Minutes of the meeting of February 14th 2000
Chair Gee called the meeting to order at 4:04 PM.
1. A quorum was present and the agenda was approved as circulated by a majority vote.
2. The minutes of the December 13th 1999 meeting were approved unanimously.
3. President Dennis Hefner (President's report):
I'll go through this rather rapid fire because I know you have a lot on the agenda today. My wife got carried away with Valentine's Day goodies and so forth, I told her it was going to be a big meeting based on what I saw on Proftalk, so she said "Oh, I'll send lots of goodies." But anyway, happy Valentines Day.
A quick update on the Natatorium, the bids came in under budget. We are moving along. The formal ceremony for shoveling the dirt, groundbreaking, will be on Friday April 7th. There will be some other announcements. So you may want to come out and see the groundbreaking ceremony. I believe it's probably going to be around the middle of the afternoon. We're still trying to finalize the exact time, but it will be on that date. The fence will be going up before that. The fence actually does go up on April 1st to fence off the area. As a result, the environmental committee met recently to look at parking, and they have come back with a recommendation to put another addition on Ring Road. That recommendation is coming in to me, and I'm expecting that any day now. They are looking, and that would then be graveled before that fence going up, so we shouldn't have a loss in parking spaces. There is a loss in some green space, but not a huge amount of green space, and it does fit within the overall master plan.
The presidents are meeting with all of the Western New York legislative delegation this Thursday to discuss the budget. I should have more information in terms of what the legislature is thinking after this Thursday. Things are moving forward. They do seem to be progressing. Our hope is to get the legislature to at least get the budget up to what the trustees asked for. The administrative budget gets about eighty percent of the way there; we'd like the legislature to do that last twenty percent. That's the number one item on the agenda. You'll be pleased to know that we now know our formal annual enrollment. This is in full-time equivalents; our annual FTE came in at 4,924. That's 74 FTE over our targeted amount of 4,850. We were a little bit over target, about one and a quarter percent over target, so we're almost to where we need to be for next year's enrollment target, which is good news.
Just to mention about that the Learning Center, I know that's been a hot topic, the Learning Center is not a new issue. I heard about the Learning Center, I think, my first week here, as Penny Deakin came over and pointed out to me that the Learning Center was not in a very advantageous location, that they'd like to move somewhere closer to campus. Discussion started on this in seriousness this last summer. That has been something that has been underway long before weeding became an issue. I know weeding is going to be a hot topic today. I've been on other campuses where there is weeding. Weeding normally is not a problem, it's a normal function of the library. But you want to make sure though that the way were doing weeding is the right procedure, and you're not taking items of critical importance and chucking them. The fact that weeding and the Learning Center are being mentioned in the same breath is not correct. We are not entering into weeding because of the Learning Center move. That's not part of it, and I know that's been widely reported. The Leader ran two articles mentioning that. That's just not the case. The two are disconnected. Just to let you know; you don't have to believe me, but they really aren't.
Then I know you've got on the agenda the issue of consensual relations, a policy on that. I do appreciate very much the College Senate working on this issue. I had brought it forward to the Executive Committee last September, had asked that our campus put a policy in place. This policy in fact adheres to the AAUP guidelines, which we have been using on this campus as a de facto, but we've never gotten around to putting a separate campus policy in place. I do want to make sure that we are protecting students who are in vulnerable positions, and I also want to make sure that we are letting faculty know what the guidelines are in a clear and unambiguous way. I appreciate the work that the College Senate has been putting in on that.
Last, but not least, I was at the January board meeting of the Board of Trustees, and I heard the provost saying that they were not going to be granting any extensions, so I pulled him aside after the meeting. He kind of waffled then, I got him on the phone three days latter and he said, "Yeah, I guess that is what I said". I knew that's what he said, I was sitting in the room. I said, "Send us a letter to that particular effect." We still had not gotten a letter, although the system has now put some guidelines out. One of the guidelines says they will not be granting any extensions. That's why GCP is coming up for an interim adjustment today. I did want to give you at least a little background on that.
Michael Grady: Isn't there a new building going up? Bookstore?
Hefner: Yes; that will be an addition to Cranston Hall, back behind that particular area. We did get the funding for that this last fall. We are currently looking at securing an architect at this time. The architect hasn't been determined yet.
Grady: Are there any plans for the space that will be vacated by the bookstore?
Hefner: No plans at this particular time. SA has a lot of large eyes looking at that particular space, because students are complaining that they don't have enough meeting room space, and so forth. I am hoping that in the next five-year plan, we put a technology building in place. I really think we need a technology building on this campus. My hope is that a wing on that particular building could be where we could then locate permanently the Learning Center, and have it in there as a facility that is built from the ground up. What would be going in on the fourth floor of the library would be an interim step. It would be done with modular furniture, so it would be easily removed and would not permanently affect the space, other than the Library would like to have one section cordoned off to have some type of a special room up there that could be used as a computer lab. That's something that they're looking at.
4. Len Faulk (Vice President's report, for Mae Reck):
I have several, I think, positive announcements. Let me quickly go through those. One of which is the administrative change in two departments: Philosophy and Foreign Language and Literatures. They have been two departments under one chair for the last few years until Ken Lucey retired and moved. That was an opportunity to bring back two chairs, two departments. Dr. Tom Getz has been appointed chair of Foreign Languages and Literatures for this year 2000, and Dr. Ray Belliotti has been appointed chair of Philosophy through spring 2001. So we now have separate chairs for the two departments. I think that's a great opportunity for those departments in the present and for the future.
We have a number of new department chairs and other faculty in support departments. Let me go through those quickly. Dr. Joan Burke has been appointed chair of the department of English for the next three years. Steve Rees has been appointed chair of the department of Theatre Arts and Dance for spring 2000, while we are looking for a permanent chair in a search. John Hughson has been appointed director of the Media Arts program for spring 2001. Dr. Vivian Conover has been appointed Associate Dean of General Studies. She will continue to retain her position and responsibilities as Director of Academic Advising. Kathy Kilpatrick has been appointed Assistant Director of Grants Administration and Research Services. Scott Sanders has been appointed Assistant Registrar. His main responsibility is to work with departments to implement the Banner program.
Next we have four additional searches going on for full-time replacement lines. That adds to the twenty-eight searches that are currently going on. These four retirements were known about, but we didn't know about the budget until January. Those retirements and replacements are for the planned retirements of Dr. Robert Deming and Stephen Warner. Those will result in replacement lines and searches in English Literature and in Journalism. The Journalism position will be an interdisciplinary search. The planned retirement of Connie Willeford will result in replacement line and a search in Music Therapy. The retirement of Dr. Ken Lucey will result in a replacement line and search in Philosophy.
In presenting a couple of things, one of which is a move of the Learning Center, I wanted Mike Conley to talk about that in terms of the background and the rationale.
Mike Conley: Just to let you know and to reiterate what Dr. Hefner said earlier, the notion of moving the Learning Center to a more central location on campus is not something that's come out in the last six months. It has been with me for the last six and a half years that I've been associated with the Learning Center. I came in in March of '93, and during that next summer we were relocated to Hendrix Hall. It was an increase in space for us at the time.
You should know that from that point on, long range planning for the Learning Center always incorporated at least the idea that the Learning Center would upon a feasible location being identified, move back toward the center of the campus to facilitate the kinds of services that we provide for students. Since that point, we've had the co-location of other services: academic support services and services to students on campus, including the Disabled Student Service office, which was at that time headed by Liza Smith (currently, the Disabled Student Services coordinator is Carolyn Boone, who came to us this past summer). Initially we had the services of Pam Hearst who is a Learning Center advisor who works in the 3-1-3 program. Additionally we have incorporated services, which we provide to the international education program, to the visiting student program, and English as a second language services for international students on campus, and for those students who visit us, the first group will be arriving February 23rd from a university in Japan. Additionally we took on the responsibilities from the Full Opportunity Program. The Full Opportunity Program is an admissions and academic support program that services approximately two hundred and seventy-five students on campus this particular semester. The increase in the numbers of staff, the increase in the number of responsibilities, and the increase in demand for services by students on this campus, particularly with respect to the Disabled Student Services Program, has put us in a position where the amount of service that we can provide is limited by the amount of space that we currently occupy. There are four testing rooms, which were built in the Hendrix Hall site, which now during testing times (midterms and final exams) are at maximum capacity. Overflow has to be taking place in faculty or staff offices at this point.
The amount of tutoring that we have done has been affected by our location. We knew it would be when we moved from the previous site, which was in Gregory Hall on the ground floor. Public Safety was there, and now it is the FSA site. At that point it was necessary to move in order to accommodate the amount of student use. We knew that it would be a problem attracting students to the outer reaches of the campus, a greater problem than it was to the Gregory site. I think we've done a fairly good job with respect to that over the years. The numbers, while they may have reached on occasion where we were at the Gregory site, have not increased beyond that.
One of the factors involved in that that we know, and this is, and I'm reporting to you what students have reported to me semester after semester after semester, is it's too far to go. I tell them it takes me nine minutes, old and as slow as I am, to get from my office to the furthest academic office in Thompson Hall. That's going with the wind. The reality is, for me though, that isn't a real long way to go, particularly for academic support that is available free, which is what I tell them, which is bull. It's not free, it costs a lot of money and you pay for it. We're there to provide it, but if you're not getting it, then it's not doing anybody good, and stuff is getting paid for and it's not being used. As I said, reports are from students and tutors and almost universally accepted is that it's too far to go. While I may disagree, that is still a factor playing in students' minds even if it is only in perception rather than a reality.
It is my judgment and the rest of the people with whom I have talked over a long period of time that a move to a more central location would make us better able to provide the kinds of services that we do to more students to their benefit. That is one of the factors involved in our including a move to a more central site, and the rationale behind with respect to our long-range planning.
Another, and a very serious consideration is this: along with us in the Learning Center is the Disabled Student Services Office under the coordination of Carolyn Boone. Access for students on campus perceived or otherwise, that being a long ways to go, particularly on days like today, is one thing. If you are in a wheelchair as students were today going across this campus to Hendrix Hall, it is a lot further. If you are on crutches, it is further. These are things that we have to consider. The fact is that some students with adaptive mobility devices, whether it be a chair with electric mobility or certain kinds of carts, do not have immediate access to the coordinator of Disabled Student Services, because they cannot get in the building. That is a very strong consideration. Do we make accommodations for that? Yes, we do. We would rather not have to be in that situation, however. There are a number of other things that are factors in this, the primary one being, being able to do what we do as well as we possibly can.
Chair Gee: Mike, the Learning Center is not really on the agenda. I think maybe we should move over to the weeding issue.
Conley: Ok, I apologize for taking the time for that. With respect to that, this is just background for you to have with respect to why people in the Learning Center would want to consider a move to another site. If anyone wants to ask me questions about that later after the meeting or at another time, please feel free to do so.
Len Faulk: Moving the Learning Center to the fourth floor means that books currently there need to be compressed in other places, and, therefore, a discussion of weeding. We have not had a process of weeding per se and we have now had a lot of discussion about how that process would work and I'll call on Randy to detail that. To weigh a lot of issues, let me mention one, as interdisciplinary dean. How do folks in interdisciplinary subjects and overlapping departments get to be a part of review of books? We have under the plan designated faculty to look at designated sections of the library. What we are going to introduce and add to the plan that Randy is presenting is an all-college faculty review. The list of the books that are to be tentatively withdrawn, after the faculty reviewer looks through the list, that list will be typed up and put on the web and there will be a review process. They can go to the web during a two-week period where you can look at the names of the books and the titles and then be a part of the review process. If you see something on that list that you want to check out further, and say this is something that's used, that will be part of the process. Let me just introduce Randy Gadikian to this talk about this process.
Randy Gadikian: Let me introduce this to you. Weeding is a part of the collection development process. It's something that libraries do in order to keep the collection relevant to the curriculum of the institution. Reed Library, at least this particular portion of Reed Library, has never been weeded to the memory of existing faculty at the library and retirees. That covers probably forty some years. When this opportunity presented itself, in other words the opportunity of taking on the Learning Center and providing co-location for it, we were given the opportunity to actually touch these books and process them in some way. This was looked at as a very good opportunity to review this portion of the collection and to see it there were potential items in the collection for weeding. We're faced with moving materials off the fourth floor of the library, and we can do that, but what better time than now to look at those items, to evaluate them for retention or for removal from the collection.
The process that we've outlined has a few specific components to it. First, librarians go through the collection and compare it to the curriculum, to a standard reference work called Books for College Libraries, and also to use patterns. If a book is in Books for College Libraries it is retained. If a book fits in with the curriculum in our judgment, it is retained. If a book has circulated in the last twenty years, it is retained. If we have a gut feeling that, gee, we really need this, we retain it. So, when in doubt, put it back on the shelves. We do not indicate that this is something that could be weeded.
The second step of the process involves faculty review. We have identified, working with the deans and department chairs, several people from departments to review items that have been marked by the library staff for weeding. After that has been accomplished and faculty has indicated that they wish to retain specific works, or they wish to move specific works to the department library, we move to the third phase, where we will take the remainder (those items that have been identified for withdrawal from the collection) and we will put those items in a database, and mount them on the web, so that they are listed and subject to all- faculty review.
Finally, we have the withdrawal phase, where those items not recognized by faculty as being necessary to retain are withdrawn from the collection. Questions?
John Arthos: If hypothetically, books weren't weeded at this point in time, where would those books on the fourth floor be placed?
Gadikian: The entire collection would be compressed. Within the addition to Reed Library we would compress the entire collection, that would result in virtually every shelf being filled. It's entirely possible that we would have to revert back to putting part of the collection in the main Reed Library as well.
Arthos: So you could do it.
Gadikian: It would not be a prudent thing to do. Would it be possible to do it? Yes, but, quite honestly, it would be ridiculous.
Arthos: So what would be the prudent thing to do?
Gadikian: The prudent thing to do would be to review the collection at this time for weeding.
Arthos: So there is a connection.
Gadikian: Between?
Arthos: Between the weeding process and making space for the Learning Center on the fourth floor.
Gadikian: Not necessarily. We would have started weeding in September anyway. We've moved up the timetable. If the Learning Center was not moving at this time, we would have started the weeding process in September of 2000, because that's what you do in libraries. You weed collections.
Ted Steinberg: Approximately how many volumes are you planing to remove?
Gadikian: I really don't know. We will weed what is indicated. What the faculty does not desire to retain will be weeded. You don't go with a specific goal in mind. It's what will remain.
Bill Sallack: Senior, Music Major. So what you're saying is that the process of relocating the Learning Center isn't placing any kind quota on the number of volumes that would have to be weeded?
Gadikian: Not at all.
Michael Grady: How many years of new acquisitions could fit in the library if it was compressed onto three floors with minimal weeding?
Gadikian: It depends on how many volumes you are buying per year. That is really a budgetary decision. It's budget driven. In the last ten or eleven years not a lot of materials have been purchased. I hope to change that.
Karen Mills-Courts: Approximately how many volumes do you have right now?
Gadikian: 420,000.
Mills-Courts: Do we have a sense of how many volumes are on the fourth floor?
Gadikian: About 65,000.
Mills-Courts: So a very small percentage.
Gadikian: About 12-15%. But the review process encompasses approximately 200,000 books. It is the P-Z portion of the collection. That's everything on the second through fourth floor, about half of the second floor and through the end of the fourth floor.
Mills-Courts: Can you explain to me what the problems are with moving volumes back into old Reed?
Gadikian: Problems? It's physical labor. It's a very, very labor intensive process. And mistakes are made in that.
Mills-Courts: But we have the space.
Gadikian: According to American Library Association standards, our library is full right now. The standard is top and bottom shelves empty, all shelves three-quarters full. There are some issues related to that that need to be addressed as well. One of them is a proposed guideline for handicapped accessibility, this is a guideline and not a standard, that the top shelf and the bottom shelf be left empty for people with mobility problems. Look at the top shelf in the library. It's up here, about six and a half feet high. And the bottom shelf would require someone in a wheelchair to have assistance to reach the materials. There are many locations in the library where we are using bottom shelves at this time, a few where we are using top shelves, the bound periodicals, for example, where we are using the top and bottom shelves.
Mac Nelson: I'm not familiar with the book you cite: Books for College Libraries. In fact, Randy, I think I'll come over and take a look at it. It would be my guess that it would probably highlight fairly main-line kinds of stuff by the standards of its publication date. And I worry, particularly in the creative arts, a number of books that might now be regarded as entirely tangential and unimportant might very well get weeded. I remind us all that the works of William Blake certainly at one time were pretty well weeded out of public consciousness and that Thoreau's Walden was an irrelevant book for a very long time. I hope that we will find room for a great many works of the imagination-and that would be regarded as science, social science, and mathematics as well as the fields I am more familiar with. I hope we will find plenty of room for works of the imagination, which don't make that book and haven't necessarily been taken out in the last twenty years.
Gadikian: One of the points that I think I'm trying to make here, possibly badly, is that this process is faculty driven. We have a great deal of opportunity here for faculty input. If you want it, we will retain it.
M. Nelson: So you're essentially throwing it back to us saying, "you may save what you feel you must save."
Gadikian: Yes.
M. Nelson: Thank you.
Neil Feit: I'd just like to point out that some of the books in P through Z are philosophy books, even though most of philosophy is not in that group. The philosophy department is affected by this and I'd like to ask if there is some way to get someone from the philosophy department into the group of reviewers.
Gadikian: I think that would be entirely possible and Neil just volunteered.
Karen Mills-Courts: Is there a reason that you could not circulate a list campus wide as soon as you have identified books. After the first step, rather than weeding the list down more, and then circulating it. Why can't we get the list right away?
Gadikian: What are you looking at?
Mills-Courts: What you have decided should be weeded, the first step. Why can't that list be circulated?
Gadikian: I would prefer that the collection be looked at in context, in which you'd actually see the books on the shelf. Reviewing materials out of context, I think, gives faculty a disservice.
Mills-Courts: It's the title of the book we're concerned with.
Gadikian: Well, no, it's the subject matter. It's the subject matter and not simply the title of the book, but the subject matter. What are the related books in the field?
Paul Schwartz: There's also an issue of duplication, since your list wouldn't indicate that there were duplicates.
Gadikian: Yeah, duplicate issues, perhaps sheer volume. I'm really not sure. But that was not something that we considered.
We're looking at something that's really quite massive, and I don't think a title list would suffice.
Jon Kraus: I have a number of questions. You mentioned a list of a number of areas under review. I'm sure that some degree of weeding is reasonable. Why wouldn't the other areas be weeded? I'm grateful that the discipline I'm in is not at the moment being weeded, but I assume naturally that they would all be weeded.
Gadikian: The rest of the collection will be weeded in due time. Right now we're looking at the P's through Z's because they have not been weeded, and have never been weeded. The rest of the Reed Library collection with a few specific exceptions was weeded around fifteen years ago.
Kraus: I was a little concerned also with two things. There are a lot of areas of social sciences and political sciences as well that are interdisciplinary, and I think that whomever is in charge of this should open themselves up to volunteers from across the departments. An enormous amount of different departments buy books in various areas, they don't just buy books where the Library of Congress designation indicates. I think we need a little more consultation than is indicated. The other thing that I was a little bit concerned with was with regard to the criteria. The idea with regard tp whether it fits in the curriculum. How is that going to be determined?
Gadikian: The people who are doing the initial marking are the library staff who are reasonably up-to-date on what is being taught. Remember we are answering reference questions. We are buying new materials for the collection. Also, we are going to have faculty review. Faculty is going to be able to participate and say, "No, this has got to stay."
Bill Graebner: Do we know what the curriculum will look like in thirty years? And if we don't, how can we predict what books will be useful to us?
Gadikian: That's a good question. I don't know the answer.
Ted Schwalbe: I wanted to ask what the phrase under control policy meant, when you say, "materials to be withdrawn will be processed out of the library." What does that mean?
Gadikian: That means that they will be dropped from our database. They will be stamped repeatedly "withdrawn from Reed Library" and they are no longer part of the library collection.
Schwalbe: But physically what happens with those books?
Gadikian: Any number of things. We cannot sell them for example, although we might be able to sell them to a recycler. Law does not allow us to sell them. We can't sell them to a used book vendor, for example.
Schwalbe: Or to faculty and students?
Gadikian: Or to faculty and students.
Schwalbe: Can you just give them away?
Gadikian: Actually no, you can't give them away. They're sort of SUNY property. Think of old computers, for example. Unfortunately that is an issue that is being wrestled with by a couple of campuses. What do we do with these things? You can offer them up perhaps to other SUNY's as an option. But that creates an additional expense. There is an expense to everything we do here.
Jon Kraus: I wonder if you could wrestle with that question a little bit harder. We certainly on campus have sold things for very nominal sums. In my memory we got rid of a lot of electric typewriters, they were put up for sale, and individuals bought them. They were SUNY property as well. There must be some way finding... your suggesting we can't do anything useful with books except sell them as junk. That just sounds bizarre.
Gadikian: I will take that under consideration.
Penny Chiappe: I have a couple concerns. One is that we're starting up a new program in education and, for example, the reading program has just been reactivated. The use of these books has dropped off for quite a while. We are re-establishing the program and we're hiring new faculty for that program. I have no insight into their minds to know what books they'll consider as essential. Even though I may be able to participate in faculty review, anything with the title reading in it and anything in speech language pathology that might be related to literacy, anything in literature that could be related to educational literacy, my gut instinct will be to keep it all. That's kind of defeating the purpose of the weeding. What I'm concerned about is how to be able to address my concerns for maintaining the integrity of my programs and the future of my programs without undermining what you're trying to do to maintain the integrity of the library.
Gadikian: I can't read the minds of future faculty, I'm sorry. But we can weed the collection to the best of our ability, to do what needs to be done in an academic library.
Bob Schweik: I have a couple of questions. We're talking here about removing from the fourth floor some 65,000 volumes. Those books need to be put somewhere, and by ALA standards the library is already full. Moving even a portion of the 65,000 volumes down to other levels would in fact crowd beyond ALA standards and I can't imagine you're going to weed anything like that proportion. The question is, then, you have a given: the fourth floor must be vacated for another purpose. I'm assuming that is the case, and that leaves you with a conundrum of what to do with 65,000 volumes. I'm afraid that there simply is not that much room available in the library unless you do weeding on a massive scale.
The second concern is that one of the points made in your document has to do with the possibility of moving some of these volumes to departmental libraries, or departmental collections. This I would certainly suggest is not a good procedure. Departments simply are not equipped to deal with and handle a book collection. It's not their business; they don't do it well. There is no clear catalog indicating what is available. In short, when you talk about the weeding process you're undergoing, it seems that it would probably be better not to say much about doing something with departmental collections. That's not really a very useful way to go.
Michael Grady: I wanted to focus on that aspect of not meeting the ALA standards anymore. This doesn't concern you? The library building was build to house this collection, and I assume they chose four floors because that's what was needed to house this particular collection. Isn't it a problem if don't we meet the ALA standards anymore?
Gadikian: I'll be honest with you, I have no idea why the addition to Reed Library was built in the size it was built. If I were giving the task of building a library addition, it certainly would have been much, much larger because the needs of libraries, and the way students use libraries, the way students gather information has changed.
Bob Schweik: I was chair of the committee for that main addition to the library. So I can speak, I think, with some knowledge. The space that we physically wanted was exactly double: 50,000, rather than 25,000 square feet. The reason we're short is a choice not made by anyone here that I know of, but rather by someone in Albany with a bean counter.
Paul Schwartz: I was just going to address a couple of comments earlier. Way back when I was at the University of North Dakota, I was a department chair. The university went through a weeding process, and it invoked the same kind of response that this one is, but at the same time they did put in all these checks and balances to allow faculty to see what it was doing. It eventually became my turn, and I was confronted with a bookshelf with the French books that were going to be discarded, and we were given the option that we could take them for ourselves or bring them back to our department library or recommend that they be weeded. I went in very nervous, and then I looked at these books, and there were some that I did take back for my personal collection (that's an option we don't have), others I took back to the departmental library, but there were a whole bunch of them, too, that I couldn't find any kind of a use for. They tended to be old out-of-date textbooks that I just couldn't imagine anyone finding any use for, and so I said, "Yeah, go ahead and get rid of them." I just offer that as my experience.
Amin Sarkar: Based on the number of holdings that we have now currently, 400,000 to 450,000 books, even if we want to weed out, say, ten percent, that will be a huge problem. Even if we weed out twelve percent of the number formerly mentioned. On the basis of that, if we have say twenty academic departments and if you divide that 12 percent by 20, the number comes between 2,200 volumes to 2,500 volumes. In each department, if they send one faculty member to look at these numbers of books it is a huge number of books. 2,000 books and one faculty has to just look at it and go through it and evaluate it? I suggest the previous recommendation, let us get a list. At least if we get a list of 2,000 or 2,500 books in the department, we can divide the list ourselves in the department. The department has five faculty members, we divide it into five equal divisions and then we can do it very quickly. Then we can have the consensus without looking at the book: these books can be eliminated, and these books we retain. Then if any of us is interested, we can go to the library and physically verify those books.
Ted Steinberg: We've been assured there is no connection between the move of the Learning Center and the weeding process. I'm going to say the Learning Center should be more central and that a weeding process is, indeed, a good idea. But I think a connection has come up and that is that you have to clear the fourth floor, which means a lot of books, that there would be some pressure to weed out more than perhaps you would otherwise. I would suggest we do a careful review and only weed out things that are really unnecessary and find another place for the Learning Center.
Gadikian: Once again, faculty will determine how many books are weeded. That's what it boils down to. As far as the Learning Center is concerned, I welcome this. I look at use patterns as a librarian and I've been a librarian for a long time, and students are not using libraries today in the same way they used them twenty or thirty years ago. If they were, you would see a direct correlation between the number of students in the institution and the use of library materials. When you had more students, library use would go up, book circulation would go up. That is not the case. Book circulation and academic libraries, public and private, have been dropping for a long time, more than a decade. One of the things that we are going to accomplish by moving the Learning Center to the library is we're going to have students physically here. Thousands of students visit the Learning Center. If we have more traffic, there is just that possibility and I think it's a very good one, that students will use the library a little bit more. That perhaps faculty on their way to the Learning Center look in the library and perhaps do something with assigned readings that they're not doing now, or perhaps approach instruction in a different manner than they're approaching now simply because they've been in a library a little bit more. I don't know; the opportunities are here to create an increase in the way the library is used. I look at this as a plus.
Adam Brown: You keep mentioning the fact that this is faculty driven. And if it's the case that there are no restrictions on how many texts and books that one instructor can keep in the library, it only takes one faculty member to say I don't want anything to move and now your whole plan is shot.
Gadikian: Well that's right, and I would hope that faculty would not react in such a capricious matter.
Brown: So what are your restrictions?
Discussion was suspended by a majority vote.
5. Chair Nancy Gee (Chairperson's Report):
First of all, I would like to welcome new senators and guests who are here today, and I also want to remind you again to please state your name before you speak so that we do have accurate minutes. There is a sign-in sheet coming around. For those of you who are new, please make sure that you sign in.
I'll get right down to business. We have some bylaw revision activities that are going to be going on. We have been evaluating our committee structure, and, as a result, we are going to be posing the corresponding revisions. The administration is also working on a similar process and historically bylaw revisions have been very difficult to pass because we have very few people who actually vote. The Governance Committee has addressed this issue and is proposing an amendment, and that was the handout that you all probably picked up when you came in. If you didn't, there is an extra stack down here. Since a member of Governance is presenting this, Charlie Davis is here, it is already moved and seconded. So is there any discussion on this proposed amendment?
The amendment was passed by a unanimous vote.
The other thing is, we have a new parliamentary procedures handout. Dick Reddy has recently drafted this handout. We do consider it a work in progress. Please take a look at it. It is informational only, but we'd love to hear your comments and suggestions. What we're trying to do is just provide a common frame of reference for the entire body.
In a related matter, I would like to appoint the parliamentarian, and Dick Reddy has graciously agreed to do that in addition to his role as the secretary. Also Jefferson Westwood contacted me and he would like to add two members to the Recycling Committee. Since the Senate formed that committee, we need to put that to a vote. The two members he would like to add are Nan Bowser and Jackie Grant. Is there any discussion? Actually, I need a motion to that effect.
The motion was made, seconded and approved unanimously.
One more announcement. There is an academic freedom conference coming up. I sent something out in email, actually Dick sent something out in email. If you need information on that, you can go to the website (the Senate website under reports) and get more information. If you would like the URL, please send me email and I'll send it off to you. Thus ends my report.
David Ludlum unfortunately had to leave, but he did include an attachment. These are two action items that need a vote. If you will turn to the attachment, the first one is a proposed new catalog category called 'DL' for distance learning. Again, since this is put to us by a standing committee, we don't need a motion or a second, and, if there was any discussion you would have to talk to David, who has left. So he asked me to put it to a vote. David said they had discussion last time and that they incorporated the suggested changes in this proposal.
Nan Bowser: I just have a point. Banner is moving to four character subject codes, and I don't believe there will be any fewer than three, so 'DL' would be a move that would look odd on transcripts. We could do it, but it would be nice if we could have three or four characters.
Gee: You can propose an amendment to this. Actually Dick just pointed out we don't need an amendment. That's editorial, so we can change that.
Bowser: The proposal suggests that we limit the number of credits that might appear on the Fredonia transcript. I don't know of a way to limit the number that can appear. We can limit the number that will count toward degree requirements. I guess that would be an amendment. I know of no way to preclude a student from enrolling in a course that exceeds degree requirements, nor do we maybe want to do that. I'm not sure that we have the capability of enforcing that. We do have the ability of limiting the number of credits that can count toward degree requirements.
Gee: Are you proposing that as an amendment?
Bowser: I'm not a member of council.
Michael Grady: I propose an amendment to change, rather than a student's transcript, the number of credits that count toward a student's degree. Also, I don't understand the 15/16. Why don't you just say sixteen? I propose that as well.
The amendment was passed unanimously.
The proposal as amended was passed by a majority vote.
Chair Gee: The second part has to do with the class schedule. Is there any discussion on that?
A motion was made, seconded, and passed by a unanimous vote to resubmit to committee.
Bowser: This means that this will not be effective fall semester.
Gee: That is correct; that goes back to committee.
Ok, we are up to the proposal for policy on consensual intimate relations.
Ted Schwalbe: There are still some items under the Academic Affairs Committee report.
Gee: Those were informational. These are the only two action items.
Schwalbe: If there are mistakes in them, whom should we see? We have no CU courses on campus; those public relations courses should be CM, not CU.
Gee: We'll take note of that. Are there any other corrections?
Jon Kraus: With all due respect with regard to that prior thing we just sent back to committee. That's a huge an important motion, and my memory is the last time it was discussed in Council that it was strongly recommended that the recommendation, the proposal, be sent to departments so that Academic Affairs could get feedback from the departments on something as important as this. I don't recall it coming at least to my department. I don't know if that was done. It really does need to be sent to different departments for their feedback. If Academic Affairs doesn't want to do it, I wish the Deans would do it.
Gee: Would you like to make a motion to that effect?
Kraus: I make a motion that the proposal number two on the schedule changes and classes be sent by Academic Affairs and the Deans back to all departments for consideration and their comments.
The motion was seconded, and passed unanimously.
Kraus: Can I amend the motion I just made? It's friendly; I made the motion. Add, "before it comes back to us again".
Gee: So we're on B, the proposal for consensual relationships and George Browder will be fielding questions.
Browder: Is it possible for me to defer my position to General Education? There is no deadline on this; this may be a contentious issue. There is a deadline on the General Education action that needs to be addressed.
Gee: Would anyone like amend the agenda to move General Education up.
The motion was made, seconded, and approved unanimously.
7c. Cheryl Drout (GCP Committee):
This is a report that I am presenting today. We are asking for a vote on our motion at the next session. First, I'll be beginning with the report. The GCP Committee held a retreat on January 19th. We have had a number of different meetings and sessions since then, and we've developed a timeline for some proposals to College Senate. The revision of General Education requirement timeline was attached to the minutes, and I'd like to highlight a few changes to that timeline. First, let me mention that a couple items have already occurred, which you see at the beginning of the timeline. Moving down to 2/7 - 2/29, we would like to extend that time period to 2/7 - 3/10 and during this period there are quite a few different consultations that will take place. Written materials will go to the chairs of academic departments for feedback, discussion of proposed revisions with chairs and division meetings will occur. Those are specifically scheduled. On 2/16 there is a division meeting among the Arts and Humanities chairs, and on 2/23 there is a division meeting for Natural and Social Science and Professional Studies. Those are scheduled events.
Discussion with students through SA and focus groups will occur. One focus group has already taken place on February 9th. There is another focus group scheduled for February 16th. There is a meeting with Residence Life February 25th and we will be making a presentation to SA in March, probably March 2nd or March 9th. That is not a set date yet. It is under discussion. There will be continued discussion with Academic Affairs administrators. Some discussions have already occurred and there is a meeting scheduled for February 17th with the President, the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, the Deans, and the GCP Committee. That's a scheduled meeting; that's coming up later this week. There will be consultations with the registrar, admissions, advising and the Learning Center, EDP, and other academic support units that are still being scheduled. Those are a number of events that we wanted to alert you to.
We have as a timeline, at least what we have identified as an ideal timeline. On March 1st there will be a discussion of proposed revisions with the joint chairs, and on March 13th proposed revisions will be submitted to the College Senate as information. Between March 14th and April 2nd there will be open hearings with the GCP Committee. We've also extended that timeline. It was originally March 20th to April 7th, and we've extended that to March 14th to April 7th. Our goal is on April 10th to present a motion for proposed revisions to the College Senate. Potentially there will be a vote at that time, with May 8th being an opportunity for continued discussion as needed. This is an ideal timeline that we've set forward, but it's obviously a token timeline that would potentially require revision.
What I'd like to do is move on to the motion that we'd like to be voted on at the next session.
Jon Kraus: How soon will you get details out to the departments?
Drout: Sometime between the 18th and the 21st roughly.
Kraus: Are you sending it just to chairs, or to all faculty?
Drout: No, we're just sending materials to all faculty. We may make some of the materials quickly available on the webpage.
Moving to the update on the request for deferment. President Hefner has already made it clear as far as the status of the deferment. We were not granted the one-year request for a full deferment on adjusting our general education requirements to meet the SUNY Central learning outcomes. What we are proposing at this point is to make some minor adjustments in our current requirements so that we can come close to meeting the learning outcome standards that have been set. We are suggesting that a couple minor adjustments be made. You have the motion attached to the minutes. I'd like to just read through that motion and take any questions for clarification or comments today. We're requesting a vote on this motion at the next session.
The GCP Committee recommends that the College Senate adopt the following two changes in GCP requirements to become effective for students entering Fredonia in Fall 2000, and to be effective until a revised General Education Program is adopted by the campus:
Of the six credits in Natural Science required under part IIA of the current GCP, no more than three credits may be taken in mathematics/computer science (those two areas combined).
Of the six credits of Arts and Humanities required under part IIB of the current GCP, three credits must be taken in Humanities and three credits must be taken in the Arts. There will be one exception to this general rule: if a student chooses to take a course in the Arts under the current GCP part ID by selecting a course in IDc, that student may take six credits of Humanities in part IIB.
Nancy Boynton: Will it be identified in the catalog then which courses are considered Arts and which courses are considered Humanities?
Drout: Do you mean the course-offering bulletin?
Boynton: Yeah, that's it.
Drout: Actually that hasn't been specifically worked out with the registrars' office. I'll certainly talk about that with the registrar and others who will be involved between now and our next session. I would certainly hope that we'd be able to do that to identify to the students and advisors, to have some way of knowing.
Ted Schwalbe: Similar to Nancy's question, how will courses be identified as Arts or Humanities. Will it purely be by department? How will that be done?
Drout: I would think we would be proposing courses that we already have under our part IDc and under our IIB, but the courses we propose are reviewed then by the Advisory Council, so we don't know for sure which of these courses they will allow as Arts courses. For example, we would propose creative writing, which is an English course as an Arts course under part IDc. It's not clear yet whether the Advisory Council who will review these courses for all of SUNY will come back and say that they do not consider the English course to be a function of the Arts. That's an open question until they review the courses.
Ted Schwalbe: So you'll be coming up with a proposal to send to this Council. Will that proposal be reviewed by departments before that gets sent out?
Drout: Actually we're working on that proposal right now, I'm not sure that we have the time for review by departments. It's discussed by the GCP Committee and reviewed by the Deans.
Schwalbe: Will it be reviewed by the faculty that teach those courses?
Drout: No I don't think so. We have a very, very tight time line. Our request for deferment was submitted in October. January 24th we were told that we needed to submit our current program. We've been given about two weeks to do that. It's an extremely tight timeline. We've consulted with the GCP Committee and with the Deans, but we haven't had more extensive consultation.
Ruth Antosh: Cheryl, what are other campuses doing? This seems outrageous that we should be given so little time.
Drout: Other campuses seem to be quicker than we are in submitting their programs.
Antosh: So everybody's been very cooperative?
Drout: Everyone seems to be getting on board. I think most other campuses though are not submitting programs in complete compliance and neither are we. We're trying to get closer to being compliant. If we get about seventy-percent compliance that might satisfy the Advisory Council so that we can go ahead with the other changes we want to make. I think that's the approach most campuses are taking. We're a little bit behind in that we expected to be granted the year to work with. We had signals that we would be; that turned out not to be the case. So in that sense, we're a bit behind. The approach we're taking at this point is very much the same as the approach other campuses have been taking.
Jon Kraus: Cheryl, Since you're going to have to come back on March 1st anyway to clear this out with the joint chairs meeting, why not send the divisions out of courses between Arts and Humanities to those chairs so they know ahead of time?
George Browder: Why? There is no change being made.
Kraus: We're asking for information about how the courses are going to be divided up. Sooner or latter you're going to have to show something to the chairs. Why not send it out as early as possible so they're informed.
Drout: There's a possibility of sharing that information, but our deadline is Friday, March 1st, and we're working under a deadline to get it to the Advisory Council. My deadline is actually this Thursday, I believe, for a meeting deadline for the Advisory Council on February 25th. That's the timeframe we're working with.
Kraus: Consider my comments dead in the air.
Minda Rae Amiran: Isn't actually the case that we're just proposing existing GCP courses. Ted's question seemed to suggest that these courses were going to be a total surprise to the faculty, when in plain act they are GCP courses.
Ted Schwalbe: My question was of the courses that already exist in the GCP IIB, which will be labeled as Art and which will be labeled as Humanities.
Drout: I think I can answer that right now pretty closely. For the IIB area the Advisory Council seems to be taking a fairly traditional approach to the arts, so it would be the Art, Theatre, and Music courses in the IIB area. The courses that would be IIB Humanities will have Anthropology, Communications, English, Foreign Language, History and Philosophy. Then there are the IDc Arts, which are a broader branch of Arts with Dance, Theatre, Music and the creative writing from English.
Patrick Jones: Maybe this is a really stupid question, I just want to make sure I understand this. If under part IDc a student elects creative writing, am I reading this correctly then that they of their six credits under part IIB can take Humanities courses because that fulfilled the Arts requirement.
Drout: Yes.
Jones: So then of these nine credits they never take a course in Arts, Theatre, or Music.
Drout: That would be the case. The creative writing course would be the only one that would result in that scenario. Whether the Advisory Council will look at it that way, or whether other faculty would like to look at it differently it's the committee's choice. We took the approach of trying to make the most minimal change in our current GCP, to simply work with the courses as we have been.
Jones: My follow up question then is, why?
Drout: Why?
Jones: Why, if I choose one those as an Arts course there, why not take another Arts course?
Drout: It's just that in our GCP, creative writing is part of Arts. Our approach is to try to make the minimal change.
Dennis Hefner: I just wanted to commend Cheryl and the GCP Committee. They have been working diligently under very short timelines to put an interim package in place. This would only apply to incoming freshman in next year's class. The following year there is going to be a new GCP program which is the big program everyone has been working with. It wouldn't even apply to transfers next year, because transfers next year would come in under the catalog they started at the community college. So if they started at a community college two years ago they come in under the GCP program that we had published from two years ago. It's only an interim; they've come up with just two relatively minor changes. They are requiring students from science to take a science course. I think that's a good idea, and they have taken the Arts and Humanities, where the system has asked the students to take a course in one of each and they've said OK, we've got an Arts and Humanities six credit, let's split it into two three credits. That will get us in a situation where then we do have the year to continue the work. I just wanted to say I think they've done a heck of a good job.
Drout: I would like to add to that that our motion indicates this will be effective for students entering Fredonia in fall 2000. It would be considered a friendly amendment if we indicated freshmen instead of students.
Chair Gee: We need a motion to continue the meeting for another half-hour. We're supposed to end at five thirty. We can either have a motion to continue the meeting or we can postpone discussion, or we can have a motion to have another meeting.
Mac Nelson: I move that we suspend consideration of the agenda until 4:00 next Monday.
Gee: So you want to have another meeting on Monday.
M. Nelson: That's correct. We have a very large amount of important material to discuss. I don't think we can get it done in a half an hour.
Gee: Can I just point out that that is a holiday and the professionals will be off.
M. Nelson:: Two weeks from today then?
Gee: That's not a holiday and we do have the room.
Karen Mills-Courts: Why only half an hour of discussion?
Gee: We can keep extending repeatedly. We can go a half-hour and another half an hour.
Mills-Courts: I'd like to go home too, but I also think we have very important business, and I'm not sure we should put it off.
Michael Grady: Plus there are a lot of visitors here that may not be able to come two weeks from now.
Gee: Let's first vote on Mac's motion of having another meeting two weeks from today.
The motion was defeated by the majority vote.
A motion to continue until six o'clock was passed by a majority vote.
Larry Maheady: One group that would be affected by the change would be Elementary Early Childhood new freshmen who choose Social Studies concentrations. Many of them use two courses from the humanities toward their concentration, so they'd be limited by that.
Joseph Chilberg: I just ask that when this motion does pass, that you'll find some sort of user-friendly advising tool. It's already hellacious with the old system, now we have other details and mechanisms.
7b. George Browder (Proposal on Consensual Relations):
As you all know, the administration has been kind enough to propose that we have some guidelines to keep us out of trouble. I think we should return the favor, given their track record, to recommend to our chief academic officer that they stay off the ski slopes. There are two motions here. The first is that we adopt the policy recommendation and the other that there be a parallel segment in the appropriate place in the catalog so that our students also avoid complications from this problem. About the motion, the committee was originally put together by people who didn't particularly ask for this job, but the more we started getting into it, the more we realized that this is an important issue. These are not rules; they are guidelines to help people stay out of trouble. The rules already exist. If you violate professional standards, you are subject to penalties. These are designed to help people avoid getting in trouble and violating those standards. We've worded them as carefully as we could. We put special emphasis on trying to propose a procedure, which could provide accused people with as much possible protection and consideration as we could.
Joseph Chilberg: This is an issue of professional standards, as I understand it. I'm wondering if the professional standard of consensual relationships is the problem, or if it is the problem of biased or inaccurate evaluation.
Browder: It's a problem of conflict of interest. The real problem of course is not whether some kind of bias does occur, but whether or not the charge is made, and the institution and the individual faculty member are accused of bias. Obviously, if you are in a position where there is a conflict of interest, you will get charged sooner or later. So the object is to avoid the conflict of interest. If you want to get yourself into a relationship with a student, that's your business. But if it leads to a conflict of interest, that's an institutional problem, it's a professional problem.
Chilberg: So basically you're saying here that faculty, staff, and professionals cannot have a consensual relationship with anyone that they have or would anticipate having a professional responsibility toward or authority over.
Browder: You could have it with someone you might anticipate having such an authority over, but, if you do have that relationship, then if the authority starts to occur, it is your responsibility to prevent it.
Chilberg: If you can prevent such a thing, there is nothing wrong with the consensual relationship per se as long as you don't continue it under the professional relationship.
Browder: That's right.
E. Nelson: Two questions. One, does this include resident assistants in the dorms?
Browder: It includes anybody. We specifically broadened the wording. The original focus was faculty, but then we thought there were an awful lot of people on this campus that needed the guidelines. We have broadened it to include any conceivable person in a position of authority.
Dennis Hefner: Let me clarify that; you probably meant Resident Director. Resident Director is not a student.
Elisabeth Nelson: No; that was my question. Resident Assistants, are they employees of the college?
Hefner: Resident Directors are considered employees of the college and they would clearly be covered under this policy. The AAUP would not include an area such as Resident Assistants, and I wouldn't see this as having that.
E. Nelson: They have authority over students.
Hefner: They have some, they can turn them in for things, but that was not the intent for student to student.
E. Nelson: Are they employees of the college, though?
Hefner: They receive some reductions in room and board.
E. Nelson: They don't get a stipend?
Hefner: I believe they get a small stipend from FSA.
Browder: Our intention here though is to broaden the advice to include anyone who has such power.
E. Nelson: My other concern is the "have had a consensual relationship". What are the limits? It seems as if if you had a relationship and it was over and that person shows up four years later in a class, do you still have to...
Browder: The limits are up to judgment. Basically this is a guideline. If there is any reason for students to suspect that there is some kind of favoritism and they get bad grades... If they don't know some relationship you've had ten years ago... That brings up a point that Mike Grady pointed out, item number five, under guidelines, has an accidental reverse wording. Number five should read like number four. It should read: "College personnel with administrative responsibilities should not engage in any intimate, consensual relationship with any student over whom they currently have authority."
Michael Grady: Number four precludes authority if there was a previous relationship.
Browder: That's right; that has to be changed.
Gee: Are these amendments George?
Browder: Editorial changes from the committee.
"College personnel with administrative responsibilities should not have or have had any intimate consensual relationship with any student over whom they currently have authority."
Ted Schwalbe: Under your definition section, number four says, "an intimate consensual relationship is..." Husband, wife, parent, child, would or would not go under that?
Browder: Good question. I've certainly told my children they couldn't take any of my courses, and I certainly wouldn't want my wife in any of my classes. What you do if that's absolutely something that person has to have to get a degree here at Fredonia, I don't know.
Cynthia Smith: I'm little concerned that you say these are guidelines and recommendations, and then we're told about non-compliance with the policy. Is this a policy? Is this a rule?
Browder: I repeat, this is a guideline. The rules are professional rules that exist external to this institution.
C. Smith: So those policies are in place?
Browder: Universally yes, as far as I know.
C. Smith: I guess my concern was that in this document. If we have policies in place elsewhere, that's different from what you're saying. You're saying these are recommendations and guidelines.
Browder: It's to help faculty understand what the line is and how not to cross it. How not to get yourself accused of conflict of interest.
C. Smith: I understand that. Some of this says they're guidelines and then you're telling me that it's also policy within the same document.
Joseph Chilberg: Under non-compliance with policy, I assume that should say guidelines?
Browder: Actually, it meant non-compliance with professional standards.
Do we want to change that to non-compliance with professional standards rather than non-compliance with policy?
C. Smith: So we already have something.
Browder: Not here on this campus in our Handbook for faculty to refer to. Faculty have asked colleagues for guidance on this, and then were told "Oh, there is no policy on this campus," because there is nothing in writing.
C. Smith: I'm not talking about writing. We have general policies in place. I think what you're doing is setting specific guidelines, but then the policies are already in place and I think they are inappropriate as a part of your guidelines.
Browder: Yeah, but not in our Handbook that I know of.
C. Smith: I'm not saying specific to the sexual relations; in a more general sense...
Joseph Chilberg: Conflict of interest; we have a policy on that?
Browder: I don't think so.
Chilberg: So this is our policy on this conflict of interest.
Browder: I'm not sure that everything in the Handbook is policy. That's not my impression.
Chilberg: We don't have any policy or guidelines on conflict of interest in any of our personnel documents that you know of?
Browder: Not that I know of.
Chilberg: So is it fair to say then that this particular set of guidelines addresses a particular kind of conflict of interest? We are discussing a written document to go into our Handbook.
Browder: This helps faculty understand specific cases that could constitute a conflict of interest. In that sense it's explaining to the faculty who don't know what the professional standards are that we are held to even if we don't have a policy statement or guideline. The question is changing the word policy since it doesn't exist to professional standards, which do exist. Does that solve the problem?
Roger Byrne: The policy statement here refers to the title of the document, which is "policy on sensual intimate relations", so if you change that there it doesn't really make much sense.
Browder: If we change policy in the title to guidelines and then if we change policy under non-compliance to professional standards, it then solves the problem to everyone's satisfaction.
Michael Grady: If there really is a written list of rules published by the American Association of University Professors, why can't that just be made part of the document? What's the reason why that's being hidden from us while we're trying to figure out what the guidelines are?
Browder: Then perhaps we should refer people to that policy and also make it available as a part of material made available to all faculty.
Dennis Hefner: Basically they incorporated about eighty-percent of what Sandra Lewis had as the policy and then the committee added items to it. She took what they had, and then some clarification that she'd seen from other campuses and made it a little clearer. Then the committee took what Sandra Lewis had prepared and made some revisions to that and came up with this particular document. That was the genesis of this. That's what I had asked, that we would compose something that would clearly endorse AAUP requirements.
Michael Grady: Perhaps it should make a reference to the AAUP document, to non-compliance as described in the AAUP guidelines.
Browder: The change we made was to change all the language directed specifically at faculty to expand it to a guideline for any person with professional responsibility. That was the major change we made other than to define more tightly the procedures under which a supervisor would move forward and start questioning about the relationship. It calls for making sure that the person has advance notice as to what is going to be discussed and that the person has an opportunity to bring along someone as a witness to the conversation. There could be no sneak attack or ambush or anything like this.
Joseph Chilberg: Just a little scenario. I'm assuming that anyone on the college campus community could go to a chairperson and say I saw Professor Dokes or Librarian Smith holding hands with one of their employees or students, and that chairperson would then be obligated to do something.
Hefner: They're already obligated. So, yes.
The motion passed unanimously.
Chair Gee: Now let's go to the second part where we're going to charge the Student Affairs Committee to create a companion document for the students that will go in the college catalog.
The motion passed unanimously.
Mac Nelson: There was one other item listed as new business in David Ludlum's Academic Affairs Committee report: to accept the report on the Yom Kippur observance.
Gee: That was already voted on; that was just part of his report.
So we're back to weeding and the proposal.
8. Bill Graebner (New Business):
I'll read the proposal:
The Arts and Humanities chairs are gravely concerned and troubled by the proposed weeding of books from Reed Library for the purpose of creating space for the Learning Center. We request that implementation of this policy cease and that an alternative be found.
Gee: We need a motion and a second.
The motion was moved and seconded.
Karen Mills-Courts: Let me start by saying that I think it's crucial that the Learning Center be centralized as Ted Steinberg said. I would be open to careful and faculty-controlled weeding of the library for that purpose, but I'm not certain that the library agrees to that. I like Randy's discussion about bringing the library more to students. I wonder about accessibility. How come SA has first dibs on the Williams Center. Can somebody explain that? It seems to me that the logical and maybe best place for the Learning Center would be the Williams Center.
Dennis Hefner: The Williams Center is very short on space for student functions. The main goal for the Williams Center is to be a place for students to come. There's no doubt about it. It's supposed to be a student union. I know we've got various items in there in various nooks and crannies, but that's a real concern. Also, I'm not sure there would really be the space and the access to the good space as there would be in some other locations. There are no other spaces on campus at the moment that would fit at this particular time. I hope we eventually look at a new facility that would able to accommodate the Learning Center. At the moment this is the best location-in the library. There are many precedents across the nation where Learning Centers are located in libraries.
The weeding issue to me is almost a specious issue. True, it's probably easier for me because I used to be what was called a weeding monitor under the California State University Chico campus. In my three years in the Economics department, I got stuck being the weeding monitor, which meant once a month I had to go over to a specific room that they had there. They had all the books by subject. I would go in and I could be looking at economics books, I also of course would look at political science books and some of the others. I'd go in and review the volumes. They had a very similar process, in that, if we felt it was something that was absolutely critical we could tag it. Rarely did that happen by the way. The librarians were very careful in what they put out there. Most of what happened was that there would be a second edition, and a third edition, and a fourth edition, and a fifth edition of Samuelson's Principles to Economics. It's just taking up space. We did not need all those editions. The first edition, which is a classic, was in a special collection area. Other than that, that was most of what they were getting rid of. They could go back to the department, and frequently we would ask that they go back to the department . Then it was up to the department to decide how they were going to dispose of them.
Mara Goodman: I don't know if people share this perception, but it seems that these two issues are related. The issue of weeding and the issue of moving the Learning Center. Even though we've been assured that they aren't necessarily contingent or related, I think people seem to have a perception that there is a little pressure associated with the weeding process because of the situation. I'm just concerned about how productive this is going to be. You seem to be talking about the Learning Center, weeding, it seems like there are a lot of issues that are co-mingled that need to be teased apart.
John Arthos: I have another process question for Randy. Will the results of the all campus review be subject to veto by another committee? And if so, will the final results be made public before the weeding actually takes place?
Randy Gadikian: If I understand you correctly, you're asking if there will be any review process of the review process?
Arthos: In other words, when I say that this book should be kept as a part of the all-campus review process, would someone else, or another committee then say, "well we've got to get rid of the book anyway". Then will the results of that final weeding be made public?
Gadikian: That's not something that I anticipate. I don't anticipate that happening. If a decision has been made to retain something, it's going to be retained. If the decision is made that it's going to leave now, it's going to go.
Arthos: You just said something that doesn't answer my question. You said, "it will be retained by ." By whom, I want to know who makes that final decision. It's entirely possible that once the decision has been made you won't have enough books to allow you to create space on the fourth floor.
Gadikian: I'm not worried about creating space on the fourth floor. Honest. OK? If I want to create space on the fourth tomorrow, I'll hire a bunch of students and we'll start compressing things and we'll have a freed-up fourth floor. Creating space on the fourth floor is not an issue for me. It's grunt work. All we have to do is hire people to make the move. The issue is that we have an opportunity; we're going to handle these things anyway, let's review them. Let's do the review now.
Gee: We can't continue to meet here after six o'clock; there is a class in here. We do need to make a decision. We either need to vote on this or we need to postpone.
A motion to table was passed by a majority vote.
8. The meeting was adjourned at 5:58PM
Attendance:
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Ruth Antosh
[x] Joan Burke
[x] Joseph Chilberg
[ ] Scott Johnson
[x] Patrick Jones
[x] Jeanette McVicker
[x] Karen Mills-Courts
[x] Elizabeth Nelson
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Ted Schwalbe
[x] Theodore Steinberg
[x] Jackie Swansinger
[x] Markus Vink
Ex. Officio:
[x] Tracy Bennett
[x] Charles Davis
[x] Michael Dmitri
[x] Len Faulk
[x] Nancy Gee
[x] Dennis Hefner
[x] Arlene Hibschweiler
[x] Jean Malinoski
[ ] Mae Reck
[x] Dick Reddy
[x] Paul Schwartz
[x] Mojtaba Seyedian
[ ] Stephen Stahl
Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies:
[x] Ziya Arnavut
[x] Nancy Boynton
[x] Adam Brown
[x] Roger Byrne
[x] Penny Chiappe
[x] Mara Goodman
[x] Michael Grady
[x] Jon Kraus
[x] David Ludlam
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Jane Romal
[x] Amin Sarkar
[x] Cynthia Smith
[x] Charles Telly
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[ ] Jean Branicky
[x] Carolyn Briggs
[x] Mike Conley
[x] Vince Courtney
[x] Marianne Eimer
[ ] William Jardin
[x] Karen Klose
[ ] Patrick Mandia
[x] Kevin Michki
[x] Charlotte Morse
[x] Carol Schwerk
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Soteris Tzitzis
[ ] Anna Zarczynski
Student Association:
[ ] Andrew Fidurko
[x] Shamus Hayes
[ ] Heather Koski
[x] Emily Palumbos
[ ] Diana Ruiz
[x] Pam Wright
Guests:
Jo Ann Kaufman
Kathleen Loomis
Sue Wilkes
George Browder
Amanda Ferger
Randy Gadikian
Ellen Litwicki
Cheryl Drout
Justin Fegsil
Nan Bowser
Scott Saunders
Neil Feit
Seyed-Mahmoud Aghazadeh
Charles Davis
Joyce Smith
Michelle Carpenter
William Graebner
Minda Rae Amiran
Minutes prepared by Dick Reddy, College Senate Secretary, with the assistance of Michael Anton Sciortino