CLINICIANS AT INDIANA-BLOOMINGTON GRANTED VOTING RIGHTS

Congratulations go out to the clinical law profs at Indiana Law-Bloomington on the recent faculty decision to grant clinicians voting rights.  Professor Amy Applegate delivered the good news:

I am so pleased to let everyone know that our tenured and tenure track colleagues significantly expanded voting rights here at the Indiana University School of Law -- Bloomington. Yesterday evening, they approved voting rights for full-time clinical faculty and lecturers (both with and without long-term contracts) for all issues except personnel issues, which are covered by existing University and Law School policies. (Clinical faculty already had the vote on the appointment and promotion of clinical and lecturer faculty.) 

Bottom line:  Thirteen (13) clinical and lecturer faculty members now have voting rights.  There are approximately 35 tenured and tenure track faculty members, so this is a major expansion of the voting faculty. 

My colleagues and I are very grateful to David Santacroce and CSALE, because it was the CSALE data and analyses of that data, that really turned the tide for us.  The data were persuasive to the committee that was examining the voting rights issue over the past 2 academic years, and then to the tenured and tenure track faculty, that it was time to seriously tackle the issue of voting rights.  I am also proud to say that once we established the trend in voting rights, faculty discussion moved from external factors (that we were not competitive, and recruitment and retention issues) to internal factors, especially collegiality, egalitarianism, and "the right thing to do."

This is a wonderful day for my colleagues and me, and the faculty's action is consistent with the law school's significant expansion over the past five years of our clinics, and clinical and externship programs. 

I wanted to share this wonderful news with my friends in the clinical community.  I also wanted to urge clinical faculty who do not have voting rights to use the CSALE data with their non-clinical colleagues.  -jl