Dash Paulson’s report on day 1 of the June 12-13 Trustees meeting

6/13/2014 update: Senate President Kyr has posted the written version of his remarks to the board on the role of the Senate, faculty and staff service in shared governance, and the Delegation of Authority policy here. The main substantive issue the Senate has with the delegation of authority policy, as submitted by the administration and passed by the board, is that it gives President Gottfredson control over Senate committees. The disputed language is this:

3.4 Committees, Councils and Advisory Groups. The President of the University shall establish and
define the charge of any and all University committees, councils, and advisory groups, except as provided in Board action.

This is a serious challenge to faculty authority, at odds with AAUP recommendations, and will have to be revisited soon.

I will post the report from Dash Paulson on the day 2 of the Trustees meeting later today.

6/12/2014: [UO Matters: Because of the importance of this meeting to the UO community, I hired freelance reporter Dash Paulson to report on it. Mr. Paulson had written several excellent stories as an Emerald reporter, including the first substantive interview with President Gottfredson, in January 2013, here. His summary is below, followed by a detailed report on what happened at the meeting. As usual, things in quotes are quotes, otherwise it’s the gist of the conversation. I have edited Mr. Paulson’s report a little, but have not made any substantive changes. Dash will have another report from day two. The Trustees web page is here, bios here. Diane Dietz has a report in the RG here, and UO’s “Around the O” blog has the official slanted PR flack report online, if you care enough to search for it.]

Report on June 12 session:

Dash Paulson here, providing you a report on today’s meeting of the board of Trustees. Professor Bill Harbaugh asked me if I would be willing to do this job earlier in the week because he had to fly to a convention. I had to think about it. When I enrolled at UO, Richard Lariviere had just taken over as President. His firing two years later devastated his supporters, but for some people like me it opened a window into how this University actually works because I read UO Matters to see what the hell was going on. The blog was irreverent. It was interesting. It was biting and often unforgiving. I’ve grown to disagree with some of Bill’s intimations, but there’s no one else writing about this interior world with the same veracity and dedication as him.

UO Matters has mattered a lot in the affairs of this University over the last 6 years, and I think I can say Bill’s independence remains unquestioned. For those reasons I’m actually pretty stoked to be the first student contributor to this blog.

Report:

The Trustees today were engaged and eager to learn. Ann Curry is particularly vocal and has asked more questions than the rest of the Trustees combined. Chuck Lillis and Allyn Ford seem very conformable; the general feeling is that everyone is trying to learn quickly; everyone seems intent of being good at their new role. President Mike Gottfredson has repeatedly emphasized the board’s new authority and power and Randy Geller has told them they’re responsible for pretty much everything now. Chuck Lillis is a gracious and humorous chair for the board, but prepared to forge ahead with the business of the board. All committee proposals and policies were adopted, mostly unanimously.

One matter of concern was over the recent GTF strike vote. Three grad students spoke during the public comment section. The Trustees were not pleased they weren’t given forewarning of the potential for a strike. The Trustees in general seemed sympathetic to the GTFs and some of them stressed they want to be kept in the loop about GTFF issues and other labor bargaining.

Senate President Kyr spoke about the controversial Delegation of Authority Policy. In March the Trustees agreed, on urging of Kyr and John Bonine (Law), to get input from the faculty and the Senate before adopting this policy. The Senate committee made substantial changes. The administration accepted some of those, and rejected others, before sending a revised proposal to the Board for consideration. Today Kyr showed the remaining differences between the two documents, and asked the board to consider accepting more of the Senate’s language, and to set up a working group with the Senate to work out language regarding Senate control over its own committees and Board participation in labor negotiations.

The latter concern inspired an amendment, which was originally proposed by Kurt Wilcox, voted down, and then Dotters-Katz proposed different language which was adopted:

“Upon request by the chair of the board or a majority of the trustees the president will provide the board with requested information regarding personnel and employment matters, including labor relations and approval of collective bargaining agreements.”

With that language in place, and despite senate president Robert Kyr asking them to delay a vote, the board adopted the policy with the encouragement of Chuck Lillis and President Gottfredson who explained they could go back and change it anytime.

Call to Order (Chair) 8:35 a.m. the board has been called to order

Roll Call (General Counsel): Everyone is present except Professor Susan Gary

Chair Comments, Discussion of Meeting Agenda (Chair)

Chuck Lillis asks that everyone be ready to make swift progress this morning, “We also have the budget for 2015 and it requires action”

President Gotfredson makes introduction remarks.

“Welcome! It’s great to see every body here and for those of you not from Eugene welcome back to Eugene. This is a first for this board and we have a lot of firsts. This is the last of the first meetings, and the board will take over on July 1. My colleagues and I will reserve our comments until tomorrow morning.”

Approval of Minutes from March Board Meeting -minutes are approved.

2.0 Reports and Public Comment  
Public Comment (Chair)

Miriam Bolton, Chair of the Officers of Administrators Council, told the board that her organization had been waiting a long time for the board and were very glad to see them transitioning into their new roles.

“Officers of administrators, OAs as we’re called, are a diverse group on campus. There are over 1300 OAs, representing about 20 percent of UO staff.” Unlike other groups they don’t have union representation. The existing policy rules were written for faculty not OAs/ Faculty policies and don’t work for us. Fun fact: Bolton says ID’s say they’re faculty.

“Unfortunately no new policy structure came out of 2007 working group.” No OAs on board of trustees, so Bolton asks board please understand their needs as a unique group. They strongly believe in a shared governance model and want to be a part of the process. Now that the Trustees are here they hope things will change (regarding their policies with the UO). If you want to know more, Bolton says to check out the 2012 sub-committee report and new listening report issued this year.

John Ahlens: He is here to speak on behalf of classified Employees, “Background on my input. I worked as a classified employee. Because our contracts extend to institutions all over the state I think new rules should recognize our unusual position.”

He’s heard many classified employees are discouraged from taking part in shared governance. Allen would like the board to recognize the senate’s language on classified status. They would be willing to share their insights with the board and are always available.

“I’ve heard from a bunch of folks that they wish that these sessions were broadcast on web cam or something.” Allen also adds.

Lillis: We won’t have public comment on material that isn’t germane, but maybe that wasn’t made clear. Let’s hear from the GTfs.

Shawna Meechan, GTF in political science:
“We are all speaking to different issues today; we believe they are all germane to the board of trustees.” The GTFs want trustees to have final say on their contract. “Final say should stay with you, as leaders of the University” They are frustrated with current progress on their contract. Current contract expired in March, and it will likely continue into the fall that way. Not great for bringing in new GTF’s. They were asked to accept a contract that was les than what they had originally, but there’s no budget crisis so why? “We don’t feel that’s right”

“I’ve been told our information isn’t reaching you.” Refers to emails sent to Trustees at [email protected], but the emails had never reached the trustees. Lillis explained they were aware of problem and it was a problem with the email address, nothing nefarious. Revelation influenced trustees questions and in next hour there were repeated calls made asking that they be made aware when problems with organizations like GTFF arose.

Meechan: We’ve been working hard to negotiate. Not happy with current negotiation. “We need you to have the final authority to say no. We want you to be the ones to sign our contract in the end.

Lillis: lets hear from other two GTFs

Phll Mayo, GTF in Philosophy department:
“I came to UO because there were professors here who I really respected, and whose work I had followed for a long time and I wanted to work with them. When I came to Oregon though, it required a serious sacrifice.” Other schools offered him better financial packages, still came to UO. “Every year we lose potential graduate students … often because they can’t live on their stipend.”

“Currently GTFs teach roughly 30 percent of classes and we do roughly 80 percent of the grading.”

There seems to be a lot of attentiveness from trustees towards these GTFs

Joe Henry, 3rd year doctoral in Anthropology and president of GTFF Executive Board:

“On behalf of the GTFF, I’d like to welcome you all. We believe that by working together we can take our program to the international level.” “As you know, administrations come and go, but this trust is here for the long haul”

We have issues with hiring an outside law firm (HLGR) to negotiate with them for first time ever. Feel it’s not a good use of UO funds. “Doing the math, we found out that the cost of having a lawyer at the table is equivalent to paid parental leave for an entire summer.”

GTFF is worried that there is no agreement on who should ratify their contract; they’d really like the trustees to ratify it.

Lillis: “Thank you Jones, it was overwhelming for you to suggest lawyers weren’t always a positive influence.”

9:04: Report of President of the University Senate (Rob Kyr)

Robert Kyr, University Senate President: “First I would like to say thank you to the board for their work so far … you’ve heard from some of our constituencies today, I represent all of them, 30,000 people. I’d like to say thank you from all those 30,000 people, first to Richard Lariviere, then to Robert Berdahl, then to Mike Gottfredson to bring about the incredible efforts to bring about the UO board and everyone else involved in making this possible” for our University. “Yes, we call it our University because we’re all in this together.”

“ I’m coming here to ask today that you don’t vote on this document (the controversial Delegation of Authority Policy) because we need more time… Take a look at how much red print there is, and how many possible errors there might be within that red area.” Kyr says they need to look at this together as people who care about the university and who care about making this the very best policy possible.

53 moving parts in senate committee system. Engine of our university. Incredible volunteer work for the university above and beyond “contract.” “You have a great University you will govern, full of hard working people.” This is the engine of the University [Senate], all working on different aspects implied by the titles of the committees.

“Nothing more important to us than shared governance. We must have it to be the best university we can be.” Our agenda is daunting, even for large legislative bodies, much less academia. Senators are committed to making this engine possible. They will be involved in rewriting polices, Coltrane says so. The senate usually look at 7 policies, this year they’ll be looking at dozens.

Agenda includes revisions to the student conduct code, reshaping committees, addressing sexual assault. It’s going to be quite a year and the senate need to work on it right away. “Could the board direct us to some members we can have direct contact?” Senate represents 30,000 people so it would be nice to have a number to call.

Trustees seem attentive.

Report of President of the Associated Students (Beatriz Gutierrez)

“Welcome and thank you all for being here.”

“We’re excited to get things going and we’d like to collaborate and communicate with board so things are actually changing. We want as much student engagement as possible in rewriting OR’s.” We think engaging students in process will be ASUO priority.

Ann Curry: I think you have a very important voice and I think this board is working for you.

Sam Dotters-Katz: It’s been a pleasure to work with Guiterrez. We’ve worked together on tuition before. She’ll do a great job

Public comment over, about 1/3 of crowd leaves.

Committee Reports (Dr. Lillis, Ms. Wilcox and Mr. Kari)

Curry: Thought there would be a 5 percent cap on tuition rise which seems high to me. I wonder if 5 percent is too high.

Lillis: the 5 percent limit was part of the legislative process.

Curry: I know.

Lillis: we didn’t increase tuition this year, that’s cognizant. It’s an interesting national issue.

Curry: Thanks for that. It might be imperfect moment for me to talk about … it seems to me that given the state of affairs in higher ed. That we should be thinking about new ways to find funding. I’d love it if we could create a team that involves young people who can consider how our technological age allows ways to crowd fund. I propose we create an app. This is a small idea. I think we’re obligated to find other sources of funding.

Lillis: Everyone who can impact that thought is sitting in the room right now. But for now, let’s move on.

Randy Geller: Noticed spelling errors in the title page. Request to pass a motion to let the president correct spelling and typographical errors./

Gottfredson: That’s pretty risky…

Lillis: Let’s wait on spelling until we deal with substantive issues.

4.0 Old Business (Pages 54 to 77) 

Adoption of Policy on Retention and Delegation of Authority (Chair) (Action) 

Lillis: “If we can move to old business section. This policy on retention and delegation of authority tells us what authority will be allocated to president.” We have approached this to give most authority to the president on this matter. “We first considered this in March. It’s had lots of input. I was surprised to hear Rob say they hadn’t had enough time, but we had lots of input.” Says many of the trustees had input. “In the end, someone has to reconcile all those views. In a number of instances, a position sought by someone didn’t fit what I think we had discussed philosophically.” He says the board of trustees should consider more of the strategic questions the University faces, not the daily operations.

“President Gottfredson got to see this, he was treated like everyone else in this process.”

“I think the bottom line is we got good advice; we have had the involvement from everyone who has a view. I can tell you as someone who has spent a long time with this document that I realize better why I didn’t want to be an attorney.” Lillis says he thinks that the document has received enough consideration. However board retains power to change document. If they find they didn’t get something right they can revise it. “I don’t want to say much more about this, but we need a motion and a second to consider.”

Ballmer: “Could you clarify some timelines for us? What would happen if we didn’t pass it?”

Geller: There are really two approaches you could take. You can be careful about retention in one policy. If you don’t adopt it today or some form if it, you’ll have to do what OSU did in 1996, and what we did in March, is give broad mandate to President. I would say approve something detailed, because you don’t ant to lose those powers. I would recommend you do this so you are clear what uyou are delegating to the president. The alternative is do what you did in March. If that’s your choice, I’ll be happy to revise it for the purposes of going forward.

Gottfredson: “I think it’s really important for those reasons to approve this policy. What the board does it can change. There’s no policy you adopt that you can’t change. That’s a good thing. In my opinion it’s reasonable to adopt this policy.”

Curry: “I wonder if, and I refer to everyone involved in making this document, what do you think about options of launching an amendment committee” that can deal with any lingering issues on this document. “I heard [Kyr] say he wasn’t happy with its final form and he wanted to be more involved with the board. Based in your experience, what do you think?”

Kurt Wilcox: “I would favor Curry’s approach. I think part of the problem here is that the UO has offered input, but no one has heard why certain revisions were made. I think we do need to move forward, but I think we also need to think that large parts of the community want to have more input on this.” Wilcox would also like to make a specific amendment on this.

Dotters-Katz: I think we’ve already gotten enough input. We can always go back and change it if necessary.

Andrew Colas: “I agree with Sam. I would have passed it in March, and appreciate all the other effort that went into it since March.” We can always come back to it.

Mary Wilcox: She thinks they should all continue listening to the community “and making changes as well get more educated” and in that regard there are a couple issues that aren’t dealt with.

M. Wilcox: “Ok. Can I talk a little about it? Thanks. I have a very small motion (amendment) I would like to add, how would I do that? I would like to add one sentence to 3.4 that makes it clear the board has the right to see those recommendations upon request by the board.

Lillis: Let’s take roll. All in favor of the amendment?

Any opposed? No opposed.

Lillis: Kurt you had something similar to propose?

K. WIlcox: To add the words that says so the first sentence says, “The president of the university, in consultation with the board of trustees, shall act for the board regarding all personnel and employment matters…”

Chair: Do I see a second for that?

K. Wilcox: “I want to ensure that by granting the president authority to act where we would in an employment matter, the board isn’t unaware” of what’s happening on campus. “The GTFF is a prime example. We, the trustees had heard not one word about this. I made a request on May 16th that the president provide us with a briefing on this issue at this meeting about where the negotiations are going.”

Lillis: says the UO should retain the current model where personnel issues should remain with executive, not the board. Wilcox’s “concern” in this instance is that willingness to extend responsibility to the president will be “misinterpreted” than the board doesn’t take an interest in these negotiations and he wants language that changes that perception. “I’m not asking the board to take an active role or get a report on every meeting, I just don’t want the board to be in the dark until it’s too late or issues like this sneak up.” Fine with leaving negotiations to president, but wants the board kept updated.

“According to what the GTF’s said, Over the last week at least 6 GTFs have written to us about their concerns and none of those emails have been forewarded to us as a board.”

Lillis: “Kurt did share with me his amendment and I am not supportive of that change. Remember the president serves at out pleasure” so he’s unlikely to say no. The terminology worries him. “It makes me envision that the board could be directly involved in negotiations.”

Language in question is end of 1.2 in policy: “The president shall, from time to time, report to the Board all significant matters within the Presidents knowledge related to the affairs of the University.”

Curry: I think Kurt has raised a very important point. I think what you and Kurt said…I think you can find a compromise. I think what you’re saying is we want to rule the roost. How can we be in a situation where we aren’t taking away the powers of the president? Isn’t it true there is a church and state separation between Trustees and the president on these issues? I think we should get those letters sent to us though.”

Lillis: We shouldn’t let ourselves be overwhelmed with a lot of issues we don’t need to worry about.

Ballmer: “It occurs to me that it will take a while to define “significant matters” I feel good about the spirit of 1.2 and my question would be does your amendment put us more in labor relations? Do you want us to be more involved in labor relations?

Lillis: It’s a way for us to be more involved.

Chapa: “We’ll have to get to more strategic matters at some point. We need to show a certain amount of trust in the President who will have to deal with all these matters.”

Curry: “Do we know what we’re voting on yet?”

Dotters-Katz: “What about we say it this way: ‘Upon request by the Lillis of the board or a majority of the trustees the president will provide the board with requested information regarding personnel and employment matters, including labor relations and approval of collective bargaining agreements.’”

2 seconds of silence.

Lillis: Ok, let’s discuss that, but call a vote on the other one first.

Roll is called. All vote no, except for Sam and Kurt. Some Trustees indicate they just want a change in language.

Curry very vocal. “Let’s change language. I would support that. I would propose we go with the language change proposed by Sam, maybe by changing some of the words.”

Ross Kari: I think that language would really handcuff the president.

Lillis: We should consider Sam’s proposal

Sam: “Based on the facial expressions of some of he trustees” he thinks 1.2 isn’t perfectly formed yet

Lillis: Your amendment is that we should add a sentence. Not change one? Yes. Let’s try to get it done right now.

Lillis: “Let’s move ahead. My current view is that we have all the necessary information to movie ahead with voting on this.”

Colas: “Our board was developed in a way that we will always have a voice.”

Curry: “I think redundancy can be a good thing if its about something important. Do we need to document this? It’s hard to fully know this.”

Kurt: We’re now facing the potential of a strike and we didn’t know about it.

Lillis: Let’s have a vote.

Bragdon: “I’d like to say that I think everyone does have the best interests at work and we’ve done really good work so far.” There will be a vote and it may not turn out the way we all want it to, but we’re doing it so we can be efficient.

Gonyea: We need to work on what significant is defined as.

Wilcox: The ASAC committee has been working on this as well.

Lillis: Let’s call it to question

Motion carries 8 to five. It’s now incorporated. Now the motion is to approve the policy as amended.

The motion carries unanimously. Policy is adopted. Several trustees say they understand that the conversation over the policy will continue.

10:50 am – Break at last. 15 minutes. 11:05: Meeting reconvenes.

5.0 Treasury Operations (Vice President for Finance and Administration/Director of Treasury

Move into treasury management policy. I’m no economics Professor, but this section led my Jamie Moffittt seems like a standard breakdown of the University’s finances and a primer for the Trustees. Everything they’re saying is in the very, very comprehensive, 312 page meeting packet.

Curry: Are we in better or worse shape now that we’re out of the OUS system?

Mofitt: “I think we are in better shape…The University will run it’s own bank in essence. We want to do this in order to maximize return on investments and make it easier to raise capital.”

12:00 pm – Trustees roundtable discussion with Bob Berdahl – Ford Alumni Center, Room 403

Bob Berdahl welcomes the Trustees to lunch in the Ford Alumni center (built in part with Trustee Allyn Ford and his wife’s generous donations) says the board is a wonderful group of people, but these these are difficult times for higher ed. At Gottfredson’s request Berdahl shares AAU history and politics 101 with Trustees.

“what AAU does now is serve its members through groups it convenes including provosts, but especially presidents…it has 62 members today. Its often referred to as the country club of Universities, somewhat derisively…but I think everyone wants to be a part of it…it shows the maturity of an institution. It is hard for non AAU institutions  to recruit from non AAU institutions. Very hard.” For most of its history AAU membership was permanent, but that recently changed.

“They want it to remain a small club. The concern is it’s the one organization where the public universities and private universities come together. If it were to get big, the private institutions would leave and form their own organization. That presents a challenge. About a decade ago, AAU passed a resolution to review institutions” if they were below the regular standards of the organization. “That presents a problem to an institution like the University of Oregon. We have no medical school,” so we aren’t getting a lot of federally funded medical research money. The University of Oregon has faced more dramatic cuts to state funding than most other Public University. “Continued membership is by no means assured.”

“That means in my view is that the UO needs to come up with a viable plan for growth.” The last two universities were found to not be making progress on viable plans.

“Time is of the essence. We need fundraising and we need to raise funds for endowment.” Raising money for endowment is harder to do than other fund raising. Berdahl says the University has become too reliant on non-tenure track faculty–though they are important to the University’ s teaching mission–who aren’t contributing to the research profile of the University. He implores Trustees to remember, “It’s important for you to help the public understand the mission of a research university. I think the country relies on its research universities in a really important way.”

“[On AAU] Its hard to get in in the first place and almost impossible to get back in.”

Gottfredson: “this might take time to come to grips with, but the fact is this board has authorities no other board of a public university has. What’s the precedent? Probably none.”

Berdahl: “You [trustees] have an opportunity and its also a challenge.”

Chapas talked to the trustees candidly, thanking Berdahl for telling them straight what was going on and “for a cold shower.”

After meeting with Berdahl the Trustees were taken on tours of the campus to see select research projects including Infographics in Geography.

3:31 pm – Reconvene – Public Meeting – Global Scholars Hall, Great Room 123 

Lillis: “Okay lets get going here. Can we reconvene? What a terrific way to get lunch.”

Next item will be FY15 projected budget. Expenditures.

Moffitt breaks down annual budgets for 2014 and 2015. Almost 80 percent of UO budget is personnel. “This year what we’re seeing on the bnefits side is to prepare for a 5 percent increase in health care costs. In the next fiscal year PERS rates will go up again, so that’s another cost that’s going to go up. We’re trying to grow the tenure track faculty.”

“Embedded in the small capital projects is the deferred maintenance. We have a much greater need than $4 million per year for our maintenance” so we’d like more from the state.

“We’re not looking at a year where we made lots of revenue growth. That’s because we’re in a situation where the student population is stable, and we’re keeping it stable on purpose.” The state appropriation has increased a little, but not that much.

Moffitt: this year we’re bringing in enough to cover our costs. Next year we’re going to nearly hit run rate even.

“This year the expenditures are growing faster than the revenue, but we have a cushion from last year. It just means we need to be careful about new expenditures.” Moffitt taking questions well. Explaining to Trustees that University is losing money, but has a useful cushion. In the future, this cushion will shrink.

Lots of mentions on putting together a new capital campaign.

“We did not receive a lot of G-bond funding, only abut 20 million which is kind of small for us.”

Lillis: “We need a motion to adopt the budget for the 2015 year.”

Moffitt: “We’ve included a 3 percent cushion [in the budget] so that we can have a little bit of room in case new expenditures come up.”

Lillis calls roll. Motion to adopt budget passes unanimously.

7.0 Optional Retirement and Tax Deferred Investment Plans (Pages 133 to 312) (VPFA and General

Summary of Retirement Plans and Necessary Board Actions
Moffitt is now going to bring some colleagues up to the table. Here come the retirement plans. Denise Younker from Chancellors office. Has been working on these plans for 17 years in OUS. Today’s motion will be whether to adopt this entire plan for UO

Ford: “who is going to educate people about these plans?”

Moffitt: We contracted with our vendors for it. She says they mostly wanted to keep administrators out of the education process and not make anyone liable for not explaining the plans correctly. “There is an organized program with our vendors, with online offerings, phone access and campus reps. for people to ask questions.”

Ford presses question, asking how they’re going to educate people that the retirement plans a good idea and to do research as opposed to “put their money under the mattress.”

Moffitt: “These plans are working well for folks and we want to leave most of it in place, though we do want to keep looking at ways to improve.”

Lillis: Is there any change in the liability for this board? Is it in any way different from OUS or how it was in the past?

Marsha (last name?): It’s set up exactly the same way. No difference.

Lillis: Are we accepting new liability that the board or the state has not accepted?

Moffitt: We are accepting fiduciary responsibility for these transactions.

Gottfredson: The OUS is out of business. Eventually each University will have their own board.

Lillis: “Let me ask the question in a different way. If a retiree isn’t happy with their funds or thought there is a problem, who will they sue?”

Moffitt: The University of Oregon.

Lillis: Will we have insurance or protections?
Moffitt: The trustees aren’t liable, they;re not the institution, they are individuals with the institution

Moffitt: We’d like the investor committee to meet every quarter, but we’re trying to make it fit with our own unusual schedule.

Ann Curry cuts to the chase: “Bottom line, to what degree do you think you achieved your goal of having employees not seeing a change in their retirement benefits due to this change?”

Younkers: I think we’re going to have a really high success. The one thing they’ll see that changed is when they go online they’ll see a different look and feel and name, but he substance of all the vendors, the way they plans work, the people they can go question, it’s all the same. That was our goal.

Lillis: Let’s take roll and vote on this

Unanimous passage of the retirement plan.

Lillis: I believe we’re about to recess for the day, but I believe Gottfredson has some comments.

Gottfredson: I do. In the last few meetings we’ve witnessed some extraordinary work. Thanks to Jaime and Marsha and Denise for their work on this. It’s impossible to overstate, or imagine the amount of work they have done in a short amount of time. Prodigious is the only word tat comes to mind. Terrific accomplishment making this ready in time.

Lillis: I think we’re done.

Recess until tomorrow