July 2026. Course cap increases are announced with no warning or meaningful input from faculty. On average, courses in the Liberal Studies program would see a capacity increase of 13% with at least on class doubling in the nnumber of students.

August 2026. The Organizing Committee worked to craft campaign goals, identify decision-makers, and compose a letter to the Provost outlining the issues and changes needed to make WCU a sustainable workplace and rigorous and personalized educational institution. The Organizing Committee presented the letter to the Provost to the All-Member meeting for approval to send (it passed with a unanimous vote). WCU AAUP decided to demand that the provost:

• Support affected faculty by providing additional compensation of $100 per student added to each affected Liberal Studies section.

• Send a university-wide email to all faculty stating that Spring 2027 course capacities will revert to Spring 2026 levels.

• Send a university-wide email to all faculty stating that the University Curriculum Committee will decide future course capacities, with disciplinary standards as the primary criterion.

September 2026. WCU AAUP sent the letter to the Provost and very quickly got a boilerplate response which essentially boiled down to: be grateful that we have these students because our institution could be closing. The truth of this statement aside, the Provost did not commit to any of our reasonable asks. We sent a follow up asking again for a commitment to our demands and got no further correspondence from the Provost.

October 2026. Becuase the Provost did not respond or commit to supporting faculty in this historic moment, WCU AAUP launched a petition campaign to collect signatures to build leverage. Within the first 24 hours, we had signers spanning the northern Hemisphere from Arlington, TX to Wilmington, NC and from Altanta, GA to Ottowa (Our petition immediately made it all the way to Canada!). The goal is to collect enough signatures to present the petition to the Provost.