Dear Colleagues,
We are writing to update you on our advocacy in response to the recent Quercus outage.
When we wrote you about two weeks ago, it was to share what we knew about the outage and to seek further information about how it was impacting the membership. Within hours, we received many email responses from UTFA members expressing concern and frustration with how the Administration was responding to the incident.
The concerns we heard from members included that: there was both insufficient and unclear communication from central Administration on the status of the outage; there was no contingency plan in place; members felt unsupported and were left on their own when it came to resolving problems; members, particularly those teaching a Spring intensive course, experienced increased workload, including increased emails and inquiries from students, needing to recreate assignments/sections using alternate tools, and increased administrative duties; and, members worried about the impact of the outage on student learning and performance as well as how students’ perceptions of who was responsible for their negative experiences with the outage would impact their PTR and promotion assessments. We have also heard concerns about the impact of the breach more broadly on members’ data and IP rights. We are in the process of responding to individual members who contacted UTFA during this period.
From May 8 to May 13, 2026, we were in direct communication with the senior Administration on this issue, and we pressed them to share as much information as possible in a timely manner. As you know, on May 13, 2026, the Administration announced the phased restoration of Quercus access.
While Quercus access has now been restored, this alone does not remedy the issues faced by our members. We are meeting with the Administration next week and will raise the serious concerns we heard from members. UTFA’s position in this discussion will be clear: in times of crisis, whether it is a data breach or a pandemic, the central Administration has a heightened obligation to step up and intervene, communicating with faculty, librarians, staff, and students, and ensuring UTFA members have the resources and support they need to perform their work given the changing circumstances. Here, the Administration fell far short of meeting its obligation. We will demand that the Administration consult with UTFA to ensure that, if another incident like this occurs, there is an appropriate plan in place that mitigates the burden, additional stress, and workload placed on members. We will also be requesting that the Administration consider how this incident will negatively impact student evaluations for the Spring term and ensure that any negative evaluations do not affect members’ entitlement to PTR and/or promotion.
If you have additional thoughts or information on the Quercus outage, we are still interested in hearing about your experience. Please email advice@utfa.org.
Sincerely,
Terezia Zorić
UTFA President
Jun Nogami
UTFA Vice-President, Salary, Benefits, Pensions & Workload