Minutes of the meeting of April 10, 2000
Chair Gee called the meeting to order at 4:02 PM.
1. A motion by Chuck Telly to amend the agenda by moving new business to the beginning of the meeting so that he could have an opportunity to address issues related to Reed Library was defeated by a majority vote.
A quorum was present and the agenda was approved unanimously.
2. The minutes of the March 13th 2000 meeting were approved unanimously.
3. President Dennis Hefner (President's report):
Well last Friday we had our groundbreaking for the Natatorium. And, if you want to follow the progress of the construction without walking over there to look at it, all you have to do is log on to the Internet. It's under Natcam. And I was looking at it the other day, and they update a picture every fifteen seconds. Here I'm looking and then fifteen seconds later there is this yellow dump truck backing up. It looked exactly like a Tonka truck that my kids used to play with years ago, backing into the picture. It's very exciting to watch. But you might enjoy looking at it every now and then. That's up and running and going.
And it was great to have the Lieutenant Governor on our campus. I was very appreciative that she was able to come here and visit our campus. It's actually the third time she's been to our campus. Once she was here prior to the election, and then she's been here twice since the election. So I think that it's pretty good news to get her out here that frequently. To at least have somebody in Albany in the Governor's office that knows something about Fredonia.
Second item, the Middle States visit was completed last week. This is our ten-year re-accreditation. Some of you may have been at the exit interview. We will be receiving a written report, it's supposed to be here within fourteen days following the Middle States visit. We then provide some input if there are any errors of fact, and then it goes forward to the Middle States Commission. Obviously we are an institution that is going to be re-accredited with no difficulties whatsoever. And I think that a lot of credit goes to Jack and Judy and all the members of the Steering Committee, and the Task Force chairs, and members of the Task Force, put in a tremendous amount of very hard work.
I've read a number of Middle States reports, and I have never ever read a report that had as much analysis and evaluation in it as the report that this campus put together. So I think the campus should feel very good about the job that it did in moving forward on this Middle States report. It was outstanding.
The third item I wanted to mention is that we have a new member of the Board of Trustees. He is a Fredonia alum who will be the student representative for next year. That will be starting either at the June or July meeting of the Board of Trustees. It's a one-year appointment, and that's Chris Holland. You may remember Chris; he was the SA Vice-President here for two years.
The fourth item is just to let you know that the SIFE team again won the regionals. This is the third year running. They were in today, of course, asking for money for the nationals. They got it, and they will be going to the nationals in Kansas City representing our campus during the fourth week of May.
The fifth item is a report that Tracy Bennett was going to give. And he truly did call in this morning ill. He sounded terrible over the phone. And so I'm going to go ahead and give the report. It's in your packet immediately after the agenda. For those that didn't bring it, there are copies up here. The copies up here start with my memo, which is a March 30th memo, the subject is: SUNY Fredonia's 2000 - 2001 State Budget. So I'm just going to go through this very quickly and see if anyone has any questions.
Normally in the budgeting process for next year, this goes through the Long Range Planning and Budget Committee and they would be making a report to the Senate. But the committee has fallen on difficult times. It doesn't have a chair. It only has, I believe, four members at the present time. So I don't think it even has enough to constitute a quorum. So I did meet with the committee; the vice-presidents and I met with the committee last Friday to give them a quick preview, but this will be the official report that will be coming to the campus, this will be the report today, not the one that was done last Friday.
And so, if you would turn past my memo to the first page past my memo are the 2000 - 2001 additions to the budget. What this has in it is a summary of what has come out of the cabinet for what will be the allocation of funds for next year. And our best guess is that for next year the total allocations available will be around $349,000. This shows the priorities that came in from different divisions and then how those are being allocated across the campus. So I'm just going to walk you through it from top to bottom. And if you have any questions along the way or any questions at the end, go ahead and ask them.
Within Academic Affairs we had already committed for four new faculty lines. This represents the three new faculty lines that we talked about last September plus the additional line that was supposedly funded by the legislature last year. As it turned out, that money that the legislature gave us was not permanent, it was one-time money only. It disappears this year. In the meantime we have hired a full-time permanent person into that position because we had been told it was permanent money. And so we need to hard-wire that money up. That's four positions at $40,000, so that's a $160,000 for the four faculty positions. Salary adjustments represent building into the baseline adjustments that came about for changes in job duties for individuals throughout the year. There are always some changes. Most of the changes that appear throughout the academic area and in fact some of the others are related to the implementation of the new Banner System. So there were some adjustments and those are being put in.
The Academic Compensation Plan, Phase I. This represents a three-phase plan that Academic Affairs has submitted which provides some funding for coordinators of different programs. We have a lot of variability across the campus between different kinds of programs. And this is at the end of the three phases will provide, in a sense, a level playing field across the campus. And so the first phase, which is the largest of the three phases, is $23,500. The $10,000 for temporary service funds for Reed Library. This is money that's been provided to Reed for the last eighteen months and this is to expand the library hours. You may recall about eighteen months ago we expanded the hours, about eleven extra hours a week that were put into Reed Library. Those had been being paid out of one-time funds. This will provide some permanent baseline money to be sure that these hours continue in the future. There's fifty percent for a keyboard specialist in the Education Department office and support for some faculty release time. That will be funds that would go to the grant office, and they would be using that. And so that's $224,000.
In the Administration area there are some salary adjustments. They total $5,000. They had their number one priority was for a new grounds person and that was $19,000 and they asked for partial funding for an internal control coordinator. This would in a sense be an internal auditor for the campus to be managing all of our funds across the institution.
Within Student Affairs there were salary adjustments. Admissions postage over the last two years, we've been expanding our recruitment. We have been spending about $25,000 a year out of one-time funds in order to cover just the extra postage that we are going through in the Admissions Office. This has been an ongoing expense. We felt for next year, let's get that hard-wired into the budget and so that $25,000 is to make that a permanent allocation. We don't see a backing off from that effort in the future. There also have been two part-time admissions employees that have been funded from what were called transfer incentive funds. This was money that was going through the system office. We have been notified by the system that we are probably not going to receive those funds next year. This happens periodically. You may recall this last year. There was $109,000 that were monies that had come to the campus out of an interest account that starting this past fall the system no longer allocated to campuses, which basically put a cut in our budget. We have been notified that we are probably going to get a $26,000 cut in our budget. This is money that goes to the system office and now will stick in the system office and doesn't come forward to us. So we are covering those two employees that do exist. They are already real people. And so the only new money in Student Affairs are two graduate assistants that would be over in the Athletics Department.
Then again, Development, there was one small salary adjustment for them. This would be to take our Foundation accountant, we now have an endowment that's over the $10 million dollar mark and as that has been growing it takes more time. We have a part-time accountant now. This would give us a full-time accountant in the Foundation office. One of the commitments that was made by this division is that they will be coming out with regular, timely reports to all of the academic departments on the endowments that you either have built or are building. There have been some complaints, especially from some of the chairs, that you're not getting timely data. This will allow for the quick flow of timely data back to the department chairs.
So, that's a quick way to spend $349,000. It doesn't take very long. But that's what has come forward from the cabinet. And then on the next page, I'm just going to flip to the next page, on the next page it shows how the campus came up with $349,000. What we had, is we had a shortfall this year that is a permanent shortfall of $750,900. That is the third line on this sheet. The original figure that I kept quoting was $840,000, which is correct except within the allocation that we received from the system when all was said and done there was some other little bits of money that came in there. So, we actually got $90,000 more than we originally projected. So that's the difference between the 840 and the 750 if that helps at all.
Anyway we've got a three-quarters of a million dollar problem that we needed to take care of for next year. We will be receiving, our projection right now is we'll receive $29.194 million s and last year we received $28.3. So we are expecting to have $820,000. This is growing by a hundred FTE next year. We do have a slightly different mix. We'll have more students moving into upper divisions, which gets us a little more money. We also have a thirty-three percent increase in graduate students. They generate considerably more money and so that's why we are expecting to be up by $820,000. We will use $750,000 of that to cover the shortfall. That left us with $69,800 to expense this year and we'd already committed to a $160,000 for faculty positions.
So the decision that was made at the Cabinet was that we would take the one-percent reserve that we have and allocate that now. That will still allow us to have to carry forward funds, which we will be very careful with in terms of distributing. We will have carry forward funds that are going to be approximately $300,000. We will have those available, but we won't have the one-percent reserve that we've built over the last three years. We are going to get rid of that. We will at least have the carry forward next year which we didn't have this year at all. We'll have that for next year. Then what we will do in the next two years, at least this is the plan now, is we will then rebuild this one-percent reserve. About $140,000 now off of top of the growth money next year and a $140,000 the following year to get back to that one-percent reserve. We felt trying to put it all in in one year would just be devastating to the campus and slow down our progress too much. So that's the plan, and that's what's come forward. And if there are any questions, let me answer them.
Jon Kraus: What's the $350,000 you carried forward? Where does that come from?
Hefner: Basically that comes from several different accounts. There are always little bits of money here and there that aren't spent in accounts or that don't get spent in time. Those all get scooped up at the end of the year and we put them in a central pocket. So those dollars are part of it. Also, the money that is saved is then put into a carry forward for next year.
Kraus: Does that include IFR accounts? The carry forward money that...
Hefner: No, all of the IFR carried forward is separate. That stays in the IFR account. This is money that was already out of the IFR account and expended.
Joseph Chilberg: Is there the possibility is for a better budget this year that might create some more gravy our way or some other kinds of decisions pending?
Hefner: Yeah, there are several possibilities for some more money. This is money that we think is pretty certain. If it's going to be off it'll be off $50,000 to $100,000 when the legislature makes a final decision. So, it could be off slightly, but not very much. But there are two other requests that we have in that could yield some additional funds and give us more flexibility next year. One is we've asked for money for mission review. That's not baseline money, that's one-time money, but we have asked for $500,000 over each of the next four years. So that would be $2 million in one-time money over a four-year period. And we've had that request in for a little over a year now. And we have been told by the system that they may get around to allocating it before the end of this semester. So we are still hopeful that we will be receiving some money from there. And that, of course, would give us some more flexibility.
The other that, quite frankly, I think is even more important is a permanent adjustment in the RAM. I have been saying for three and a half years and have been writing letters continuously that the RAM greatly underfunds us in the area of music. When the RAM formula was put together they take the cost by discipline and they average it so that our music conservatory approach is averaged with other schools basic music appreciation approaches, and as a result the funding for music... music isn't even considered a high-cost program in SUNY. Well, our music conservatory program is more expensive than any engineering program that I've ever seen on campuses that I've been on. And it is, excuse the expression, a sinkhole for the college. It produces great students, but it is not cheap. And I've been arguing strenuously that we need an adjustment. It's part of our mission. We are expected to have a music conservatory program, and if we're going to have that kind of program, let's get an adjustment that recognizes the money that we're spending on that program. If we get an adjustment on that, that will be baseline funding. The system has committed this spring that they are going to review that and that they will get back to us before the end of June. I am hopeful we will get an adjustment. They have not committed that they will make any adjustment. They could come back and say we are never going to make an adjustment. But my hope and expectation is that we may get some additional funding. The minimum that I've been telling them we should have is a minimum of $800,000 and I could document that and have documented it for over three years now.
4. Mae Reck (Vice President's Report):
You have attached to your agenda the report of the Library Advisory Committee. These are the points that I would like to make in regard to this. In the future that this committee will be appointed in consultation with the College Senate Executive Committee. The committee will be making two formal reports to the College Senate twice a semester. You can see the composition will be consisting of the University Librarian, three faculty from Natural and Social Sciences and Professional Studies, three faculty from Arts and Humanities, three librarians, and three students (two undergraduate and one graduate) and that there will be three-year staggered terms for this committee.
Jan McVicker: I was just curious why interdisciplinary programs are not represented on the committee. Is there a reason for that?
Reck: I guess I would hope that this would happen within the two divisions.
McVicker: I would hope so too, but we do have an Interdisciplinary Studies Council....
Reck: Would you like to make a suggestion....
McVicker: I would like to make a suggestion that there be rep that would represent either interdisciplinary majors or minors, or somebody from the Interdisciplinary Studies Council because those programs don't typically have library budgets and it's really crucial that they have a say.
Reck: We will add one person then for that.
Jon Kraus: Usually the composition of this committee is organized with the Executive Committee.
Reck: Yes.
Kraus: As I recall, at the last meeting it was suggested that you want this committee be advisory to the Librarian.
Reck: That's the way it is stated currently.
Kraus: If it's to be advisory to the librarian, why do you have the librarian as chair? It's sort of like it's advisory to itself.
Reck: Well, I think the University Librarian is responsible for the library. He is or she is, whoever it might end up being. But the thing is that this is the committee that does advise, you know, us in terms of our library usage. And the library has to, I think, you know, receive the information input and make good use of input of that Advisory Committee. I would expect it would be the University Librarian who would report this to the College Senate.
Jane Romal: Well, I agree with Jon. Can't we change it? I was on the Library Committee for years, and it seems like we had a faculty person or somebody elected from the committee. The director of the library came to the meetings and filled us in. If Planning and Budget is advising Dr. Hefner, he is not chair of the committee.
Reck: Well, I can meet with the University Librarian. I mean it would then all of a sudden be the responsibility of a person on that committee to organize the meetings. It would fall to somebody then, whereas the university librarian does have resources and staff to help organize that.
We have two name changes in terms of departments. The chair of the Art Department has submitted a name change from "Art Department" to "Department of Visual Arts." It is the department's belief that this new name would and help distinguish it from other departments on campus in the arts area.
And the second name change comes in the area of the Learning Center. They will be making a change in terms of the area of "Disabled Student Support Services" to "Disability Support Services for Students." Are there any questions about those two name changes?
There are two other things here that are not on the list of my items here. I wanted to also give recognition to the School of Education. I guess everybody is aware that all of the programs have been submitted for re-registration. That was a great effort and I wanted to give credit and thanks to everyone involved with that. I know a lot of departments were involved and especially to director Julius Adams and Greg Harper. They were leaders in that effort. So thank you very much!
And, also, just a brief update on our recruiting of our faculty positions. We are being very successful. We originally had 28 positions. That sort of mushroomed into 35 because we had some late retirements and so forth. We have hired now 21 new faculty. We have three offers out there. So we still have searches, of course, still going on.
Paul Schwartz: Four.
Reck: Four offers now? OK. It changes every minute.
5. Nancy Gee (Chairperson's Report):
In terms of my report, the only thing I really have is that I would like to announce, and I sent out an email to this effect today, that we are going to have a special session of the Senate one week from today in this room at four o'clock. That is with the sole purpose of discussing the GCP, so it will be a very short agenda.
6. Moj Seyedian (Faculty Senator's Report):
I guess our university's college is not alone with its frustration with the GCP, frustration with the process of implementing a new general education program. However, Binghamton, I guess, has had it. They are very upset and they have finally written a letter and sent that letter to the Provost and also to the committee that advises the Provost on General Education, and another copy also to the Executive Committee of the SUNY Senate and also they copied all the governance leaders across SUNY. They are very concerned about the timeline for the implementation of the program and concerned about the intercedeness of the process of approval of the General Education Program. And they are asking, they are actually urging the support of all the university's colleges with respect to their cause. They have given an ultimatum to the Provost and they are saying that if they do not hear by April 17th a written response, a written reaction, from the Advisory Committee, they will go back to their current GCP Program. So that is my report. I don't know, I guess, we could make some resolution to support them.
George Browder: They actually asked for even more than that. They actually asked the campuses for a motion for SUNY-wide college response to the Senate. Our illustrious leader in the Senate, Joe Flynn, bargained away our curriculum conference last year. He said he is now waiting for us to ask for some more action. You may remember that George Sebouhian suggested that we all simply refuse to obey and I said that was nonsense. At this point it may be that the rest of the schools are now ready to stand back together in registering some kind of complaint. If that's so, a motion to that effect from us instructing the Senate that we would like to see it register such a motion might start a snowball rolling. I have proposed a very long-winded motion and there wouldn't be much use to try to read it to you, but I am not sure that I can get it up on the Elmo:
Whereas the Board of Trustees has undermined the responsibility of the faculty for the curriculum by unilaterally mandating a major SUNY-wide 30 hour general education component for all baccalaureate degrees;
Whereas they have imposed an inflexible and totally disruptive deadline of fall 2000 for its implementation, rendering impossible appropriate faculty consultation in the implementation of this mandate;
Whereas the chancellor and the Provost have failed to take such sufficient action to protect the SUNY system and its students from the consequences of such a disruptive mandate;
Whereas the faculty have made every reasonable effort to develop on their campuses general education programs that are in compliance with the Provost's Guidelines for implementation; and
Whereas delays in the review and approval of these efforts at the level of the Provost's office may require last-minute changes of significant nature that may totally disrupt fall semester course offerings and discredit the professional image of each campus in the eyes of incoming students and their parents;
We, the Senate, representing the faculty and staff of the State University College at Fredonia, call upon the Faculty Senate of the State University to issue a proclamation to the effect that:
1. the faculty of the State University of New York cannot accept the responsibility for the implementation of such a disruptive policy;
2. no SUNY campus should further disrupt its currently planned fall schedule to accommodate implementation and thereby jeopardize the professional quality of its planned curriculum; (in other words, whatever each of us has put into effect for the fall, even if the Provost's Advisory Committee does not like it, it cannot be changed at this late a date)
3. and the faculty of the SUNY system will only participate in further efforts to create SUNY-wide standards (that's a reference to going on to full implementation) when the Board of Trustees, the Chancellor and the Provost have agreed upon a reasonable timetable and a professionally appropriate consultative process that recognizes the professional competence and responsibility of the SUNY faculty for its curriculum.
I don't know if this would have any effect at all, but if somebody would like to move it...
Ruth Antosh: If I could ask a point of information... Is this resolution coming from the committee or from the university...
Browder: It comes from me personally.
Gee: It is a reaction to this Binghamton letter, which Moj presented.
The motion was made and seconded.
Mac Nelson: Motion to amend. The word "and" at the beginning of the third clause is really awkward. If you want it at all you can put it after "curriculum" at the end of the second or just cut it. Without it I think it is better.
(The suggested change was taken as a "friendly amendment.)
Charles Telly: George, what about making number two and number three a little clearer? I don't think they are clear.
Browder: OK, what would you suggest?
Telly: I haven't had a chance to think about it.
Nancy Boynton: This is really pertaining, for the most part, to what goes on for fall semester?
Browder: No, it's pertaining to both. Both to fall semester and further implementation of the guidelines.
Boynton: And for fall semester, we still don't know...
Browder: For fall semester, we still don't know how they're going to respond to our provisional.
Boyton: OK.
Browder: Meanwhile we are trying to get into effect a very disruptive change for fall of the following year.
Boyton: Yeah.
Browder:...about which none of us feel comfortable in terms of the long-range implications. We are essentially demanding a much more reasonable timeline. The Board of Trustees has just been hardheaded about this. You will do this this fall, period. We might give a few waivers for minor details, but that's all.
Mac Nelson: I share with George doubt that this will have much impact, but if it is what we believe, and it is, indeed, what I believe, then it seems to me a very good thing for us to say it, whether it is heard and responded to or not and I urge its adoption.
Telly: The other reason that I think we should support the Binghamton people is we are going to want their support later on and if we let them just stand there and we don't show our good faith....We need them as they need us.
Browder: But this isn't in support of Binghamton. This is an effort to get the Senate to speak for the entire system to protect us all. This has nothing to do with the Binghamton letter. We are not sending this to the Board of Trustees ourselves like Binghamton has done.
Telly: So this is going to the Senate?
Browder: Yes, it's going to the Senate to ask them to pass a motion or a resolution to say, "Stop, we will not go any farther."
Nancy Gee: George, is it going to anyone besides the Senate?
Browder: No, as it's worded now, we just send this to the Senate.
Roger Byrne: When is the next Senate meeting?.
Browder: April....
Moj Seyedian: 27th.
Browder: 27th. So this is the only chance to act this year.
Nancy Gee: Actually, that's not correct. We are having a special session....
Dick Reddy: George is talking about the session of the University Senate.
Jon Kraus: Do you assume that if you send this to the Senate that informationally it will also get to the Provost and others on the...
Browder: Oh, I'm sure they'll hear about it, yeah.
Bob Rogers: Is there a reason to only send it to the Senate, and not send it to all these others schools?
Browder: To the schools? It might be a good idea, you might want to instruct your chair to use the CGL list to make sure that everyone in the Senate in the system knows we are sending forward a motion like this, so they might decide whether or not to support it.
Joe Chilberg: What's the signs of other institutions making similar or equally stand-up type moves?
Browder: I don't know. That's one reason why I say we should not send this directly to the Board of Trustees and stick our neck out.
Nancy Gee: I haven't gotten anything on the CGL list today from anyone else. But just to point out, we are having a special session on Monday, so if we want to consider it and make a decision on Monday, we could then act on that on Monday as an option.
Browder: When I was on CGL it was just general grumbling and frustration. But everybody had buckled as you well know. What I'm suggesting is now that everybody has reached pretty much the same point we have. They now may be ready to fight back.
Markus Vink: On a somewhat related issue, why don't we also send a letter of support to Binghamton? That's a suggestion.
Browder: Why not?
Telly: Sure, I agree with him. I think we should support Binghamton. We're hoping that they'll support us if we need it later on. It feels that if they've asked for support, the least we can do is show some kind of solidarity.
Browder: That's what this is doing. It is going to the Senate.
Telly: I understand, but it's not going to Binghamton.
Browder: If you want to write a letter that we support you, go ahead. Do it, fine; this is not what I'm proposing.
A question was called and the motion to close debate passed unanimously.
The motion was passed unanimously.
Gee: Moj, did you have anything else?
Seyedian: No.
Karen Mills-Courts: Moj, you said that Binghamton has asked for a written response by the 17th of April?
Seyedian: Yes.
Mills-Courts: What do they want in that response? What is the nature of response they're asking for?
Seyedian: Well, they have come out with a complete general education program and they have to know whether it's OK and they haven't received any recent responses.
Chuck Telly: What do they want from us?
Seyedian: They want from us to support them in their giving of an ultimatum to the system that they will go to their current GCP if they don't hear in writing from the Provost and his people about their proposed program because it takes time for them to consult within their own committee and then get it approved through their own Senate. It takes time and the summer is coming.
Roger Byrne: Moj, will you be able to bring this motion to the Senate floor at the next meeting?
Seyedian: We have a usual session in every meeting that we have. It is called "sharing of concerns session". While we are there I can present the motion and then what happens is that after everybody agrees on the complaints, the set of complaints (and this would be one complaint), then we will have the Chancellor there and we ask the Chancellor to respond.
Cheryl Drout: Just to add some additional clarification. It's my understanding that the Provost Advisory Council on General Education plans to meet on April 24th and, I believe, subsequent to that, around April 30 make a report to the Provost. Then the Provost has to act upon the programs. So, with the current timetable, I believe, none of the colleges would know if they had approved or disapproved programs until after April 30th.
Chuck Telly: So if we make a motion to support Binghamton, then you can take it to the Senate?
Seyedian: Yeah.
Telly: That's not direct to Binghamton.
Seyedian: I think that Binghamton is a peripheral issue. The main issue to let the Provost know of the problem that exists. He gets one letter from Binghamton. One letter from us, then maybe he comes to his senses.
Bob Rogers: What was passed was not going directly to the Provost is it?
Gee: No, it's going to the Senate. That's what we passed.
Rogers: Is there any way to find out if the Senate wants to send something either directly to the Provost or..... That's what Chuck's talking about now. Who's supposed to get this? It seems to me that it would be much better to smack the Provost right in the face with it than have him find out about it round about. Because if you take him directly on, he's going to know that people mean business. Now it is just going to be people are skulking around dark corners....
McVicker: I wanted to thank Nancy for forwarding Binghamton's letter on email to all the faculty. They copied Provost Salins, Joe Flynn, and the University Senate as well as all SUNY campus governance leaders and I would recommend that since we are addressing our resolution to Joe Flynn of the University Senate, we might copy Provost Salins and the SUNY campus leaders. That way Binghamton will know and so will the Provost.
Gee: I agree to do that.
7a. David Ludlam (Academic Affairs):
You have copies of my report in your minutes. Are there any questions?
7b. Charlie Davis (Governance Committee):
There are two things I wanted to discuss with you.
One is, a little while ago we made an amendment. This is in the report that we had a bylaw change. Simply put, we were not getting the statement here in italics that provided that at least one-third of the faculty return their ballots and that is holding up the governance process in making any bylaw changes. The last time we approved this. It went into a vote and the good news is the vote was 2:1 in favor of this motion. The bad news is we didn't get the one-third. So we can't change the bylaws because we couldn't get the participation. To make a long story short, here we are again, so I'm making a motion that we remove the part that's in italics from section two under ratification so that it would read as the text shows here minus provided that at least one third of the faculty return their ballots. It would still be a two-thirds vote.
Ruth Antosh: What if you only have maybe three people returning their ballots? I sort of worry about too small a number.
Davis: That is a possibility, I don't think it is a probability. We went back and looked at the number that returned. We're getting about twenty-eight percent to about thirty percent on all issues. We're not getting the ones, twos, and threes. So, in a sense, I think it's worth the chance that that wouldn't happen since we're getting twenty-eight to thirty percent return now, but since we don't get the third, we can't pass anything because of the participation.
Roger Byrne: If you're getting that amount of participation, why don't you make it at least one-quarter of faculty return their ballots?
Davis: We can do that. I mean last time we passed it as is, that's why I wanted to throw it out. Our problem is we have to find a point at which we get that amount of participation, otherwise we can't make bylaw changes. So, if you'd like to amend that to make it twenty-five percent or fifteen percent or eight percent or whatever feel free to do so.
Byrne: I'd like to amend it to read at least one-quarter of the faculty return their ballots.
The amendment to the amendment was passed by a majority vote.
Full text of amendment as amended:
Article VII Section 2: Ratification
At the discretion of the College Senate, proposed amendments shall be ratifies either by mail ballot, where ratification is to occur upon receipt of affirmative votes equal to two-thirds of the number of faculty who return the ballots, provided that at least one-quarter of the faculty return their ballots; or at a meeting of the faculty, provided that at least one-third of the faculty is in attendance, ratification to occur with an affirmative vote equal to two-thirds of those present and voting. Changes to the language of these bylaws to reflect current divisional structure should be ratified with a majority vote of College Senate provided that such changes preserve correct proportion of representation by Division.
The amendment as amended was passed unanimously.
George Browder: It might help if the senators sort of beat up on all of their collegues and tried to get them to vote this time
Charlie Davis: I would urge that.
The next point is that in the bylaws it states that the votes would be done by mail. What we've done is we've set it up so that we can do this by email now, which would make this much more efficient. But the problem is it says in the bylaws it is to be done by mail, and at the time that that bylaw was passed it did not include email. So I'm making a motion that in order to expedite possible ratification of the proposed bylaw amendment, that the ratification vote be done via email ballot. Ballots would be sent out via email to all voting faculty no later than Friday, April 14th and must be returned via email no later than Friday, April 28th. So that's my motion. We'd like to do it by email.
Michael Grady: What's the controls on email as far as multiple voting and that kind of thing as opposed to paper ballot?
Davis: When you email those back it's identifiable, which is another question or issue, I would imagine. If you really wanted to be anonymous, then paper ballot is the only way to do it. Yet that can also be debated that that's not really true because a lot of times when you get it back there's the mailing address there's the mailing address on it anyway. The way it's set up now all email would go back to Theresa who is helping us in this process. So you're automatically identified and she would have a checklist, so you could only vote once.
George Browder: With mail ballots you can counterfeit; all you have to do is Xerox the ballot.
Davis: The email obviously goes directly to the individual. It will be simple. It will be "vote for the following." It will be split by division, which electronically makes it very efficient. But it would go to you directly and come back. There is a control in terms of when you send it back right now I know of probably no way that the average student would be able to do that, know what's counterfeit or whatever. Now that you've brought it up, however... But I think it's time to move in that direction. That's why I'm making the motion.
Joe Chilberg: Although the issue of anonymity is not likely under the circumstance, can we ensure confidentiality of votes?
Davis: Yes, to the integrity of Theresa. She would count them. She would keep them. What we do on all votes because if there is a question we would want a hard copy, but she would then give those to me, and there would be no other record other than as there is with paper ballots now, we do still keep all of them for hard copies.
Chilberg: That would be understood then?
Davis: It is between the two of us.
Chilberg: OK.
Arlene Hibschweiler: I'm not sure I'm following exactly what you're proposing Charlie. It seems to me that if you're saying it says "shall ratify by mail ballot", if you're saying that doesn't mean email, then it seems to me what we're really doing is amending the bylaws to say that mail means email, in which case we would have to go through the amendment procedure. So is this simply a clarification of existing language? We're all agreeing that mail means email or...
Davis: Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doing. Otherwise it would have to be a bylaw change, which right now we can't make because we can't get the participation and we can't put people on committees until we do that. I don't want to send it out and then have a lot of people upset because we've gone off and gone email, which is still mail, but...