Minutes of the meeting of December 8th 1997
Vice Chairperson Dan Jelski called the meeting to order at 4:00 PM. The Chair was unable to attend due to medical reasons.
1. A quorum was present and the Agenda was approved unanimously.
Ken Lucey: On page nine [of the minutes] the right-most column, the comment between Jane Romal and Joseph Straight is attributed to me, but I believe it is somebody else's. Someone spoke with authority about Affirmative Action and that wasn't me.
Vice Chair Jelski: Does anyone want to own up to those comments?
Ok, I guess it's anonymous then.
2. The minutes of November 10th 1997 were passed unanimously as amended.
3. President's Report (Dr. Dennis Hefner):
Just a couple of quick items. One, I'd like to just thank everybody that attended the rally that we held last week, "Beating the Drums for SUNY." I think it was a very successful rally. We had more than two hundred faculty staff and students that came out to the rally. I think it was a good beginning of our advocacy. We're going to keep pushing it in Albany and try to make sure that we do get the budget that was recommended by the Board of Trustees group. The legislatures were very pleased; Senator Jess Present wasn't up on the podium at the rally. He walked in just as we were finishing the rally and then we did have a chance to chat with him afterwards. He was appreciative of what was going on.
The second item I wanted to mention is we have received word from Middle States that they will be willing to go with a more focused visit as we go through our accreditation visit. That focus will be on assessment. Hopefully you are all busily working in your departments to put your assessment plans together so that we can implement them by the end of next semester. For those few departments who haven't started on them yet, the clock is still ticking. I know a number of departments have things in place and things on the way but just a reminder that that is a go with Middle State.
This Friday there will be a teleconference on the R.A.M. model. It will go from nine until eleven thirty. It's going to be in Williams Center S-104. All that have a chance to go by, even if you can't be there the entire time, if you can be there part of the time I'm sure it will be of great interest to you.
This does not include the revisions that we have suggested. I met a week ago in Albany with the President of Potsdam and Purchase along with several people from the System Office. We have a proposal going in to suggest two changes, one that there is a recognition of the fact that smaller campuses do have fixed costs, which of course we do. And second that we need special recognition, the three campuses, because of our professional art programs, which truly are in a different category than the arts programs that they have on other campuses. So we are going forward with a proposal on that and documenting the differences in cost. For our campus we've got preliminary numbers, it comes out somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 million dollars primarily for the School of Music costs.
The third item, just to let you know that the SEFA campaign is going exceedingly well. I want to thank everyone for having participated in it. I did, of course, make the heroic gesture to have all of these breakfasts. So far, nineteen of the fifty teams have reached a hundred percent. We've had six teams over to the house. We've got the seventh tomorrow morning and we won't finish until the end of January, I think, but we are going forward with those.
I did not want to report that the Library Committee that would be making recommendations on the Chancellors Award for Excellence in Libraryship did send me a memo. They are not going to have a nominee this current year. Many of our librarians, of course, have already received this award and they felt there weren't any individuals they would be nominating for this year. The memo did say however they thought they might have several for next year.
One other reminder, the capital campaign ideas which are being put together by the departments, I know are starting to come in. I believe it's still December 19th the departments will be given a chance to come forward with those. If your department hasn't come forward with it yet, please get it in because we want to look at as many ideas as possible and then try and start pulling this next capital campaign together. Get as many of those ideas into the final campaign.
I just wanted to mention that I had a chance to read most of the sabbatical reports that people have written for last year. I'll tell you, I'm really impressed. We have had some wonderful activities by faculty as they have gone out into the field or into companies or gone overseas and been doing studies and publications and working on things. I have been reading these reports as they've come across my desk. It's really impressive, and I think that we have a good written record that we can pull out and utilize to indicate that these are very valuable breaks in a faculty members life. People come back so refreshed with so many good ideas and bring it into the classroom. It's great to be having the reports in. I think most of the reports are now in; another one just came across my desk today and that's why I was thinking about it. I did want to at least let you know that it's wonderful when you get a chance to read them. What we should do we should have the sabbatical people make some reports to the whole campus so everybody can see these. They really are wonderful.
The last thing that I had on my list was to wish each and every one of you a happy holiday. I hope you get nice and refreshed as we go into this several-week break. For all of the Faculty Council members, you probably have already received an invitation in the mail to come to an open house. I wish we could invite the entire campus but we only have so much space in the house. It's a big house, but we did invite all of the Faculty Council members and Department Chairs and some of our donors and College Council Members and so forth. We do look forward to seeing you if you can come by for the open house.
Ken Mantai: There's an award from SUNYCO that's a University Professor, it's more for Scholarship. We haven't submitted anyone in many years. Over the last two or three years it was moved to get that process going again. Do you know anything about that?
President Hefner: We have several committees that have been formed that are looking at the different levels of honors, and I'll have to check and see if University Professor is one of those categories. I think there is a committee looking at that, but I'll have to double check.
The Vote for College Senate Secretary was deferred to the Governance Committee report, 8a.
4b. Charge of the Convocation Committee Ken Lucey:
Basically this is on our agenda today simply because I raised the question, I think about three meetings ago about whether President Hefner had really any thought to reinstituting the Academic Convocation. I don't think there ever was a formal charge to the Academic Convocation Committee. It was initiated in 1979 by Carter Roland, and Morgan Dowd organized the first one. I hope you were able to pick up one on your way in, we did a summary of the seventeen of them that occurred. I think that they were quite worthwhile. We had Nobel Laureates and noteworthy scholars. The convocation was basically a victim of our budget constraints in 1996, and if times are better I'd like to see it re-instituted.
Bob Deming: Is there a Convocation Committee in existence?
Ken Lucey: Yes, it hasn't met. When money got tight President MacPhee took it from our hands, disbanded the committee, and he invited Chancellor Bartlett for the September '95 convocation. There was none in '96 although there was the Maytum Lecture, the fellow from IBM. The people who were on the committee are still here and are ready willing and able to organize new convocations. What's lacking is an institutional commitment.
Bob Deming: I move that the Executive Committee constitute a Convocation Committee at the earliest time.
??: Who makes the ultimate decision?
President Hefner: Ken was kind enough to come in and share with me some materials prior to this meeting and give me an overview of how the convocations had run and how it went forward. I think it's a wonderful learning opportunity, and I'd like to see this or something like it put in place. I think putting a committee together makes good sense. We'll do what we can in the budget to see if we can identify some dollars, but I think it's a great learning opportunity.
The motion to convene a Convocation Committee as soon as possible was passed unanimously.
Jon Kraus: What is this Convocation Subcommittee supposed to do?
Ken Lucey: Well actually I think if it's going to be reconstituted there would probably be time for the Vice President for Academic Affairs to actually create a charge for the committee. I suspect what the charge would say is "Please put in place plans for a sequence of convocations such that if they were funded they could occur."
Len Faulk: Glad to do that.
Jon Kraus: The reason I raise the question, at the time this was instituted without a lot of consultation with faculty. We could ask the Academic Vice President to do something, as it were, to sort of have an academic light. There are multiple ways of doing that. This is a one shot per year thing. I would hope that the Academic Convocation Committee entertains multiple ways of in fact animating intellectual light. Convocation once a year is not the only way of doing that.
Vice Chair Jelski: So do you want to change the name of the committee to reflect this broader mission.
Jon Kraus: No. I just wanted to ask that since the motion was so broad I didn't know what it constituted.
Minda Rae Amiran Could you perhaps add as a footnote, it would be nice if a student representative were on the Convocation Committee. I think if a student were on the committee there could perhaps be better communication with the students about this.
A motion was made and passed to replace Julius Adams (who resigned) with Melinda Karnes on the VPAA Search Committee.
Pete Sinden: First, I want to say how proud I am to be a part of the committee that worked so hard to come to the point that we are. It's a fantastic group of people. We should be very very pleased with what they've accomplished so far, at least I am. What I want to do first is describe the process that has resulted in what we consider, that is the committee considers, five excellent candidates for this campus to consider. We've undergone a vita review, an extensive vita review. We've examined the letters of references that they submitted to us. We developed a series of questions for them to respond to; we've evaluated the content of their responses. Then we've engaged in a series of blind reference calls. With the candidate's permission first, we called individuals on their campuses, our counterparts , solely unbeknownst to the candidate who we would call unbeknownst to us as well, and solicited their evaluation. Blind reference calls either confirmed our confidence in a particular candidate or removed top candidates from further consideration. That did in fact happen unfortunately.
What I want to do now is to name the candidates and their affiliation in no particular order. There is one person that I will not name because we did this last Friday and I tried over the weekend and today to reach everybody. I was able to reach four of the five. The one that I was not able to reach is at a conference and has not been able to contact me. I'm assuming that this person continues to have an interest in our campus, but before I'm announcing who this person is I think it would be best to speak with this person. The ones who will be visiting this campus first, and again in no particular order, a person named John Mosbo. He's the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Central Arkansas. His PHD is in chemistry. Another, a woman named Dean Una Mae Reck. She's the Dean of the School of Education at a University in Pennsylvania. She has an EdD, doctorate in education. The third person, Lemuel Berry, Jr. He is the Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts at a State University in Kentucky. His PhD is in music education. Our fourth candidate is Margaret A. Malmberg. She is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the college at Lake Erie College in Ohio. Her PhD is in experimental psychology. As I said, there is a fifth but before that name is announced, we should have contact first.
This is what, hopefully, will take place. These candidates will all be available for interviews on campus in the two and half weeks after January 21st when we begin classes again. Prior to that point materials will be sent to Department Chairs and Directors to be made available to individuals on campus. Among the materials will be edited versions of their vita. Full versions will be on view in the library. Edited because some of these vita are thirty to forty pages long; they are filled with materials that perhaps many of us may find somewhat uninteresting or extraneous to the decision-making process. What we will do is edit and keep, what I call pertinent information, and I realize that's a loaded term from my point of view, certainly, what their education is, what their experience is in higher education, what their scholarship record is, and these kinds of things. We are doing this in part to save trees, frankly, because some of these are very thick.
We will also send to the Departments and Chairs and to the directors their responses to our questions so that you can read them and do content analysis with them as well.
We've done a significant task; now it's your task really. Participate to the extent your schedule will allow in the campus visits, which are scheduled for late January and early February. As soon as itineraries are developed, we will submit those itineraries to the Department Chairs and the Directors again for circulation. Evaluation forms will be distributed as well, a form that can be used for each candidate to be submitted to us.
Since this might be my one opportunity to share some of my ideas with you, I'll take it, if you'll allow me that opportunity. I see my past, and I hope I participated in a process that will end up with a Vice President who will mesh with our current colleague culture, and who will provide intelligent, consistent, and stimulating leadership of our academic life in a way that establishes a strong and vigorous campus, not just for next year but for the next twenty years or more and I emphasize "the next twenty years or more."
I think back to my initial years on campus some twenty-four years ago. At that time, as I think back, I was reasonably confident, then, that if I chose to I could build a vital and productive career as a sociologist and as a teacher. That has been borne out over these years. In doing this search I've been mindful of the fact that those of us who've joined us as colleagues one year, two years, three years ago deserve the same sense of confidence that I had twenty-four years ago, confidence for their future in this campus. I hope, I really hope, we collectively are able to choose a leader who will participate effectively in creating such a future for all of us, but especially for the newest among us. If they are served well, we are all served well.
I think our committee has identified those individuals, at least my hope is, that we have identified those individuals that will make this upcoming decision the most difficult of all. We really, and I think those of us who are on this committee here would agree that we've identified people who, on paper, at this point are excellent leaders for the future of this campus and that from among them we will be able to select the very best.
Ken Lucey: The third name you mentioned, Lemuel Berry, Jr., I think you said he was a musician?
Pete Sinden: Well he's in music education.
Ken Lucey: Is that individual one of the persons that we interviewed in our last search for a dean?
Pete Sinden: I have no idea.
??: No it's not.
Jack Berkley: This is the search committee for the Dean of Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies. We have met twice this semester so far, October 8th and November 12th. We have a third meeting, which is scheduled for Wednesday of this week. The chair (me) has had formal and informal meetings with Vice President Faulk and Assistant Vice President Jefferson Westwood and with Affirmative Action Director Sandra Lewis to formulate plans for the search.
A few highlights of some of the committee meetings are as follows: October 8th we met with President Hefner to receive our charge and to exchange ideas concerning how we're going to handle the search. How we are going to construct a candidate profile, and how we will conduct the screening process. We also discussed a copy of the proposed advertisement and at that meeting we came to a consensus on what the advertisement should look like. That ad by the way has gone our in The Chronicle, it was published November 28th. If you want to see it it's on page E16 of the November issue. We published this, by the way, along with the other Dean search committee, so both of them are in the combined ad. November 12th we had another meeting, copies of the final advertisement were passed out and we discussed those. Faculty Council principles and procedures in the faculty handbook were discussed for candidate searches. We made a note of any items that we felt we either were or were not following and it turns out we were following, I would say, all of them. December 10th, that's the meeting that's coming up, we are going to review the candidate profile that we constructed for initial evaluation.
Since The Chronicle ad came out, we have had a total of ten applicants. Their files are now available on eighth floor Maytum. Some of the committee members have had a chance to see some of these. They haven't been there very long.
After our meeting on Wednesday, we will be conducting serious scanning of the files. We will narrow the field to five candidates eventually and interviews with these will commence hopefully in March of 1998.
Vivian Conover: Have they been advertised anywhere else?
Jack Berkley: Yes they have. The ad was sent out to Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, Black Issues in Higher Education. It's on the web page of Fredonia State, so I think it's been adequately distributed.
Report from the Search Committee for Dean of Arts and Humanitites: The report for the division of Arts and Humanities is not much different from the one you just heard. Even the number, and I trust it's not the same ten candidates. We had ten candidates and we went through much the same process. We hope to narrow it down to a field of a few people somewhere by mid February, is what we hope, but we've only received ten as well.. Shokoff, as he indicated, has sent out the ad to various different organizations.
Jon Kraus: The main distribution method is The Chronicle of Higher Education plus some minority organizations?
??: So far, yes. Now that's to my knowledge anyway. Jim didn't indicate anything else. The only thing he wrote here was "committee members have begun to contact colleagues in other institutions and have posted the job description at professional conferences in many fields". In the meetings we've had, it has not been indicated that it's been placed in any kind of professional publications other than that.
Jon Kraus: Has it been placed in College Art Association?
??: Not to my knowledge.
Ken Mantai: I think everyone received in the mail today the letter describing the review process for the Student Affairs division. We will be getting out some kind of a survey to all of the faculty and staff. There are, I think, ten different offices in Student Affairs. They are very very different in function so devising a survey in under twenty-five pages is turning out to be kind of difficult. We'll get something out; we're going to be meeting this Thursday, and we'll, hopefully, have something out early in the next semester.
Most of our work is going to be personal/confidential interviews. We plan to interview something over a hundred people. We will be starting those very soon. This will be including faculty/staff, students within Student Affairs, outside of Student Affairs, on-campus, and off-campus. We do solicit comments and suggestions from anyone on the campus. We want them to decide, for example, it's hard for us to determine who interacts with Student Affairs. There are people out there interacting, we'd like to know and talk to you. So, if you know some of those people, please let us know.
Interviews will be going on spring semester, again probably between a hundred and a hundred and twenty-five people. We will then submit a report to the President, only to the president, hopefully by March. I'm not sure March of which year, but hopefully March. He will then deal with the report as he sees fit and eventually a summary will be released to Faculty Council.
8a. Vince Courtney (Governance):
The Governance Committee has met during the past month. We are starting to work on the by-law revisions. The Faculty Council election ballot should be coming out within the next week. We have only one nomination for College Senate Secretary at this point in time and that's Julie Henry. Are there any other nominations from the floor?
There were no further nominations and Julie Henry was elected Faculty Council Secretary by a unanimous vote.
8b. Joseph Straight (Academic Affairs):
I'll refer to Mac first.
Mac Nelson (Calendar Subcommittee): I have, here, additional copies of what you all got as part of your agenda. There are a good deal of things we may wish to discuss about the calendar today, but specifically, the action items are on here.
We have about six things that we are going to ask you to vote on. Really only the first two are in any way weird. I notice also that you picked up a very useful handout when you came in that Jane and her secretary prepared showing: top line of each pair the current projection for any of the terms. At the bottom line of each pair what would happen to those projections if you accepted our guideline changes today. It's a little hard to visualize this, but each of these blocks is what's in place tentatively now and what would be in place if you agree with our recommendations. So I take it that before you, unless you have some other questions or comments, would be these recommendations requested.
The first one would be: "One weekday each semester shall be devoted to course selection; no classes will be held, but the minimum number of class days per semester shall not thereby be reduced." Any discussion?
Ken Maintai: I guess I have to speak out against that in spite of the fact that we desperately need help on the advising side. A couple of reasons, one is that many departments, including biology, have about forty advisees so one day doesn't help us all that much. More importantly in the sciences we have multiple lab sections. For example in my course, we have seven lab sections. If we lose a day, we lose a week. So if we lose two lab sections, we have to cancel the rest of them and we just can't afford to lose a week. So perhaps a way to do it would be to extend the advising from seven days to ten, something like that. We really can't afford to loose that day.
Joyce Stephens: I'm not exactly sure what that means.
Mac Nelson: That means there would be no classes, nothing else going on that day so we could devote the entire day to registrations specifically. Not just advising, advising would of course be a larger, longer process. Specifically course selection registration would go on that day.
Nan Bowser: The Calendar Committee did take into account the numbers of days. We counted Mondays, Tuesdays, and tried to balance it so every day of the week we would have equal numbers. We considered that when we did this. So if there is an extra Tuesday it would occur then.
Ken Mantai: That does not help us. We set a lab up for a week and so if two of the sections can't meet, there is no way to make it up for those two sections. We can't have that lab some other time in the semester.
Nan Bowser: Do you have labs on Monday?
Ken Mantai: No, normally not. This semester we had one because of a problem with the original scheduling.
Nan Bowser: That has been the problem historically. There haven't been enough Mondays. Tom, what about you?
Tom Janik: Not meeting on Mondays is a real problem, as you know. For example this semester we start classes of Tuesday so Monday is already a week behind, next Monday was Labor Day so now we're already two weeks behind. It's a real problem.
Nan Bowser: But you do have Monday labs?
Tom Janik: Yes.
Mike Grady: In the physics department we also have the same problem. We've had to redefine days in the past; anytime they redefined a day we also had to cancel class for the entire week.
Karen Mills-Courts I don't understand exactly what you're saying. You schedule labs, for instance, around Labor Day break, that kind of thing. If you knew well in advance what day this was going to be, wouldn't you be able to do the same kind of rescheduling?
Tom Janik: The first week isn't so bad because generally we're not really getting started. It's the middle of the semester; labs coincide with certain block of information from the lecture. We have certain things that are set up for the lab and so you can't just take Wednesday labs and have them some other time in the semester. It just doesn't work.
Bruce Tomlinson: We don't generally have Monday labs, so everything starts on a Tuesday, so the first week and Labor Day is no consequence. We start Tuesday.
Karen Mills-Courts: So if they chose a Monday, it would be acceptable to you?
Bruce Tomlinson: Well yes, for us but not for the other departments.
George Sebouhian: Would it be possible for the departments to assume responsibility for delegating a day and we wouldn't then have to have a blanket calendar. Why can't we do this departmentally?
Mac Nelson: Interesting idea. Your suggestion, of course, would mean simply you should vote against this recommended change. Would somebody like to speak for this recommended change?
Len Faulk: Just to suggest again why this particular model, and understandably there is some problems with it. It was because of heavy demand and just not enough time. Forcing people to take fast- paced advising, not having time. Having one day doesn't solve all the problems, but it just focuses in extra time. It could also be an opportunity for departmental advising. Use that as a focus for looking at overall issues, careers. It could give you an extra time you can meet all your majors in one point of time. There's a certain flexibility there that we don't have now, in terms of group advising.
Dan Jelski: I have a suggestion, and that is, how about we take the converse, or inverse of the other suggestion, and that is if departments want to hold classes on the advising day, they can. The reason we are having a day off for advising is for our benefit, not so much for the student's benefit. The students only have to meet one advisor; they don't have to meet sixty advisees. Departments could conceivably hold labs on the advising day. I don't think that would throw everybody into a fit. So the biology department said that they had to have labs on Tuesday that week, I don't see why the rest of the college couldn't take off and have an advising day on that day.
Dan Jelski: It seems to me that having one day is going to be important, mainly for the General Studies students. But I would think, if for students who are majoring in Biology, you can organize it any way you want. It would be nice if we could get most of the advising done that day, because that would be convenient for us too, but if you can't do it, you can't do it.
Nan Bowser: I think if we move to an online registration system, which will hopefully happen before I die, we will, of necessity, extend the period of time, at least initially for course selection, and registration will become synonymous.
Dick Weist: How much time do you think you're getting out of this one day off? From the faculty, you're getting the time that they're in classes. You get more time by extending the advising period than you do by taking a day off. The only people who are getting more time for the day off are the students, and I didn't think that was the point.
Tom Rywick: One of the things though that throws the monkey wrench in all of this is that one of the ideas of getting the day off is that it would allow them to do things in different ways. For example, Education had thought about having a group advising in the morning where a number of different issues of advice would be handled with all the students at once. If some of these students happened to be in the Science Ed. Program and also had labs, that'd mean they're not able to attend those group meetings. But that is one of the things, it wasn't just the extra time. It was the idea of flexibility and maybe doing things a little bit differently.
Mac Nelson: It's also emphasis, I think Dick, if there is an entire day devoted to this issue, nothing else much going on, perhaps people will respond to it a little bit more positively than they now do.
Ken Maintai: This may get me killed, but what about Saturday?
??: You mean for the labs... right?
George Sebouhian: If I understand correctly what's going on, what has gone on, if the sciences will operate as they must around these hours around these days, would that free up the necessity of making Tuesday the only time, the only day when we would have advising? It seems to me that people on a MWF schedule are not going to get any benefit from this whatsoever. I think it might be better to like have Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday...
Mac Nelson: Let me respond to that George, the committee's deliberations, of course, discussed this. Originally we thought perhaps it might take two days to do a full job. Then that either begins to either take time away from instruction or adds a lot of time to our calendar responsibility with the professionals. So we settled on one day; we settled on Tuesday because we figured, well cynically if it's a Monday the campus might be rather lightly attended that Monday, and so we thought it had to be in the middle of the week. Not quite in the middle because we are somewhat more in need of Tuesdays than we are Wednesdays, and for that reason, we settled on Tuesday.
Nan Bowser: We could still have an advising week. We could have advising all week, but there would be one day...
Mac Nelson: Let me clear up one other thing. It seems to be that this is indeed partly for the students, not just for the faculty. If the faculty is a little bit less hassled and little bit less frazzled during that time, has more time, not just time off from class, but time off from meetings, from office hours, then the students will get a fairer shake. There will be more time to probably meet with them and generally advise them rather than simply signing the sheet and sending them off to first floor Maytum. It seems to me you may not like this idea, but it does have some value for the students as well as for the more harried departments.
I would like you to vote not precisely on the language in front of you but on the idea as modified by Jan's suggestion that some flexibility particularly in the labs might be permitted. If you like the idea with that flexibility clause, then I think you should support this, if you don't you should reject it.
A motion was made and seconded to amend the motion to allow flexibility for labs to occur as scheduled.
Nan Bowser: I'm a little concerned about the phone calls that I might get from students wanting to know if their class is or is not going to be offered on that advising day.
Dan Jelski: My sense is that the only exceptions are probably going to be in the biology department and maybe in the chemistry and physics departments and it's up to them to negotiate with their students. The students should assume that there are no classes on that day unless they get contrary information from their...
Mac Nelson: If indeed it's only labs then no amendment is necessary, because it now says classes. Let me make one more broad point here. That is, we are, of course, only recommending this to the president. If we send it to him approving this with an understanding that some flexibility should be permitted...
Harry Jacobson: In the music department, there are some issues here. There are lessons, and there are ensembles, which are not exactly classes so I'm not sure how my colleagues would feel about that.
Ken Mantai: This isn't going to be etched in stone is it? We could try it for a year?
Mac Nelson: Every time we do a guideline I do a four-year projection but last years four year projection is in the circular file because there have been some changes requested. So no you're not going to be locked in.
Vice Chair Jelski: The amendment has been withdrawn, at this point. We are discussing this description here. We are not voting on anything just yet.
Mike Dimitri: Just for clarification, it's perfectly clear to me and I know the intent, but would it not be helpful to say in addition to one full week, one day each semester will be set aside so people don't lose track of the fact that a full week of advising is still in session.
Mac Nelson: I don't understand your point, no.
Mike Dimitri: The way it reads now, "One weekday each semester shall be devoted to course selection." It's one week day will be set aside in addition to a full week. Should it not be perfectly clear so there is no question?
Mac Nelson: I don't think that's really necessary; the term is course selection not advising. Advising certainly extends over a full week and indeed perhaps even longer.
Vice Chair Jelski: The only motion on the table is this motion right here as written.
The motion to cancel classes one weekday each semester for course selection was defeated by a majority vote.
Mac Nelson: Item number two, "The Monday after Easter shall be a vacation day." The rationale for this is that we want to make our students' returns to campus safer.
Harry Jacobson: I'm not sure I understand how it would be safer. Whether they are driving on Monday or Sunday, why would Monday be any safer than Sunday?
President Hefner: I had suggested that the committee at least take a look at this possibility. Statistics show that there is very heavy travel and traffic on the afternoon of Easter, and that if students are driving there tends to be a higher accident rate. We haven't had a significant accident here. When I was on the Chico Campus we had several, and what we did is we then changed it to Monday being a travel day. So they would be driving that day when there wasn't quite as much traffic and we found that the incidents and accidents dropped significantly. It's something that I brought with me. I looked at the calendar and brought these concerns to the committee, so they brought this forward.
Harry Jacobson: So there are statistics to support that Monday would be a lighter traffic day.
President Hefner: It does tend to make it safer. That's the only reason.
Karen Mills-Court: This is totally out of order. But in keeping with the comment that was just made, the heaviest travel traffic day in the entire year is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The new calendar that we have has just put our students on the road on that day in very bad weather.
Mac Nelson: Could we defer that to the end of this discussion?
Karen Mills-Court: Sure.
Mac Nelson: It's a good point.
Greg Prechtl: I assume because it's a Monday it'll have an impact on labs...
Mike Grady: We can stand doing it once a semester, but doing it a second time is a problem.
The motion to cancel classes the Monday after Easter was approved by a unanimous vote.
Mac Nelson: The third: observe Martin Luther King Day. What we wish to do, as you can see from this rationale, is not just have no classes on Martin Luther King Day, but also no registration, no orientation. In other words a "real" observance of the holiday. In order to do that we really need to take a day from classes after that to do registration and orientation. So really all you're doing if you vote for this is ratifying what we've all done for years, except that in this case the campus would be truly shut.
Joyce Stephens: If we don't come back until the 21st, then this becomes moot.
Mac Nelson: There would be some times when we would come back. Martin Luther King Day can be as late as the 22nd. We need to have a vote on this.
George Browder: I want everybody to listen carefully to what I'm going to say, because I do consider Martin Luther King one of the greater Americans. However, I kind of worry about observing this day, and I think it's worthy of a national holiday, but I kind of worry about our campus observance. We don't observe Presidents Day; we don't observe Veterans Day. Does that not make us look like we're doing something actually hypocritical, especially considering the atmosphere on this campus? I think a much more appropriate way to honor what this man stands for would be to assume some educational responsibility for talking or working with the issues he stood for on campus, rather than having a holiday, that is just give everybody a day off to observe this man.
Mac Nelson: It's not either/or, of course, George, as I'm sure you're aware. That is to say, the discussion of the ideas would be an excellent idea and should be refereed to the new Convocation Committee.
George Browder: I don't think it should be thrown to the Convocation Committee! I'm talking about why observe the holiday? Why not observe the man in a much more constructive way and quit messing up the calendar with the holiday.
Mac Nelson: It is, of course, not messing up the calendar any more than we already have messed it up.
George Browder: We don't mess it up observing a lot of other national holidays!
Mac Nelson: We have been observing this one for some time. All I'm asking from you here is a completion of the practice. But yes, I take your point, and thank you.
Jon Kraus: I think, if you have a holiday on it and people are not in classes, you're not going to be discussing it...
Mac Nelson: Not on that day no.
Jon Kraus: Having a holiday on it, when nobody is doing anything doesn't seem to be much of a celebration of it.
Mac Nelson: Well holiday originally meant "holy day," a day of obligation. Those things change a good deal. I think it's possible at least to argue that if we generally do acknowledge it on the campus completely then we are making a point, and then perhaps we can extend that point by doing some real discussion, some real thinking.
Kahan Saban: My office will be interested in putting on extensive programming during that entire week, not just that day. Considering the fact that students aren't in classes anyway, I'm not sure how much of an issue that is for the faculty since classes aren't in session. If the issue is having plans to celebrate Martin Luther King with his birthday and what he stood for, we'll be putting forward activities like that. Of course, they're not mandatory, but the offering will be there.
The motion to close the campus for Martin Luther King day was approved by a majority vote.
Mac Nelson: Now the rest are chiefly housekeeping, "Register between August 21 and August 30." "Register between January 13 and January 23." I don't know if you want to do these separately; that's pretty much what we do now. The current guideline says August 23rd, not August 21st. I will tell you that one of the things that I am most concerned about, as chair of the Calendar Subcommittee, is what might be called "registration creep". In other words we seem to have gone a day or two, always another day back into August, so, as this is particularly concerned, we're all thinking of going another day or two back earlier into January, for all sorts of good causes. Now, one of those good causes, you have rejected, that is to say the extra day for selection. That would mean that we wouldn't have to come back much earlier than we do now.
All I'm asking you for in these two is enabling for a fairly wide opening. We won't bring you back during August or January any earlier than we have to. Remember, I'm a union man, I don't want us to do overtime unpaid frankly, and I like August and January just as well as Joyce. Do you want to do these individually? "Register between August 21 and August 30." We'll keep it as close to August 30 as possible most of the time.
Tom Rywick: If there is some voting or redoing of the Thanksgiving idea, then you might need again to start earlier.
Mac Nelson: Indeed, we might. Therefore, this would be more important, especially first term, those two days after next year when it is a full week. Those two days are already used up.
Mike Grady: Since Thanksgiving has something to do with this, maybe we could talk about that now. I wasn't here when it was voted to get rid of the five-day Thanksgiving Break, well get rid of the first two days. It seems to me that those days are completely dead days.
Vice Chair Jelski: The point under discussion is changing the beginning date of the semester. Do you want to put a motion on the floor to change Thanksgiving?
Mike Grady: I just thought since Thanksgiving was relevant to the beginning day we should discuss that first.
Mac Nelson: May I make a suggestion instead, sort of a compromise. That is simply this, skip over that recommendation, August 21st. The recommendation as it stands now is August 23rd, since we've "saved" a day already by our actions here. I move that it won't kill us to avoid that one entirely for now, then if you wish we will talk about the Thanksgiving break, but let's do the other ones first.
The next one is, "Register between January 13 and January 23."
Joyce Stephens: I'm really going to vote against coming back as early as early as January 13th. I don't know what other people do, but I need that time. Some people can do their research while they're teaching. I admire them, but I need a block of time.
Greg Prechtl: I'm hearing that people would like as long a break between the end of the first semester and the beginning of the second semester. For those of us in phys. ed. and athletics, we come back January 2nd practicing on teams. We have people here from January 2nd sometimes until January 22nd or 23rd. They're living in the dorms and eating meals. A lot of schools come back earlier than us.
Nan Bowser: Are there student members of Council? If so, I'd like to hear from them. I would hope we all would.
Pam Wright: It wouldn't bother me at all. Are you asking if I would rather have a longer summer and a shorter January break?
Mac Nelson: Yes.
Pam Wright: I would.
George Sebouhian: Something needs to be clarified here though. Are you speaking for yourself or are you speaking for your constituents here? Are you representing a group?
Mac Nelson: May I suggest that probably this should come up at another time. I'd lik