a plea to attend today’s Faculty Assembly at 3 pm.

On Wednesday Dec 7, 2011, at 12:58 PM, John E Bonine (UO) wrote:

Dear colleagues,

I write to you with a plea to attend today’s Faculty Assembly at 3 pm.

The revised UO Constitution is up for a vote today.  It is a document that
has been intensely negotiated with everyone at Johnson Hall and which
makes major strides forward in faculty governance at UO.  In my view, we
don’t need an Interim President to be spending his few months here going
over this, when he/she must be helping us find a permanent President and
keeping the ship afloat.

The members of the Administration have agreed with major steps toward
allowing Senate (mostly faculty) oversight when the Administration
develops university-side “policies.”  This is critical, because those
policies involve matters such as academic freedom and free speech,
conflicts of interest, etc., etc.  Without these changes, everything
remains ad hoc and without official procedures.

The “statutory faculty” (defined by state law and an Attorney General’s
opinion) continues to delegate day-to-day governance to a broader
University Senate.  But now, if a President disagrees with Senate
legislation or policies, the process involves the President and the Senate
in a collaborative search for a solution.

Importantly, if a dispute is elevated to the statutory faculty Assembly,
the Constitution will now facilitate the participation of all faculty
members, including those who have class conflicts or other reasons they
can’t attend an Assembly meeting.  Just as Oregon’s political system
provides for vote-by-mail, the new UO Constitution provides for
vote-electronically.


Andrew Marcus in Geography prepared an objective short analysis, which is
attached.

We are at a “constitutional moment” when we can help cement shared
governance into UO’s way of doing things. While I realize we could examine
this for more months, many on campus have worked on this over a year and
have produced substantial improvements.  We can always modify it later if
glitches are found.  But right now we have a chance to make a major stride
forward and I urge you to show up and bring your vote.

Thanks,

John

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             John E. Bonine
         Kliks Professor of Law
Distinguished Faculty Fellow, 2007-2010
       1221 University of Oregon
          Eugene, OR 97403 USA
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