This week’s faculty senate meeting sparked debate as members contemplated the pros and cons of the new university retirement plan for the faculty and staff.
In a letter addressed to members of the Retirement Plans Advisory Council (RPAC), members requested that they would “consider expanding the current Tier One and Tier Two offerings so that the existing choices of SMU faculty and staff are well represented in every asset category.”
The plan works through Diversified Retirement Corp. and consists of “tiers” that possess different options. Tier One is the default option and allows the client to invest in one fund that’s targeted to a specific group. The Tier Two option invests in multiple funds. Some faculty members expressed concerns with the Tier Two option because of its high cost.
During the meeting, faculty members discussed concerns with the new plan. Mathematics professor Alejandro Aceves said there was a “sense of anxiety” present because “no one has all the answers to what the retirement plan entails.”
The senate voted on two motions. The first called for broadening the investment options in the retirement package. The second called for a one-year delay in implementing this new system so that other questions and concerns could be addressed.
Faculty senate president Jose Lage felt that the “unanimous approval” of these two motions “represent, to a great extent, the high level of engagement of the SMU faculty.”
Lage said that “the worse that could happen for SMU” would be for “the faculty to withdraw, to become inert, to behave like a herd of sheep!”
Several senators advocated postponing the process of accepting the retirement plan. By tabling the issue to a later date, the faculty could theoretically have a better chance of understanding what exactly the retirement plan entails.
“I think the [retirement plan] changes are largely positive,” English faculty member Dennis Foster said.
Foster supported postponing the plan so that the university would be “given time to make improvements based on the opinions of faculty experts.”
Similar to Foster, political science professor Cal Jillson said, “SMU does need to act on these matters, but it does not need to act without due consultation and deliberation.”
Anthropology professor Carolyn Smith-Morris said the senate’s request “is motivated by clear evidence of Faculty concerns, so we consider it a reasonable request and hope the Administration will be able to meet it.”
Law professor Joshua Tate believes “slow[ing] the process down” or at least adding “more fund options . . . will be a good thing for the faculty.”
Accounting professor Hemang Desai believes that the “university means well” and “has good reasons for going down this path.”
“Our point is just to make the people making these decisions aware of low cost investments,” Desai explained. “That’s the point we’re trying to make [so that] university faculty and staff would be better served.”
