This annual letter summarizes our accomplishments over the past year and serves as a historical record for our chapter.
Membership and Recruitment
Our dues-paying membership decreased slightly from 71 members (out of 164 voting faculty) in May 2024 — to 62 members (out of 161 voting faculty) in May 2025, slightly reducing our representation from 43% to 39% of the faculty body.
Goals: In the current national and university political climate, maintaining membership is a top priority. For maximum impact at Gallaudet, our target remains organizing and maintaining active involvement of 51% of the voting faculty. Formal union recognition would require a supermajority of roughly 65% being dues-paying members.
Skills to Win Seminar
In February, six members completed AAUP/AFT’s Organize Every Campus: Skills to Win training. The six-session program focused on person-to-person organizing, recruitment, and building effective campus networks.
Their attendance and active participation qualified our chapter for a 10% dues rebate, which we can use for local organizing activities. The training is part of AAUP’s national Organize Every Campus campaign, launched to strengthen faculty advocacy in response to growing attacks on higher education.
Thank you to those members who invested their time and energy in helping us build a stronger chapter. When YOU are ready to learn more about organizing, reach out!
Open Letters
We published three open letters this year on key issues affecting the faculty and campus community:
- Our survey results suggest a campus climate of limited freedom of expression and lack of confidence in the administration (Sept 17, 2024)
- 2023 salary data show stark inequities between Gallaudet administrator and faculty pay (Oct 23, 2024)
- Reclaiming Gallaudet’s Mission, Together (May 15, 2025).
We also updated our Faculty Salary Dashboard, which provides an at-a-glance summary of our ongoing salary campaign.
Outreach
Website: since launching our website, gallaudet-aaup.org, in January 2023, it has received 22,800 views and 11,000 unique visitors, averaging approximately 30 views and 13 visitors per day. Traffic has remained steady over the past two years.
Anita Levy from AAUP National guest presented on academic freedom during the fall Professional Development Week (August 21, 2024).
We hosted three AAUP Happy Hour Socials in the Union Market District. These were successful, though they mostly drew familiar faces. We plan to continue them next year and explore ways to broaden participation.
National Politics, Advocacy, and Labor Issues
This year, our national political environment has undergone significant changes, including Trump’s elimination of the Department of Education’s Office of Policy and Planning (within the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS)). That shift leaves open questions about continued federal oversight of Gallaudet and the handling of other special institutions.
At the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), new appointees are bringing different priorities. We do not yet know precisely how that will play out, but it could make faculty organizing (and unionizing) more challenging.
In response to this rapidly changing landscape, the National AAUP/AFT pushed back through legal and advocacy work. In a major win, a federal judge blocked parts of two Trump executive orders that attempted to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, ruling that some of those orders exceeded constitutional limits.
For our chapter, this means you need to stay strong and steady. When you talk with faculty, underscore not just how the AAUP/AFT defends faculty rights, but also how we protect students and the mission of higher education
Faculty Representation
We continued to advocate for faculty members on personnel issues involving Handbook actions and salary reviews, and we regularly answered faculty questions about Handbook and HR procedures. These cases remain confidential.
Faculty representation remains one of our chapter’s most important roles. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) secures every employee’s right to have a labor representative in meetings with administrators. We provide this support to all faculty members, regardless of their status as AAUP members.
Recommended Goals for AY 2025-2026
For the upcoming academic year, we recommend the following priorities:
- Membership Growth: Aim for 51% and 65% membership benchmarks while seeking opportunities to broaden participation in chapter activities.
- Shared Governance: Continue working within Faculty Governance structures to prioritize academic interests, demand transparency and accountability, encourage academic freedom, and rebuild trust in shared governance.
- Faculty Salaries: Continue advocacy to address lagging compensation.
- Alliances: Continue strengthening our relationships with the Faculty of Color Coalition (FoCC), Student Body Government (SBG), Graduate Student Association (GSA), and Gallaudet Staff Council (GSC).
- Campus Education: Host guest speakers on academic freedom, shared governance, and faculty economic security.
- Climate Survey: Perform another climate survey to publish results during the Spring 2025 semester.
- Bylaws Revision: Replace the current boilerplate bylaws with customized ones that define elections, stagger officer terms, set conflict-of-interest rules (e.g., whether AAUP officers may also hold UF Governance positions), and establish formal procedures for member referenda.
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The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) defends academic freedom, promotes shared governance, and advances the economic security of faculty. The Gallaudet AAUP chapter is a member of Local 6741 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL-CIO.
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