College Senate
Minutes of the meeting of October 11th 1999
Chair George Browder called the meeting to order at 4:07 PM.
1. A quorum was present and the Agenda was approved unanimously as amended.
2. The minutes of the September 13th 1999 meeting were approved unanimously as corrected.
4. Dr. Una Mae Reck (VP, Academic Affairs):
Just so you know, the advertisement for the twenty-nine faculty members is out in the Chronicle. That advertisement will say twenty-eight. The one on October twenty-second will say twenty-nine because we did have another retirement there.
The second item deals with the waiver for general education. That memo has been sent by the President's office based on the following three items: (1) that we are under a Middle-States accreditation process, (2) that we already had started a revision process prior to the taskforce report of the Board of Trustees and we have our own timeline, (3) the type three grant in terms of meeting the compliance for that. So we're asking for a waiver to begin our new general education program for the fall of 2001 instead of the fall of 2000.
The third item is that if you recall at the general faculty meeting for academic affairs at the beginning of the fall 1999 semester, I mentioned that I would be initiating and forming an ad-hoc committee on student evaluation of faculty teachers. I'm in the process of finalizing that ad-hoc committee. Dr. Joseph Straight will be chairing that committee. They had basically two charges: (1) to review the process of student evaluation of teachers on this campus at the current time, (2) to get any recommendation or recommendations to me about that process, procedures, format of evaluation forms and the use of the information from the evaluations.
5. Chair Browder (Chairperson's Report):
The next two items on the agenda are my report and Moj's report and I want to talk about some of the streamlining that we're trying to accomplish for Faculty Governance and then follow that with some comments about the Senate which Moj might also wish to amend. Then after that I'll accept any questions or suggestions that you have.
Basically we have a number of problems with governance. As active members of Governance, I'm sure that you have all felt some of the frustrations and encumbrances of trying to do this.
For instance, we are supposed to have the election for Executive Officers at this meeting. Since we don't get a list of who are voting faculty until sometime in September, by the time we get the preference sheets out it's too late to pull together any such nominations in time for this meeting, which would have had to be two weeks ago (i.e. mid September). Consequently, that's an example of the encumbrances we have in the system in meeting the by-laws.
Another example as you may remember, the Governance Committee asked to have its size expanded in a by-law proposal last fall. We ask you to vote that down because that just meant two more people on the Governance Committee and two more people on two other committees and the size of committees are getting unmanageable. The representation of some of our committees is kind of strange in terms of getting the kinds of people on committees who should be on those committees.
Essentially the Executive Committee is trying to re-design the whole system so it works more smoothly and more efficiently. We have gotten the promise of some clerical support from the administration for doing this. Primarily what we want to do is use that clerical support to make everything as electronic as possible. For instance, we would like to create a closed listserv for all voting faculty. At the present we're using Proftalk for that purpose, but people have to sign onto Proftalk. This would be an automatic mailing list. All voting faculty and also the student representatives would automatically receive electronically the reports, agendas, all of this promptly and on time.
We would therefore also be able to get the preference list out electronically and that could hopefully put together our ballots automatically. We could, ideally, do everything on time, more automatically and in the process eliminate the entire Governance Committee, for instance, and replace it with a Governance or Election Officer on the Executive Committee. That would in turn reduce all the standing committees by one liaison officer with governance. That should make the amount of committee work that everybody has to do considerably less.
It should also make communication more efficient and, I would hope, allow us to have in advance of this meeting all the reports. Both from the Administrative Officers and from the Committees for you to read with any proposals or motions that are going to come before the council in advance of this meeting. That means we would not have to spend time listening to information; we could use the time here for questions and answers for the administrators and committees, and move directly to business. We would hopefully have shorter meetings in that way; that's our strategy. How much of this we can accomplish depends on how much computer literate clerical support and knowledgeable clerical support we are able to get. We will find out shortly and will be reporting back to you on our progress.
We would also have a central office for hardcopy files. Everything would be coming to you electronically, you could of-course print off whatever you felt like you wanted, but hard-copy records would only need to be kept in this one central office. We might save a few trees in the process.
We also need to reduce and rationalize the numbers of committees and their sizes. We're getting some strange committees. We'll get a committee like the GCP Committee, which might by sheer accident end up with three people from the music department on it. Strange structures which result from the way in which we elect committees. We would like to try and get these committees to give us more clear feedback on how they should be structured.
We hope that we will have the necessary bylaws ready to recommend to you be the December meeting and then, however much time it takes in the spring semester to get the faculty to accept those bylaws. We should have all of this in operation by sometime next spring.
Jan McVicker: Will the topics for the agendas still be circulated, say on Proftalk and on the professionals list so that non-voting members would also have a chance if they wanted to attend a meeting simply as a...
Chair Browder: When I said voting faculty I didn't mean you guys, I meant the entire voting faculty. That's faculty, staff, administration, everybody.
We might want a separate closed list for the Senate, I don't know. We'll see. We will do whatever works best for everybody concerned and in that regard of course as much feedback as and helpful suggestions as anybody has would be appreciated.
Ok then, about the Senate. Some of you saw my response to attending the Senate meeting on Proftalk. I was very disillusioned and basically to describe the Senate, I would say that it functions like the Supreme Soviet and the Senate Executive Committee is essentially its Polit Bureau. That's pretty accurate a description.
The Executive Committee is actually empowered by the Trustees to speak for the Senate when the Senate is not in session, and the Senate is only in session three times a year for two days. That executive committee speaks for the entire SUNY Faculty, and it consists of only one representative from the four-year colleges, one representative from the University Centers, one representative from Ag. & Tech., one representative from the Special Colleges, and one representative from Community Colleges and so on and so forth. In other words it is not a body that represents us in any sense of the word.
Furthermore, it pretty much appoints all the committees of the Senate and it sets the agenda for the Senate. If it doesn't want to recommend something for the agenda on the Senate and it doesn't get on the agenda, you can't make motions from the floor unless they pertain to an agenda item. It is very much like the Supreme Soviet in its operations and this is all part of a bylaw system that is mandated by the Trustees. It's part of the Trustees policies. If you want to amend the Faculty Senate bylaws you can, but then they have to amend the Trustees bylaws for the amendments to come into effect, and the Trustees have to do that. It's all set up in a way that frustrates one, when one tries to function with it.
I told you before that I thought they flubbed the no confidence vote that we gave them last year at their request. I don't feel like they used it wisely and I think it cost us much more than it got us. What it got us was a seat for the head of the Executive Committee (the President), not on the Search Committee for the Chancellor, but on the Advisory Committee for Search of the Chancellor. We have one faculty representative, and he believes he's going to keep them honest and assured us that this was one of the great accomplishments for this no confidence vote.
The other was of course the Provost Advisory Committee that gave us the guidelines which was supposed to have five faculty on it but actually only had four, only two on whom represent the four-year colleges. We saw the guidelines and we saw what we got as a reward for that. Basically I would describe the Executive Committees policies or politics as being extremely cautious in dealing with the Trustees and the Provost.
The question is whether or not the Senate can be an effective voice for our concerns, and I hope it can, and I think it can. I think there are a lot of things we could do to make it a much more effective voice for us. For one thing, we could pay more attention to Moj's reports or whoever succeeds him and be more supportive of future senators. They have to know we care about what's going on and that we want to hear from them about what's going on. We need to give them ideas that we want them to feed into the Senate, so that they can be more actively involved there.
We should also try to get more committee members from Fredonia. There are half a dozen committees and aside from the Executive Committee these are the only other bodies that make commentary on what's going on. They also provide reports, which in turn come back to our campuses so that we get some sense of what's going on in the SUNY system in a voice that might be a little bit different from the Executive Committee. They are the only other body that can, sort of, pressure the Executive Committee into putting something on the agenda.
If we had members from Fredonia who were involved in the related campus committees, for instance there is a Governance Committee. That should perhaps be a member of Fredonia's Executive Committee. There's an Undergraduate Committee, which should be a member of Fredonia's Academic Affairs committee. In other words, somebody who's involved in that business here on this campus and knows where we're coming from and knows what our interests are is speaking on the relevant committee at Albany rather than somebody who's just simply willing to serve, but is not necessarily connected with or tied into what's going on here at Fredonia.
The third hope is the Campus Governance leaders. That's me and my counterparts on other campuses. We are an unofficial body at the Senate. They're asked to attend by the Executive Committee twice a year. This year we very strongly expressed our dissatisfaction of what's been going on and asked that we become a more permanent body that attends every Senate event. The Executive Committee did not like that suggestion, and I'm sure they will not forward that motion to the General Senate. If for instance, our Senator knows that this is a request and other Senators know that this is a request somehow or other there might be more pressure for yet another committee of people who directly represent the campuses to speak at the Senate and to get agenda items put on the Senate.
The question is, is this worth the energy. Is it worth, not only having a Senator, who goes four times a year, but also sending the President or the Chair of Faculty Council and sending as many other committee members as we can possibly get involved in Senate Governance. I don't know, and that's one thing that I think you all should help decide.
The other alternative is, and this was a motion passed by the campus governance leaders, that we set up meetings with the new chancellor, the vice-chancellor, the Provost and the Trustees. That is invite them here to meet us, not just sort of a dog-and-pony show, but actually meet with various important agencies on the faculty and administration to understand what we're doing here and how we're doing it. This is in line with the outgoing chancellors one strong comment or suggestion that we try to educate the Trustees.
If you look at the guidelines, you can see they really don't understand what we have to do and how we have to do it. For instance, we're being asked now, "wouldn't it be a good idea if your senate had to approve any changes in the General Education program?" Obviously, it has too; it's not an option. Faculty on every campus have to approve curriculum. That hasn't occurred to them, otherwise they wouldn't have a December deadline proposed for submission of General Education reform from all the campuses. There is a lot of education that needs to go on for these Trustees, even those who were once upon a time college professors. As a matter of fact, they are probably more problematic that those who have never been college professors.
Those are some of the things that are going on. Moj, did you want to make any commentary at all?
Moj Seyedian: No, you are very eloquent.
Chair Browder: Any questions or comments. If you think it's worth proceeding with trying to have a voice in the Senate.
Jane Romal: We can't afford not to can we?
Chair Browder: I don't think we can. It's our only machinery for talking back to anybody.
Dick Reddy: Does the Senate permit guests to attend?
Chair Browder: I'm not exactly sure. There are a limited number of seats where they assemble, and I know, for instance, Cheryl asked to attend a meeting, and...
Cheryl Drout: I was given permission to attend Friday's upcoming meeting.
Dick Reddy: My suggestion then is we've typically had one person as Senator or in some instances a Senator and a committee member go to these meetings. It may be possible to send more people if the campus is willing and able to support that and it's permitted, so that at least there will be more people seeing what is going on. Getting a pulse, interacting, developing relationships, whatever it may be. So that if we have the resources and the possibility that might be something we'd want to explore.
Chair Browder: You have to consider that it is an investment of the time and energy to go to these meetings. To cancel your Thursday or Friday or both classes, if that's what it takes to go to these meetings. Once twice, three four times a year.
Minda Rae Amiran: We used to have some good contacts with a couple of people: Goodman, from Stony Brook and Martin LaHood from Buffalo State who were both on the Executive Committee. Is either of them still around?
Chair Browder: Martin LaHood was a member of the Provost Advisory Committee. Yes, he's very much involved, not as a senator, but as committee member.
Minda Rae Amiran: If we have good connections with him, and could maybe informally talk with him about our interest in some of these committees...
Chair Browder: He's volunteered to come down and talk to us about the GCP guidelines.
Minda Rae Amiran: I don't how he could help us on the GCP issues, but he certainly could be principle in seeing to it that if we nominated people for committees to get on.
Chair Browder: Yeah, having inside pressure and influence on the Executive Committee determines who gets appointed to these committees, very definitely. Amin Sarkar is a member of the Governance Committee; that's our only other Fredonia involvement.
Jan McVicker: Is there any possibility that these meetings could rotate regions...
Chair Browder: Oh they do. They rotate all around the state. The January meeting is at Buffalo, you don't always have to go to Albany. If I said that, I'm sorry.
3. Dr. Dennis L. Hefner (President's report):
Sorry, I'm a few minutes late getting here. We're having a series of meetings dealing with race issue on campus. This will be the first of six what are called campus town meetings so I had to be there to get the kick-off for that particular one. They are going to be Mondays at four o'clock for each of the next five weeks after this, so you might want to go by. They're all going to be in S-104, and there are posters around on campus.
There are a couple things I wanted to report. I was at a Presidents' meeting last week, and was able to glean some additional information relative to the budgets. I know that there have been some articles going around. There was an article in the New York Times last Monday that talked about the fiscal difficulties. There is probably one in the Chronicle of Higher Education today that should be dealing with that issue. There was also an editorial in the Albany paper, I believe that was last Friday that also talked about the fiscal difficulties.
Just to give you a quick capsule, what we have is a situation whereby the hospitals we're supposed to be generating sufficient revenues that those revenues would then being used to under gird the funding for all of the SUNY budget. That worked well as long as the hospitals were making reasonable money. As hospital revenues have decreased the last few years, the hospitals have not been able to make revenue targets that they're given. Last year they fell seventy-seven million dollars below the revenue target so the system has carried seventy-seven million dollars worth of debt into this year. For this year it appears that they're going to be, I have a couple figures but let's just use the lower figure, 116 million dollars short for this year. So there is a problem this year compounded to the carry over form last year.
There certainly is a little whole in our budget this year. We get 12.8 million for our operating, so when you look at 116 million we would be a drop in the bucket compared to the losses that they're talking about there. This is an issue that needs to be addressed at a statewide level. I have been told that the legislature is going back in for a quick fall session. My hope is that this will be on the agenda. The Albany editorial was saying that this topic needs to be on the agenda for this session. Hopefully we will have a resolution sometime this particular fall. If there isn't a resolution, quite frankly I don't know how the system would be able to handle that. The good news is that we only get twenty-one percent of our budget from the state. They can't ding us more than twenty-one percent of our total budget, although I don't believe it will come to that.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed, and I think it's probably going to be a combination, if I were to guess right now... I've certainly heard some talk about the state coming up with baseline funding to address this issue. There also was some talk that there might be an across the board increase in tuition in SUNY, that money would be earmarked to backfill this particular hole. There are several different ideas forming out there, but it's a pretty big one, and it's one were probably going to hear a lot more about. I'm glad it's finally surfaced. We knew about it last spring, we were talking to our legislatures last spring. Tracey Bennett and I were even talking to the division of budget, saying this issue needs to be addressed and now it's finally bubbling up and at least reaching the surface. It's a topic that I think needs to be worked on.
In terms of our budget for this year, we have preliminary figures. We don't have final figures yet. The preliminary figures were about what we thought; they actually came in slightly less than we had anticipated. There were some other last minute adjustments. There always seem to be some, but it is within the dollar amount that we had between the reserves and the carry forward, we will be able to balance everything. We're sticking with the budget book even based on these preliminary figures. Obviously over the next couple years we've got to bring that into the balance, but we are going to get through this year just fine.
I did want to mention we had an open house today. The indicators are good for enrollment for next year. Last year, our Columbus Day open house was a little over 225 students that actually showed up. This year we had over 285 who showed up with their families. We were scrambling around for rooms. I know that some of the groups were much larger than the rooms. That's a good problem to have, and we picked a great day.
I did want to let you know that on October 28th of this month, we will have the advance visit by the head of our Middle States team: Karen Sandler. She is the chief executive officer of one of the Penn State branch campuses and she will be coming in. It will be a fairly short meeting; she will be meeting with a few individuals. She will be meeting with the executive committee of the College Senate and a few others. It's not a comprehensive where she's everywhere, so not everyone will know that she's here. We are on track, and that is certainly moving forward quite nicely.
Then, just to let you know on this Wednesday we do have what is called the Provost Liaison to the campuses. The Provost Liaison to the University College Campuses is a person by the name of Jennifer Clarke and she will be on campus this Wednesday and we have a few meetings set up for her to meet with a few people. She's only here for about four hours. She happened to be swinging through the area, so she's going to stop.
I think George had a great idea, if I can just add to that for a minute: to bring people from off campus onto campus. That is something that makes sense. Since I've been here, we've had the Chancellor a couple of times and John Don the Executive Vice Chancellor. We were the second campus that he visited. Peter Salins, we were about the fourth campus that he visited. So we've had people here before. The Provost, we've had Chip Foster, who's the education director of the Department of Budget. He's probably the most important of all the individuals for our particular predicament. He's the one that talks regularly with the Governor and says you don't want to do things that are going to hurt Fredonia. We like Chip a lot. He's really a great supporter; he's a good person. Then we do have Trustees come to campus periodically. I keep inviting Trustees; not many will come this far. The majority of our Trustees live in New York City and anything this far west is almost beyond their realm of thinking. They think you get to Syracuse and you fall off the end of the earth and we're even further. So we haven't had as many Trustees as we'd like, but I think it's great. The more we can do to get them here to educate them, at least to get them to know about our campus, the better off we're going to be.
With that I'll take any questions if anyone has any.
7a. David Ludlum (Academic Affairs):
As proposed in your minutes, a new minor in film studies. The Academic Affairs Committee is unanimously behind this proposal. Are there any questions about it?
The proposed minor in film studies was unanimously approved.
7b. Chair Browder: We now have a report from the Calendar Subcommittee. Ellen Litwicky is going to pass out the calendar. This item did not get to us in time to be on the agenda, therefore it is not an automatic motion. You may ask whatever questions or make whatever suggestions you would like to make. If after that time somebody wishes to move this calendar I assume that can be done. Otherwise it will come forward as a motion on the November agenda.
Dick Reddy: We haven't had a chance to look at this, I think I'd like to make a motion that this be on the agenda for the November meeting.
Chair Browder: Is there a second to the motion that this not be voted on today.
The motion was seconded.
Dick Reddy: I think the calendars are important issues. We have just had an opportunity to take a glance at this. Our colleagues have not had an opportunity to see this at all, and many of them will have interest in how it is set up. I think it's better for us to give some time for our colleagues to be aware of it in some fashion or other. Maybe we can circulate it and then we would have more feedback so we'd be in a better position to co-actively vote on it.
Mac Nelson: It's a good principle. These calendars are very white bread, I very much doubt that anybody would fight with them, but yes I think it's a good idea.
The motion was passed unanimously to ensure the calendar would not be voted on at this meeting.
Ellen Litwicki: I have a couple things to say actually. I want to apologize for apparently not going through the right channels to get this. We gave it to Academic Affairs first, sorry. Secondly, my astute colleague on the committee has just pointed out to me that there is an error in fall 2002. We have Thanksgiving listed as the third Thursday in November, which of course it is not. That should read instead of November 18-22, November 25-29. The changes for 2001-2002 were because we had neglected somehow to account fully for the Martin Luther King holiday, and had scheduled registration for Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Other than that, I think it's pretty straightforward.
Michael Grady: I notice that fall break is very early in 2001. It's in September rather than near Columbus Day.
Ellen Litwicki: Because of Yom Kippur.
Michael Grady: Usually it's October tenth or so.
Ellen Litwicki: Actually the calendar approved last year, so... We had done that because of Yom Kippur.
Chair Browder: Is Yom Kippur covered in the fall break of 2002?
Ellen Litwicki: No, Yom Kippur is very early in fall 2002. It's in mid-September.
Chair Browder: I would like to ask why we have to have a separate day for registration. There are only a relatively few students who actually in-person register, aren't there?
Mac Nelson: I asked this same question at the Calendar Subcommittee meeting and I was told not just by the registrar, but also by the student affairs people that there would be important programs going on on that Monday, and that probably we couldn't really start without one day. That's why we start when we do.
Chair Browder: What programs?
Jean Malinoski: Orientation perhaps? I think they are doing an orientation session on that day. They did this past year in the fall.
Dick Reddy: I think it would be helpful if we knew more about why it wasn't possible. I know a number of people really feel it would be far better for us to get started, rather than to have a separate day for registration. I think, with good reason for holding off until November, if there are really compelling reasons, then they are compelling. If they are not really compelling then we ought to be in a position to evaluate that and decide.
Carol Schwerk: I think that they do that orientation the day before registration. That would be Sunday in the fall.
Chair Browder: I know when I participated it was always the Sunday before registration.
Bill Graebner: Is there a state requirement for the number of days we're supposed to be in session and if so, where we do we sit vis-a-vi that requirement?
Ellen Litwicki: It has to be 140 days for the whole year and at least 68 per semester. On these calendars, we have 71 in the fall and 70 in the spring.
Bill Graebner: So we're teaching more than we have to. More than the law requires.
Mac Nelson: Some years we do teach one or two more, some years we don't.
Jan McVicker: Did the Calendar Subcommittee consider a reading period? Is that part of your discussion? I'm just curious why this campus has never had a reading period.
Mac Nelson: Our guidelines do require a reading period. Exams begin in the middle of the week. One day however is the entire reading period. Whereas if we have the weekend as we do with both of these calendars, it's not required.
Jan McVicker: To do that we would have to start the semester earlier?
Mac Nelson: That is correct.
Jan McVicker: Or have a shorter Thanksgiving.
8. Chair Browder (New Business):
We have two petitions. The recycling petition is listed as coming up first. I'm handing out some literature relating to this petition. The petition is on the last page of your agenda.
By the way, the new count indicates that there will be one additional seat for Arts and Humanities and one additional seat for Natural and Social Science Professionals on the new Senate. Both of those two branches have grown by one seat each. There are no changes in the professional staff.
Adam Brown: I just wanted to introduce myself real quick. I'm a faculty member in the psychology department. Right now I'm ABD University of Albany, and one of the things that first struck me when I moved on campus here was that there is not a lot of recycling going on that I saw. A day later I received some mail from Albany and there was a letter from the President of Albany, Karen Hitchcock that said we must redouble our efforts. I noticed that they were already doing maybe ten times as much as we were at the current time.
I though maybe I should stand in from of you all and see if we could do something about it. It may seem a little bit hypocritical to be talking about recycling and handing out five pages of paper, but I though it would more salient this way. First of all, let's go over what you have in front of you real quickly. The first thing is the petition, the first side and the second side. There are faculty members on the second side and student names on the first side. Then you have the actual letter that I received from Karen Hitchcock in Albany to redouble their efforts. Third you have former President MacPhee's official statement. Actually my position here today is not to point fingers or do anything of that nature, but to just let everyone know what's down on paper and see if we're currently doing those things. Number four, are my recommendations. That would be for a committee and they would be responsible for the things underneath that.
Jane Romal: Well we used to do this; I don't know what happened. I get a Wall Street Journal every day and I hate throwing it away, but there's no place to put it.
Adam Brown: And I imagine that probably a good seventy to eighty percent of just the faculty and staff are thinking the same thing you are. And it's so easy to throw it away. It's almost inconvenient for people to recycle.
Jane Romal: Well we had a box in our office and they did that.
Ruth Antosh: For a long time in our department we laboriously separated colored paper from non-colored and there were two boxes and we were removing paper clips and staples and then one day someone said to me you know janitors are just throwing those things out so don't bother. I think we also have to consult the custodial staff to figure out what the problem is.
Chair Browder: We have a motion please.
Mac Nelson: This is a statement actually at this point.
Chair Browder: It's a petition, which is on the agenda as an item to be discussed for action.
Adam Brown: I'm not quite finished with it.
Chair Browder: Well if people are asking you questions we are having a discussion. To have a discussion we need a motion.
Jane Romal: I move that we set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate this. Is that what you wanted?
Adam Brown: That would be great.
The motion was seconded.
Mac Nelson: Just a clarification that I assume what you mean is that the Executive Committee would establish an ad-hoc committee to do this.
Jane Romal: Yes.
Adam Brown: A little bit more evidence for you. There is also a piece from the SUNY BFI contract that you have, the next piece of information, which I've starred and underlined as well. I wonder if in fact we are doing that.
Jane Romal: When they come to our loading dock, they don't pick up all that shredded paper and everything.
Adam Brown: I don't know how liable this is, but I had students that have come to me and have come to the Psychology department about this. They've said that the BFI guys as a part of their contract are to take all the recyclable to two different plants to have them recycled. BFI takes the big bins (not the individual ones that you take from your office, rather where you empty them) and dump them right into the garbage trucks. So after those few people who have done all this work to make the boxes available in their own offices and go and dump them themselves. The paper is dumped into landfill anyway.
Chair Browder: It has to be taken to the landfill separated.
Adam Brown: Well it has to be separated somewhere for sure.
Chair Browder: It has to be delivered in separate containers there. They don't separate there. BFI is supposed to be doing that?
Adam Brown: Yes. Page six is an executive order 142 from the state, at the top I've starred "to maximize all opportunities", I wonder... And the last page, this is a page that was set up and just submitted. It lists all the things that we said that we do. Like I said earlier, I just wanted to make it aware and at least inform that committee that was going to be set up of some of the current goings on in terms of recycling. As a new faculty member, I barely have time to breathe, so there is no way I could take on this problem by myself. I wanted to get some people that are more able to do this some information.
Jan McVicker: I want to thank you for going through this again. I think our campus is really negligent in recycling, and I also want to support what you've said. I've heard some of the problem that the custodians have in trying to do what little recycling this campus is currently doing. Clearly if it all falls on the custodians shoulders it's not going to work. We need to have some kind of regular system whereby everybody can have a convenient and responsible place in which to do this recycling. To put it all on the custodians is not fair to them and it's going to prevent this from ever getting off the ground. I think we need to take a different approach than we've been taking.
Nancy Gee: Who's the student group in Biology?
Mac Nelson: Project Environment.
Nancy Gee: Can I amend? I don't know if I can, since I'm Ex Officio. Can we add that there needs to be a representative from that group on that committee?
Jane Romal: I'll accept that. Who seconded this?
Michael Grady: Do you know whether the recycling contract actually specifically says how much recycling BFI is going to do? I know they do a lot more for homes than they necessarily always do for businesses.
Adam Brown: I believe so, yes. What's odd is, as far as I have read the contract, it doesn't matter the amount of recycling that we do it costs the college no more. If we do a ton of recycling it doesn't matter. They are required by the DEC to do that. So if we do very little or we do a lot, it costs the college no more money.
Chair Browder: So if we sort metal, glass, recyclable paper, plastic from all the rest they have to pick it up and handle it that way.
Dick Reddy: Technically they are handling the same volume anyway.
Chair Browder: And if it's pre-sorted they have trucks that already come prepared to pick up the pre-sorted material and those are the categories that are at the weigh-center.
Vince Courtney: One of the things that you have to watch out with BFI though is that if any trash gets mixed in with recyclable they treat it all as trash. We had our paper in the outside corridor and we had a clean recyclable paper sign on it and students would throw in cans, gum-wrappers and as soon as anything like that went in there it all went in the trash.
Adam Brown: I have some suggestion actually. That maybe we have some of those recycle boxes. I think they're $7.50 a piece...
Chair Browder: This sort of thing should be forwarded to the committee once it's created.
The motion was approved unanimously.
8b. Ellen Litwicki: Basically I just figured that since it is in our best interest health-wise and such not to allow smoking within our buildings. I don't think we should allow it right at the rout we have to take to get into them. Especially in the winter months as students and other people smoking huddle closer and closer to the door, you have the hazard of running into the wrong end of a lit cigarette as you walk into the building. We have no option but to get into the building through the door, so that's my rationale for this.
Nancy Gee: It's particularly an issue near Thomson Hall entrances, because there is a lot of traffic going through those entrances.
Carolyn Briggs: The petition here says twenty feet. I would like to increase that to forty or fifty feet.
Ellen Litwicki: In California it is fifty feet actually, but it's warm in California. I originally had it that far away.
Carolyn Briggs: I think that's more realistic and safer to have it a greater distance. My office is right above the steps. I have one of those small windows that are very difficult to put an air conditioner in, so when I leave my window open I get the darndest updraft all the time. And you're right, they huddle right around the door and one day last winter a faculty member was inside the building with his foot up on the door holding it open, and I came down stairs real quick. I suppose he considered that he was smoking outside. I'm going to suggest we increase that from twenty to fifty feet.
Shamus Hayes: My question is, and I don't mean this to be thought the wrong way I'm a non-smoker also, is who and how will something like this be enforced and what can we do with that. We can put signs up outside the buildings and we can move all those little but-stops to different areas, however the questions is who is going to be the person to tell the person in the middle of winter in Fredonia when the winds blowing that you have to move fifty feet away. I think it's a great idea, don't get me wrong, I just want to know who and how we're going to enforce something like this.
Dick Reddy: Two observations. One, I served on a committee here that was involved in making these policies. There have been several committees that have done this over a period of time. That very issue does come up. Campus Security, University Police, whatever you want to call them years ago had no interest in enforcing that. I don't think they've ever enforced anything along those lines although I could be wrong.
Shamus Hayes: But they have guns now.
Dick Reddy: Right. They can blow the cigarettes right out of their mouths. Nonetheless this is a serious issue. The other consideration that I have is really a fundamental one in terms of our acting on this, and that is if we have any jurisdiction. At best we are in a situation where we could recommend this to the president, which is about what is being said there. We really don't have, as far as I know, jurisdiction on an issue like this.
Chair Browder: Any motion by this body is a recommendation to the president.
Jane Romal: Didn't we have a committee that got smoking off campus?
Dick Reddy: Those committees, for example, are joint labor-management committees. I served on one of those at a period of time and we had representatives from CSEA and UUP and the members of the management confidential staff that work on the development of those policies and they were implemented in that fashion, which is why I'm raising the question of whether we should reword this. Suggest that this is a good idea or something that is worth taking a look at or considering...
Chair Browder: So yo