Faculty in 'uproar' after Texas A&M University-Victoria implements mandatory in-person policy

VICTORIA, Texas -- A shift to daily on-campus requirements has Texas A&M University-Victoria faculty in an "uproar" at the start of this semester after years of remote work that allowed many of them to live more than two hours away, officials from a professor advocacy group said.

The new policy requires employees to work in person five days and 40 hours a week this school year, which officials said puts the campus in compliance with state law.

University officials sent an email in June indicating that all full-time faculty would need to be in person on the Victoria campus during the workweek or obtain written permission to work remotely, representatives from the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers said.

The university asked employees to confirm their "understanding and commitment" about six weeks before classes began Monday, which the advocacy group said wasn't enough time for employees to make necessary arrangements.

Teresa Klein, president of Texas AAUP-AFT, wrote a letter to university leaders Monday expressing concerns regarding "overcompliance or misapplication" of state law.

"The timing of the impromptu mandate has left many faculty scrambling to rearrange their schedules to accommodate, negatively affecting their professional and personal lives and having a possible disproportional, discriminatory and disparate negative effect on female faculty and those with long commutes to campus," Klein wrote.

The percentage of faculty affected by the rule remains unclear. President Christian Hardigree previously said 31% of the university's faculty were the only people "in their zip code" when she began her role last year. She said, of the remaining faculty, 73% lived in the Houston metropolitan area.

Hardigree wrote in a statement to the Texas Tribune that the campus was welcoming a freshman class 23% larger than last year's and the students deserved faculty who were "present, accessible and fully engaged" in the academic life of the university. The school enrolls approximately 3,300 students and promotes a 15:1 student-faculty ratio.

"Our taxpayers deserve public employees who fulfill a complete workload," Hardigree wrote. "Faculty work naturally includes teaching, research and service, and schedules may vary accordingly. But flexibility is not an exemption from accountability."

A new state law passed last year, Senate Bill 2615, prohibits public colleges and universities from allowing "telework" for employees except in certain circumstances. The bill defines telework as a work arrangement that allows an employee to conduct "institutional business" at a place other than their place of employment during work hours.

Under the law, those in teaching roles are exempt if they are not full-time faculty members, on temporary research assignment, or the only classes they have assigned meet the criteria for remote instruction. The bill does not directly mention the number of days or hours that an non-exempt employee must be on campus.

Texas A&M University-Victoria, located about 120 miles from Houston, was previously under the University of Houston System, but the school joined the Texas A&M system on Sept. 1. Hardigree said the university communicated with faculty about teaching loads and the importance of maintaining a meaningful campus presence for more than a year as they stressed accountability and institutional excellence.

In Klein's letter, she wrote that most other Texas colleges and universities were not requiring faculty to be present on campus for a set number of days or hours outside their normal teaching, research and office hour schedules, although some were requiring a specific number of days or hours on campus. She urged the president and provost to immediately rescind the policy.

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