Faculty and staff members are joining with university lobbyists and President Peter Likins in opposition to legislative proposals that would require fingerprinting all university employees and firing people convicted of certain felonies.
In the past several days, employees who are subscribed to a listserv for staff members have been offering opposition to the two bills.
And yesterday, some faculty senators agreed the bills overstep the bounds of legislative appropriateness. Likins echoed their sentiments, telling the senate he hoped both bills would die.
"The university would · prefer that the Legislature not interfere in our employment practices," Likins said.
The bill forcing the university to fire people convicted of many felonies would strip those people of tenure, benefits and employment without affording them due process, said Faculty Senator Andrew Silverman.
The bill would terminate people convicted of felonies such as murder, stalking and sexual crimes, but would not include burglary and assault.
"Once the Legislature gets involved in this kind of thing, what kind of
slippery slope are we headed down?" Silverman asked.
Likins also said yesterday the bill requiring job applicants to pass background checks and get fingerprint clearance cards will likely "die a quiet death" in the Legislature.
The bill requiring many felons to be fired passed a House committee last week, but its sponsor has promised to withdraw it if the Arizona Board of Regents drafts a similar policy.
Such a policy is being written and could be discussed by the board of regents in April, regent spokeswoman Cathy McGonigle said last week.
The university has lobbied against both bills, and Likins said yesterday faculty need not make a concerted effort to halt progress of the fingerprinting bill.
Faculty Senator Gail Burd asked Likins whether a letter-writing campaign to legislators in opposition to the bills would be helpful. Likins said he would direct faculty chairman Jory Hancock to ask university lobbyists whether that would be appropriate.
"There's no point in writing to the arch-conservatives, the authors of these bills, because it sounds like you approve of hiring felons," Likins said.
In recent days, employees have also publicly voiced opposition to both bills on a university-wide listserv used by many lower-level employees. Some of these staff members wrote they were concerned that the bills are unnecessarily broad and needlessly invade people's privacy.
"What I vehemently object to is legislation that allows the government to poke its nose into every employee's background just because they're an employee," wrote Ryan Windows, a program coordinator in the Dean of Students Office.
Windows wrote that he didn't oppose background checks for employees required to handle large sums of money but thought the proposed policies were unnecessarily broad.
Tim Jull, a senior research scientist in the geosciences department, called the fingerprinting bill inappropriate because it mandates fingerprinting, rather than giving universities discretion.
Likins also said yesterday that the felons bill would unfairly prevent the university from hiring people who had committed crimes in the distant past.
A conviction that occurs while someone works at the UA could be reason for dismissal anyway, Silverman said, but not without due process.
"It's the way it's being done, I think, that's the problem," he said.