May 6, 2018

UUP delegates re-elected Vice President for Academics Jamie Dangler, above, and Vice President for Professionals Tom Tucker to the statewide positions, and voted to place six members on the Executive Board at the 2018 Spring Delegate Assembly.

The candidates, all incumbents, ran unopposed. The more than 300 delegates at the DA elected the candidates by acclamation May 5; statewide Secretary-Treasurer Jeri O’Bryan-Losee cast a single vote for each winner on behalf of delegates.

Tucker, left, laughing with UUP President Fred Kowal after his election, and Dangler will serve three-year terms.

Tucker won his first full term as VPP. He was elected last year to fill the unexpired one-year term of former VPP Philippe Abraham, who stepped down in April 2017 to become a NYSUT statewide vice president. Dangler won her third term as VPA.

Executive Board elections

Elected to the Executive Board were Alfred Chapter member Ray Gleason, Plattsburgh Chapter President Walter Kim Hartshorn, and Stony Brook HSC Chapter President Carolyn Kube.

Also elected were Buffalo HSC VPA Tom Melendy, Fredonia Chapter VPP Idalia Torres, and Buffalo Center Chapter President Ezra Zubrow. Executive Board members serve three-year terms.

Wishnia Award winners

Two longtime UUP activists—Cortland Chapter member David Ritchie, above, and Stony Brook Chapter member Michael Zweig are the winners of UUP’s Judy Wishnia Advocacy Award.

Ritchie received his award May 5 at the DA; Zweig was in South Korea, working U.S. Labor Against the War; he was unable to be at the DA.

The award, established in the spring of 2015, recognizes UUP members who have advocated tirelessly for UUP, labor, equity and humanity. Wishnia, a veteran UUP advocate, served as COARM Committee co-chair for 10 years.

"David and Michael are examples of the hard-working advocates that make this union great,” said UUP President Fred Kowal. “They fight to help make us a stronger union and stronger SUNY. We are grateful for their work."

At the DA, Ritchie spoke of the importance of recruiting new advocates.

"The closest leader you have—the one who is more impassioned—is yourself,” Ritchie said. “The next closest in the person you recruit. We need more advocates, and our job still remains to talk to them, show them, involve them, and bring them along."

Ritchie, an Outreach Committee member, is known for his advocacy work in Albany and in his local district. He is an active member of the Labor-Religion Coalition of the Finger Lakes, and volunteers in Tompkins County as an income tax preparer for low-income individuals and families. He also works with the Solarize Tompkins Southeast Program.

Zweig, above, a former member of UUP’s Executive Board, has served as VP for Academics at Stony Brook for 16 years. He is a co-founder of USLAW, and has been a volunteer at the Southold Fire Department in Suffolk County for 27 years.

Zweig has been a UUP delegate to AFT and NYSUT since the 1980s. He served as the chair of UUP’s Committee on Labor and Higher Education from 1995 to 2015.