I wonder if I did the right thing, but I did it so that the board can work without the pressure of my well-being hanging over their head,” Rojo said. “My tenure is at the center, but this is really about the much broader issue, which is that the decision to grant tenure is a faculty decision.”
From the Morning Call article:
While Rojo said he initiated the strike to draw attention to the tenure issue and put pressure on the board of trustees to address it, he said several trusted colleagues convinced him the pressure could be counter-productive to getting the board and Byerly to discuss the issue.
“This is not a case of petulance and I do not consider myself entitled to anything,” Rojo said. “But it is an issue I feel strongly about and one that has much broader ramifications on the future at Lafayette College.”
Rojo was at that seven-year mark when documents, including student and faculty reviews of his teaching style, his academic accomplishments and a self-review, were submitted to a Promotion Tenure and Review Committee.
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The committee is comprised of six tenured faculty members from other departments and Lafayette Provost S. Abu Turab Rizvi, Rojo said.
On Dec. 18, the committee voted to recommend Rojo for tenure. The recommendation then went to Byerly for review, according to documents viewed by The Morning Call.
On March 14, Byerly denied Rojo’s tenure in a four-page letter in which she said he did not exhibit “distinctive” teaching abilities.
According to the letter, Byerly based her decision on student reviews and other documentation.
Rojo counters that student evaluations “are unreliable because they’re often a response to the grade the student expected.”
He hopes his actions will precipitate a change in ultimately who gets to determine tenure: “I believe this has energized the faculty,” he said.
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