Council requests outsourcing talk

Members asked for a special session on the Tammell Crow deal. University Council members have asked to hold a special session next week to discuss the proposal to outsource facilities management to Trammell Crow Co. For the first time in more than 20 years, more than a quarter of the membership of the advisory body signed petitions calling for a special session, according to Council Secretary Constance Goodman. The petition requests that the meeting be held before University Trustees meet on campus next Thursday and Friday. The Trustees are slated to vote on whether to approve the deal then. The special session will be held only if University President Judith Rodin, Provost Stanley Chodorow "and others" approve the meeting, Goodman said. Their decision is expected to come as early as today. University Council is a purely advisory body to Rodin and Chodorow. It cannot pass binding resolutions. Since Executive Vice President John Fry announced the outsourcing proposal October 8, some students, faculty and staff have criticized the administration for keeping the deal secret until it was finished. The proposal calls for Trammell Crow to assume management duties for buildings across campus. About 175 managers and staff will need to interview with Trammell Crow officials next month to retain their current jobs. Administrators expect about 75 percent of them to get offers from the firm. They have pledged to maintain salary and benefits levels for employees who are hired by Trammell Crow, while providing job placement or severance packages for those who turn down or don't get an offer. If the special session proposal goes through, it will include a call for the trustees to reject the outsourcing deal. But Graduate and Professional Student Assembly representative Alex Welte emphasized that University Council members who signed the petition did not necessarily take a stand either way on the Trammell Crow proposal -- they merely wanted to discuss it publicly. And former Faculty Senate Chair Peter Kuriloff said many professors "support the fact that this is a grave issue that needs to be addressed publicly," although they do not necessarily want the trustees to reject the deal. Welte said the meeting would allow Council members to respond to "what is happening with this strange, sudden announcement of the secretly-broken deal." "This is the last official chance to go through the channels that exist and make a statement for administrators and trustees to take note of," he added. Many Council members said the meeting is an appropriate way to encourage discussion about a controversial issue. "The function of Council is to create an opportunity for campus-wide discussion of issues that affect the entire community -- and this certainly is one of those issues," said Communications Professor Larry Gross, who signed the petition. On Monday, Welte and others decided to seek the special session, and they began to gather signatures for the petition the following day. In addition to the support of nine of the 15 members of Council's Steering Committee, the past and present Faculty Senate chairpersons both signed the petition. Faculty Senate Chair Vivian Seltzer added that "members of the Faculty Senate as a whole respect and are in favor of wide consultation and discussion of these important issues."