Showings necessary to rebut presumption of conflict.An employee who wishes to campaign for or assume a major public office and simultaneously maintain his or her full-time University employment must demonstrate that, contrary to the presumption established by the policy, no conflict of commitment in fact will occur. For purposes of this policy it is assumed that each University employee, including members of the faculty, is obligated to be on duty for a minimum eight-hour day and forty-hour week. In conventional employment contexts, entailing a standard eight-hour workday, an employee will be expected to limit campaign and office-holding activities to evenings and weekends in order to satisfy employment obligations.Faculty members, however, typically follow schedules that vary from day to day and, indeed, from week to week in accruing their forty or more hours per week of employment activity. Such variety reflects, among other factors, their scheduled teaching and counseling hours, the demands of their research projects, the time dedicated to classroom preparation, the requirements of institutional service through committee memberships, and study and travel associated with contributions to the profession, as in visiting lectureships, professional meetings, and reviews of the work of other scholars and programs. Thus, there is no "standard workday" among the professoriate. The need for flexibility in scheduling the component faculty endeavors of teaching, research, and service is universally recognized. Yet, for purposes of this board policy certain shared assumptions must be identified to help quantify employment obligations.
Unless there is clear demonstration to the contrary, it will be assumed that the work day for professors is the conventional one that falls between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. However, an individual faculty member may seek to demonstrate that his or her full-time employment schedule for a given semester in fact does not or need not conform to the presumed norm and, accordingly, that times other than evenings and weekends properly would be available for campaign activity. Thus, a petition to the governing board in support of efforts to rebut the presumption of conflict would have to begin with a representation about what basic periods of time would be devoted to campaigning and why such a proposed schedule would not conflict with the forty or more hours per week of his or her University job. The unalterable premise is that the employee must meet the full requirements of employment while campaigning or serving in office, not that he or she will be permitted to reduce in any way his or her full-time University service in order to engage in candidacy for or service in public office. A satisfactory showing therefore must quantify the distribution of time between employment time and personal time devoted to candidacy and officeholding, as required in the petition form prescribed by the president.