Today, Phil Knight Library, Room 101 3:00 ‐ 5:00 pm
Some live notes: (My interpretation of what speakers mean, not their own words!)
Lorraine Davis talks about OIEB benchmarks, then announces she is leaving the Senate meeting, but wants to say something about emeritus policy first. Why doesn’t the provost even bother to stay for the Senate meeting? An in your face commentary on the weight JH puts on shared governance.
Wants to call emeritus parking “subsidized” rather than free. Will that logic extent to the athletic department budget? Announces she and Jamie will look more at parking issues – including subsidies for jock box and Matt Court garage? What do you think? Now she’s lecturing the faculty about sharing their parking permits with family – it’s a privilege, don’t abuse it, children. My god, have you no shame, madame?
She went on long enough that there’s time for only one question – about admin petition about the bargaining unit.
Her answer: admin is neutral about existence of a union, but objects to this specific bargaining unit.
3:25 Next up: Pernsteiner. He’s not twitching this time. They’ve accumulated a pool of candidates. If you are thinking about applying or nominating someone (Bean? Frohnmayer? Moseley?) now is the time.
3:35 Glen Waddell on change to Intercollegiate Athletics Committee charge. The background on this: Berdahl wants to weaken the IAC, and objects to the current charge because it gives the faculty and students too much power over athletics department. Berdahl’s emails are here. Current charge here. UO has told the NCAA that the IAC provides “student and faculty oversight“. Berdahl wants no oversight. Loss of institutional control? Now Sonja Runberg, an OA from Academic Affairs, moves to table motion and refer to C on C. Hubin put her up to this. JH is very scared of any faculty student oversight of athletics. Hubin goes on to stall for a bit with irrelevancies – sort of rude wasting the Senate’s time – 20 minutes so far… BTW – where’s Berdahl? President doesn’t even need to show up for Senate meetings? Bonine: Watershed proposal, this is a power grab by our administrative overlords. Vote no on the motion to stall this by sending it to the C on C. Ben Eckstein: admin is stalling. Dev Sinha: thinks Berdahl will back down on a change in charge this small. Runberg calls for a roll call vote: Berdahl wants to know who’s on his side. Bonine calls Runberg out on this: is a division OK or do you need to have a list of names for your boss? Runberg folds on names, the administration’s efforts to stall on this simple change, having taken 50 minutes of Senate time, passes and now goes to committee to waste still more time. Another successful administrative effort to sabotage faculty governance.
4:25: Policy on Emeriti. Sorry, I’m going to go light on this and check my facebook. Mooney: The admin has been stalling, please vote yes and get this done. And after a quick wording change, it is done!
4:35: ASUO update: Ben Eckstein: While election incidents are serious, ASUO government will survive and will stay autonomous. Frances Dyke had been overcharging ASUO on overhead (and using the money to subsidize the Jocks) this week they got $100,000 back. Nice work.
4:40: Emilio Hernandez on respectful workplace proposal. Staff/OA, maybe an ombudsman?
4:50: UO Truth Commission (student group) on Robin Holmes’s recent changes in OMAS/CMAE. The services are for students, they would like to have a voice in changes, ask Senate support.
4:52: Ben DeJarnette some “student-athletes” are complaining that they have to miss too much class for sports and that their professors are not sympathetic. IAC will study this.
4:55: Frank Stahl says he was going to bring a motion asking for evaluation of UO administrators, but thinks UO Matters is doing a fine job with ad hoc evaluations.
Adjourned.
4/11/2012: It’s going to be a while before OUS board chair Matt Donegan and Governor Kitzhaber accumulate enough testosterone to show up in public on the UO campus again. In the interim they’ve been sending George Pernsteiner down to update us on the progress of their search to replace Richard Lariviere. Lots of other interesting topics on the Senate agenda as well, starting with an opportunity to ask Lorraine Davis why she rehired John Moseley as her $248,000 “Special Assistant to the Provost”, or why she had to fire CIO Don Harris before Jim Bean got back from his sabbatical. Or maybe she’ll even tell us how Bean spent the tuition money that the academic plan said would go to hire 100 new TTF. But probably not.
Senate Agenda for 4/11/2012:
3:00 1. Call to Order 1.1 Approval of the minutes of the March 7 meeting 3:05 2. State of the University 2.1 Remarks by Lorraine Davis, Acting Provost and Senior Vice President 2.2 Questions and comments with response 3:20 3. Open Discussion 3.1 Update on Presidential Search; George Pernsteiner, Chancellor 3.2 Questions and comments with response 3:40 4. New Business 4.1 Motion on IAC Membership; Glen Waddell, IAC Acting Chair 4.2 Retirement & Emeriti Policy; John Nicols and Jim Mooney, Co-chairs; Tenure Reduction, Retirement and Emeriti Committee 4:15 5. Reports 5.1 ASUO Report; Ben Eckstein, ASUO President 5.2 Respectful Workplace Ad-Hoc Committee Report; Emilio Hernandez, Chair 5.3 OEIB Achievement Compacts Subcommittee Testimony; Robert Kyr, Senate President 5.4 IFS & OUS Leadership Caucus; Robert Kyr 4:40 6. Announcements & Communications from the Floor 6.1 Concern regarding changes to the Center for Multicultural Academic Excellence; UO Truth Coalition 6.2 Motion regarding student athletes and sports scheduling; Ben DeJarnette, Student Athlete 6.3 Motion regarding shared governance & job postings; Frank Stahl, Professor Emeritus (Biology) 5:00 7. Adjournment
Ok… let’s call this what it is. The Hubin/Administration-motivated move to push the IAC motion to the ConCs is likely a setup to allow Berdahl some cover when he ultimately decides to veto the Senate’s will to add a student to the IAC.
The Senate is an embarrassment. Fifty minutes on the IAC motion — whose sole purpose was to give Berdahl a black eye. Sad.
Agreed!! Just reading the play by play–so childish. This is either the reason the admin prefers not to give real decision-making power to the Senate. Or, even with decision-making power, this is the petty useless b.s. to which the Senate chooses to devote its time. What we really need folks is some new blood on the senate ballot this time around: out with the old-fogies, the “who can piss higher” guys, the math and econ geeks, and in with some new blood committed to taking up serious issues and actually finding a way to resolve them.
Anon 7:39: Yea. It would have been better for the IAC to keep us in the dark on the context. They should have just let us vote to add a student without telling us that Berdahl was opposed to the change. Yea, that would have been so much better.
Anon 5:39: The majority of that time was spent on the motion to send the issue to the ConC. (Where are those emails that were read? Can someone post a link?)
now added in post
On IAC issue, what a pitiful deferral to admin, Berdahl and the defenders of atrophy. How about stirring this power system up a bit – c’mon union!
On the bargaining unit issue: neutral, yea, right. Classic Frohnmayer play with loyalists in court – he is no doubt rubbing close with his friends making thousands every day at Harrang, Long, Gary, Rudnick.
Why should I care how much Frohnmayer is making or who he’s “rubbing close” with? How is focusing on those issues going to make the UO better? These union antics are getting tiring…
Because you don’t care about cronyism at UO?
Not to answer for Anon 6:51, but: because it’s a massive distraction. Makes ya’ feel good, all high-and-mighty. But contributes nothing to identifying or solving any problem we currently face, and there are many.
“c’mon union!”: Excuse me, but a union has the legal right to negotiate pay, benefits and working conditions. It cannot have any role outside of these in University governance (unless perhaps we change our constitution). Conflating these two issues means people are going to be very disappointed – no big raises until Governor Mustache sez so (maybe pay distributed more evenly…), no additional say in academic or other matters, 1-2% pay out the window to our comrades at union central, extra layers of administration in HR,… yeah “c’mon”!
I also hear from a colleague on a unionized campus that the Chief Legal Officer (or whatever it is called) plays more of a role in tenure and promotion etc. Woo-hoo! Sign me up for “Provost Geller”!
I’m sure a high-quality new President would just love to work with “Provost Geller.”
As I overheard my students say last year before their final exam: “OMG we’re f****d!”
So what exactly did Waddell propose?
The powerpoint wasn’t legible from your corner of the room? (Next, 6:28 will be asking what’s on the exam and if there is anything he can do to raise his C- to an A.)
Adding one more student member. Unspeakable. Meanwhile Berdahl had threatened to dissolve the whole IAC or cut it to 2 faculty, for asking too many awkward questions.
Will somebody tell me why anyone should care whether or not one more student member is added to the IAC? Why is Berdahl being vilified, demonized even, over such a triviality? You take it for granted that people know the ins and outs of the argument, the justifications of both sides, the stakes, the relevance… the whole deal. I frankly don’t give a hoot.
Meanwhile, didn’t the emeritus policy–which IS important–get resolved, by Berdahl in cooperation with Senate representative, to everyone’s satisfaction?
I didn’t think Berdahl was vilified at all. Obviously something is going on, though, or Runberg and Hubin wouldn’t have taken over the senate meeting to sabotage such a simple motion. Why should anyone care whether or not one more student member is added to the IAC? Apparently the administration does.. alot.
“Taken over the senate meeting.” How would such a thing be possible? Who was the chair? Was the Senate forced at knife-point to refer the matter to the appropriate Committee–within its own structure, and indeed appointed by the Senate? I hardly think so. Anyway, watch for another meeting very soon when the CoC recommendation, whatever it is, gets shot down and the whole argument done over again, wasting yet another Senate meeting. Because one of the paradoxes of faculty governance is that the senate doesn’t even recognize the legitimacy of most aspects of its’ own governance structure and process, nor the decisions of committees chaired and staffed predominantly by fellow faculty. Don’t blame the administration that the Senate is non-functional.
Balance of power is at issue with the IAC, something the student reps (and uomatters?) understand. Centralization of power at this place, the lack of transparency, the knee-jerk deferral in the senate to Berdahl via Hubin and Runberg, all speak to the ugliness of a faculty that clamors for faculty governance but won’t challenge power arrangements. Anon 5:51 had it right, a faculty union would stir this up positively. Otherwise, it looks like the same old whining.
As I sat and listened to the discussion of the IAC expansion, and especially to Hubin’s self-indulgent and lengthy celebration of himself I could not help but wonder if this uncharacteristic behavior might not be part of another agenda, an agenda he repeatedly denied.
Changing the structure and competence of a committee does put a special burden on those proposing it; it is a special burden in that it requires a consensus that is deep and wide. And the burden is on the proposers to acquire that conensus. Effective faculty governance depends on consensus and clarity.
I hate to see meaingful reform held up by legitimate procedural issues, and I had to see arcane procedures used to obfuscate meaningful change. The discussion went on far too long yesterday, and the senate president should have cut it off sooner.
so opines the Golden Duck
I think it is time for some grownups to intervene and clean up the Senate. I’m thinking of past Senate presidents here — not the Admin. The absence of a VP to chair the ConC and take over from Kyr (who has done a valiant job) at the end of his term is as good a reason as any. The transparently concocted IAC throwdown and the large numbers of unfilled committee and Senate slots are two others.
Der BlogMeister, and others, have criticized Senate operations. A primary focus of the April meeting was an IAC motion to add a student member (ASUO President, ex officio) to the Committee. As pointed out by proponents, Prexy has promised to oppose such a move. As pointed out by others, it is never clear when a threat of opposition is serious, especially when the issue appears minor and nonnegotiable opposition could lead to an Assembly of the Statutory Faculty. Nevertheless, the proposal to refer the matter to the Committee on Committees was upheld. Some of the aye votes probably represented support for Prexy or for his position on this issue. Others may well have been gathered by the argument that proposals for changes in the composition of committees could be politically motivated – ie, designed not to strengthen the effectiveness of the committee but to strengthen a particular committee position. Others surely supported the view that the Senate would appreciate an analysis of the request from the body dedicated to maintaining the health of the committee system.
The Senate wisely ordered the C on C’s to respond at the next meeting. This one-month “delay’ delay’s nothing because Prexy has 60 Constitutional days before his ratification or objection is demanded. ie, if Prexy is really opposed, the addition to the IAC simply could not happen in time to be effective in this academic year.
One blogger writes “What we really need folks is some new blood on the senate ballot this time around: … to [take] up serious issues and actually [find] a way to resolve them.” This chap has nailed it – the well-crafted Constitution gives the Senate as much power as the law allows. Under this Constitution it is truly the University’s decision-making body (subject, of course, to the legally inescapable possibility of Prexy’s veto following campus-wide debate and voting). The Constitution has moved the delusion of committee power into the reality of open, transparent Senate power. So, c’mon folks – go where the action is.