Minutes from Union Executive Committee Meeting

Present – Michael Abraham, Prince Charles Alexander, Dennis Cecere, Beth Denisch, Rich Grudzinski, Danny Harrington, Jonathan Holland, Teodros Kiros, Jeff Perry, Wendy Rolfe, Jackson Schultz, Will Silvio

  1. Jackson opened the meeting. We discussed the on-line intellectual property rights issue. Ross’ e-mail is very informative and asks very important issues. Roger is looking at what is going on around and wants to replicate it here. Harvard and MIT have classes on-line, Berklee does not have to follow. We are dealing with copyright law that was enacted in 1909, the media that we are dealing with now did not exist then. If they want us to be like Harvard and MIT they should pay us like them. There is a history of royalty at Berkleemusic, why not at Berklee College? If you write a book for your course, there is a royalty; the on-line class version should have a royalty. For a school that teaches students to create intellectual property and protect themselves, they are not protecting the people that are creating the courses to teach them. What about the royalty concept vs. work for hire. It is not just about the money – what about the delivery of the curriculum, why should we let the corporate model allow the on-line delivery of curriculum take over. We discussed 3 models of on-line: totally on-line, every other week in person/on-line, and 1 hour a week in class and 1 hour on-line. We need to find out about all the on-line classes and hybrid courses that are currently being taught. Jeanine Cowen should be able to share this. Michael Abraham met with Board of Trustees at a retreat about on-line courses. The overall felling that he shared was that it currently is not working as positive as it could be. Dan Thompson and Pat Pattison could be resources for us to tap for both Berkleemusic and Berklee on-line.
     
  2. Jackson passed out the BAFT fund information for review. We will discuss next month.