After faculty members voted Wednesday to preserve NIU’s shared governance system, players on both sides of the court will throw in the towel and try to get back to academic life.

The NIU faculty reaffirmed their faith in NIU’s shared governance system with a 522 to 245 defeat of a bid by the University Professionals of Illinois (UPI) to become the sole representative of NIU’s tenured and tenure-track faculty members in a collective bargaining system.

The strong defeat came as a surprise and a relief to Neil Rickert and T. Daniel Griffiths, co-organizers of NIU’s Professors for Shared Governance (PROF-S), a group of faculty members who banded together in order to oppose UPI’s bid.

“Obviously we’re happy with the result,” Rickert said. “I was surprised the victory was so overwhelming.”

He agreed with a statement made Wednesday night by UPI-NIU Chapter President Kevin McKeough that a letter sent out by NIU President John La Tourette influenced the vote of many faculty members. The letter detailed La Tourette’s past experiences with unions and why he was against collective bargaining.

“I think it was in part many of the faculty’s respect for President La Tourette,” Rickert said. “It (the letter) made people sit back and think.”

Rickert also cleared up some misunderstandings about PROF-S. He said the group was founded only in response to a union bid and would fade back into NIU’s woodwork now that the election is over.

“PROF-S doesn’t represent the faculty,” he said. “We aren’t involved in the University Council, the Faculty Senate or anything like that.”

UPI also will be closing up some of its shop. However, McKeough said although the UPI office will be closed down “NIU-UPI will continue to be a presence and if faculty continue to have concerns we will try to respond to their concerns.”

Griffiths suggested the faculty members put the election behind them and return to normal university duties.

“This was a hard time for the faculty,” he said. “I think now is probably a time for healing. Let’s get the faculty back together. Let’s get back to our job of teaching.”

“We hope we can just go back to doing our research and teaching and everything else we’re doing,” Rickert said.