Members Absent: Lee Evans, Dean, School of Pharmacy; Sheri Downer, Interim
Dean of Libraries; Martha Taylor, A&P Assembly Chair; Leanne Lamke, Steering Committee; AAES Representative; Mario Lightfoote, ACES; Anoop Sattineni, Building Sciences; James Guin,
Chemical Engineering; Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry;
Renée Middleton, Counseling and Counseling Psychology; Jack DeRuiter,
Pharmacal Sciences; Marllin Simon, Physics; Vivian
Larkin, Rehabilitation and Special Education; Thomas White, ROTC - Air Force.
Members Absent (Substitute): Bob McGinnis (Wil Miller), VP for
Development; Fran Kochan (Bob Rowsey), Interim Dean,
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at
John Mouton, Chair of the Senate: I’ll call the
meeting to order; the first business of order is the approval of the
minutes. The minutes are on the senate
home page for both
Richard Penaskovic,
Philosophy [Not at Microphone]: [Inaudible]
John Mouton: Paula [Sullenger], would you respond to that please on the
microphone?
Paula Sullenger, Secretary of the
Senate: I think the previous speaker is
confusing the actual minutes – the transcripts which were put out – and the
unofficial notes that I write up just to give people an idea of what went on in
the meeting. I always concentrate on what
was said and not who said it.
John Mouton: The transcripts of these meetings are posted now, and they
do list the speaker. Thank you. The announcements for the President’s Office
are going to be made by Provost Tom Hanley.
Announcements
President’s Office — Thomas
Hanley, Provost: Timing
is everything … Thanks, John; I was tired of waiting back there. [Audience Laughter] I get a chance to speak twice today. The first thing I want to talk about is the
current thing, I think you will remember that when I interviewed for the job and
in subsequent discussions, we’ve talked about ramping up the assessment process
here. So, what I want to bring you
up-to-date on is what we’re doing now in an effort to start that assessment
process on the campus – and to give you some idea of what to expect. Is Drew – Drew [are] you here? Drew Clark (Office
of Assessment) in my office is going to be running in front for most of these
assessment things for me. The first
thing I’ve asked Drew to do is what amounts to a zero-based budgeting
analysis. If you – most of you know the
way the budget’s done on campus – we typically do an incremental budget every
year. There is
a lot of logical reasons to do that, but on occasion, we would like to know
what our zero base is, and what it should be. So, the first analysis we are going to run is
what’s called a minimum teaching requirement (MTR). What this – how this is
generated is working with the deans and the department chairs; we take the
faculty in the department, we calculate the maximum amount we would like to see
that faculty member teach – and that is in light of all the other requirements
that are on faculty. The best example
that I can give you is, of course, in engineering where the typical
accreditation agency in engineering doesn’t want the average engineering
faculty member teaching more than half-time. That leaves the other half-time for other
activities including research and service and outreach if outreach is done.
If you figure out the maximum load that a person could teach
and then we go in and divide that number into the minimum number of courses
that we have to teach in a given year to deliver all of the curricula, we come
up with a number which is called the minimum teaching requirement (MTR). That gives us the lowest end – the lowest
common denominator of the number of faculty we need to operate those
programs. One of the things that we will
do is, of course, I don’t think anybody wants to be operating at the minimum,
and so we would like to see most of the functioning departments operating at
some multiple of the minimum. In my past
job, we looked at 1.5 times the minimum.
But, this gives us a concept and an idea of what the minimum number of
people we need to keep the program viable; that includes your Bachelor’s, and
your Master’s, and Ph.D. programs – any program that is currently being
offered. So, Drew is in the process now
of collecting that data based on the 2003-2004 academic year data that we
currently have right now. The other side
to that is working with the dean’s and the chairs – is to go in and do an
assessment of the number – of the resources that are available in each of the
operating units. The dean’s are – we’re
starting to that that now to get those resources in place. So, this is the first piece of the puzzle that
we are going to do.
The second piece which is something that is near and dear to
the heart of several people in the room – Dr. Mouton being one – is that we are
going to do a very cursory analysis of capacity. Steve McFarland has generated the current
enrollments in all the degree programs, and the – am I going blind or did the
lights go out? Thank you. We’re then going to send this out to the
various units and ask them to project the maximum number of students that could
be handled with existing resources. And
so, for instance, if you’re operating a B.S. [Bachelor of Science] program,
we’re going to try and figure out what the maximum capacity that B.S. [Bachelor
of Science] program is. Where we are now
– I think most of us are convinced that we’re probably operating at or near the
maximum at the freshmen and maybe the sophomore years; that there may be some
capacity at the junior and senior year, depending on what we find. But this will give us at least a cursory
number of what we can do with what we have as far as enrollment goes. I think that issue is going – could in fact –
come to play in the near future, and think we’d all like to know what that
number is. So, this is a very easy
analysis. It’s based on opinion, but
that number will be out, too.
The third analysis that we are doing will then be a
performance assessment – and we will then go in and look at the various
resources that are available and will do a calculation on how well those
resources are performing. Now, the – as
I told Drew [
The department performance or the college performance
assessment on the other end is a balancing analysis which says – okay, whatever
resources you have – how well are you using them? The result is if you make an adjustment to
one that improves it, you typically knock the other one down. They tend to balance each other. So, change in activities to improve the
performance might in fact decrease the MTR – and vice versa. So, once these two analyses are out there, we
can – it gives the deans and the chairs a tool to look at how the programs are
functioning. I think that we need to
have those numbers. Now, I am aware of
the Texas-Alabama study on department size, and we are going to try to make
some correlations between that – the advantage of the MTR is that it is
entirely local. It is what we do here,
and what I’ve found in comparing ourselves to other universities is that they
aren’t in exactly the same situation that we’re in. The other thing that you have to take into
account is when we compare programs – different programs at the same university
have more cohesiveness – than say programs in agriculture at two different
universities. We might not be able to
make appropriate comparisons just looking at program to program, but I think
inside the university that we can make those analyses. So, those are the three things that are
coming down right now. We hope to have
those done, in place, and as far as I am concerned, it’s open information; it
won’t be secret information. If you want
a copy of it, you are more than welcome to have it; and like I said, I know
Drew [Clark] is going to be a very busy person trying to explain how these
things work, but we want to make sure that everyone understands how the
analyses work – and that as we go through we will probably see some checks and
balances – some improvements made to this system – because as with any
analysis, it’s not perfect and we’re going to take what we have and try to make
the most out of it, and improve it as we go. Can I answer any questions before I sit down
on that particular initiative? Yes, sir
…
Doug White, Nutrition
and Foods: [Inaudible] minimum teaching requirements. Do you take into account for service courses
that have multiple sections?
Thomas Hanley: The things that would count are – you would get credit for
all the required courses that you teach; you would get credit for all multiple
sections that you teach because of enrollment; you would get credit for all
service courses that you offer; you would get credit – there is also credit for
what people call a “drag section” – some programs have a first course that
typically has a higher than normal failure rate, and so you offer a “drag
section” to let the students stay in the curriculum and have a second try; those
are included. We typically include one
set of electives. So, if your program
has twelve (12) hours of electives, you’d get twelve (12) hours of credit, but
you probably want to teach twenty-four (24) or thirty-six (36) but you get
credit for the twelve (12) because we going at the bare minimum – and that’s
why in looking at this – what we’re at here is the bare minimum, and we don’t
want anybody to operate at that figure – but it does give us a number that we
can latch on to.
University Senate
Chair – John Mouton: Okay, I’ve got probably three or
four announcements. The first one is to
ask the Senators about nominations for the Rules Committee; it is a two year
term. Nomination will be made at the
February meeting and elections held at the March meeting. All nominees must be Senators at the time
that they are nominated. So, we are
looking for nominations.
Next topic is SACS Reaffirmation. An open session for the faculty to meet with
the visitation team will be scheduled the afternoon of Monday, February
23. We’ll have more information at our
February 10 meeting. You may have read
or heard that there was a SACS person on campus last week – actually, he was
here for a few hours on Thursday. He is
the head of the visitation team; the meeting was about logistics and how they
are going to schedule to take care of all the work that needs to be done.
On January 27, two weeks from today, there will be a
University Faculty meeting. The meeting
is scheduled from
A statement regarding the probation was posted on our
website yesterday. At the Administrative
Council meeting yesterday – and I attend this meeting – it’s now once a month
and it is the administrators of the university.
I raised questions and emphatically stated the need to communicate a
clear plan to resolve the probation requirements. As well as the importance of not pursuing
legal remedies any further. I would like
to note that there were several key administrators that supported the position
that was taken. I’m going to meet later
this week with [Board of Trustees] President Pro Tem [Earlon]
McWhorter, and we’re going to have discussions along the same line. I’m going to encourage the Board to take this
opportunity to go beyond the probation requirements in order to restore
confidence in the governance of our institution. The Board meets on February 6 and probation
will be on the agenda. I think the one
thing that’s a struggle for our university right now is the Board cannot meet
outside of either regular or special meetings – they’ve got a meeting February
6. They’re not in a position to take any
action now, but I hope to have some communication – I will have some
communication. Two individuals have
suggested to me that we endorse the Alumni Board’s plan. I’ve studied the probation requirements in a
lot of detail – I’ve actually dissected them, and looked into them, and I’m
going to make an editorial comment on the back end.
One of the things that I think is that I think there is some
issues that the Alumni raised that may not be consistent with what is actually
stated in the probation, and I think that there’s some other
opportunities. I’ve identified seven
things that I think we need to communicate to actually Dr. Walker – since we
are advisory to Dr. Walker – one of the reasons for meeting with both the
Executive Committee and the Steering Committee tomorrow is to make a
determination about how we are going to move forward, and I will trust their
counsel on that. But, anyway we will
look at those issues.
Before I take any questions, the last statement is tomorrow
begins a six-week – a series of six weekly meetings regarding freshmen and
transfer enrollment for next year. As
Dr. Hanley pointed out, it’s been something that I have been very interested in
and have been a watch-dog – I’m actually not a member of the committee, but
they do allow me to sit in and occasionally allow me to speak, and I appreciate
that. So, anyway those are my
announcements, and I’ll take questions if there are questions. Please, would you come to the microphone?
Judy Sheppard,
Steering Committee: John, tell us more about the possibility of further legal remedy
that you mentioned.
John Mouton:
One of the things is if you read all the documentation on the SACS
issue, okay, there was a consent decree.
The last statement in the consent decree was that at the end of the SACS
action – whatever SACS decided to do – there was the opportunity for either
side to return to court and take legal remedies. Okay?
Ever since the probation has come out, I have been strongly advocating
to those who listen, that that not be an alternative that’s being considered –
and I don’t have any information that it is – okay; but I think that, you know,
if you look at the history of what has happened up until then, to me it kind of
looms in the background – and I think it’s something that required a strong
position even though there was no inclination necessarily to the other
direction.
Judy Sheppard: Maybe the Senate ought to make a statement about that. I would hope most people would feel that
would be just disastrous route to take.
John Mouton: Well, we could do
that; I’m going tell you that I have spoken for this group, and for all, I
mean, I don’t think there’s any doubt that all of the faculty feel very, very
strongly about that, and what I will tell you is that there are other people in
the administration and elsewhere that also feel very strongly about it. Dr. Hanley, you’re up again.
Information Items
Thomas Hanley: John, thank you, what I’d
like to do is to give everyone an update of the activities that are going on with
planning and assessment. I think most of
you know the President has appointed a commission – a committee to do the next
five-year plan. I chair that
committee. John, I would ask that the
members of that committee be included in the minutes of this Senate
meeting. I don’t have them all with me
right now, but there’s about ten people on the committee, and we’re going to be
meeting probably on a weekly basis for the first month or so and then maybe a
less hectic pace after that. [Planning and Priorities Commission shown
below]
PLANNING AND PRIORITIES
COMMISSION
MEMBERSHIP
The
Commission will serve for at least five years and will provide recommendations
to the President for development of a five‑year plan as well as provide
oversight for the implementation and ongoing assessment of the plan.
STEERING
GROUP
Provost
(chair) Thomas R. Hanley
Executive Vice President Donald
L. Large, Jr.
Vice President for Research C.
Michael Moriarty
Vice President for Outreach
David Wilson
Vice President for Student
Affairs Wes Williams
Dean (selected by President from
a list nominated by deans) two year term
Dean Dan Bennett
Five
distinguished faculty (selected by President from a list of nine nominated by
the Senate)
Professor Joseph
A. Buckhalt
Professor Terry
A. Byrd
Professor Curtis
Jolly
Professor Chris
Rodger
Professor Donna
L. Sollie
Professor Linda
Glaze
RESOURCE
GROUP
Special
Assistant to the President
Director,
Director,
President, Student Government
Association
President, Graduate Student
Organization
Vice President for Alumni
Affairs
Vice President for Development
Director of Assessment
Executive Director, Planning and
Analysis
Assistant
Provost, Multicultural Affairs
Director, Intercollegiate
Athletics
Representative from Staff
Council
Representative from
Administrative and Professional Assembly
Chair, University Senate
But the
concept is that the President would like to have this five-year plan in some
form of near state completion toward the end of April or the first of May. So, we have about three or four months to
finish this up and it’s going to take quite a bit of work to do that. Let me tell you where we are right now, and
then I’ll try to answer questions. By
the way, you have the opportunity – faculty will have the opportunity to impact
this planning through a variety of sources because there are faculty
representatives on the committee. You
will have the list of the people that are one the committee and I would
encourage you to make sure that your thoughts are known. As we go through the process, I think you’ll
see an idea where you’re going to have the opportunity to have input.
The first
thing that the committee is doing is we are reviewing the mission statement and
the AUCUPS strategies to determine if these are adequate for the planning that
we are going to do in the next five years; my cursory review of the mission
statement in the AUCUPS is that they are.
The mission statement is rather general, the AUCUPS, if you’ve read it,
it basically says that we’re going to do a lot of wonderful things – all the
time – to everyone. So, I think we can
probably fit a plan into that. It’s
broad enough that I don’t think we need to go in with any significant changes
in what’s in AUCUPS. But the committee
is going to be doing that and looking at those to make sure that the basic
documents that we are going to use for the planning are in place.
The second
thing we’re going to do is that we are going to evaluate the Peaks program for
1999-2004. We’re going to look at the program;
we are going to see how well those Peaks areas were funded, and how effective
they were. We are going to then make a
decision to either recommend expanding, adding, or deleting certain areas of
the Peaks program that were funded in the last five years. I would think from what I know at the present
time that these programs would either be left as they are if they’ve been
successful – or added to slightly. The
other thing that we are trying to do is that we’re trying to expand the scope
of the various Peaks to include more people on campus. An example I will give you, and there’s
numerous examples, but let’s take the one in sustainability that was operated
primarily in Forestry. I’d like to see
us – if we’d like to stay with that – I’d like to see us pursue a Peak in
sustainability period. Where the Forestry sustainability program is one of the programs
that we’ve funded, but now look for other things that we can do to add
sustainability image to the university.
One of the things that we are trying to do – and I know I wasn’t here
when you did it, but I was at another university when we did it, and the first
thing that comes out is –“we’re not included in the program.” Well, I’d hope that we’re not going to say
that after this round, and one way to make it inclusive is to try to make the
Peaks a little bit broader to give everyone an opportunity to participate. The second thing, of course, is what we’re
saying to you is that you have some expertise and you’ve typically applied that
in certain areas. Take a look at the
Peaks program and see if you can apply your expertise in an area that the
university is trying to focus in. So,
while you traditionally haven’t done work in the area, it might be appropriate
for you to take your expertise to that area because in all likelihood it is
needed. So, there’s
two things we are trying to do here: broaden a little bit to get more people in,
and to encourage people who maybe haven’t felt included to include themselves
in the next round. We hoped – what we’re
going to do is – Dr. Moriarty and Dr. Pritchett were available for all of the
Peaks reviews. We have the reports;
we’re going to review all of the reports on the committee; we’re then going to
have Dr. Moriarty and Dr. Pritchett come in with an assessment of how well they
thought the programs ran and then we’ll use that as a starting point. Dean Bennett brought up the fact that there
were three Peaks programs that were effectively approved and not funded and the
answer to that is
those
Peaks programs are more than likely going to be included for consideration as
we move forward in this Peaks program.
So, if they were a good idea five years ago and the mission of the
university hasn’t changed significantly, they are probably still a good idea
now. That does not impair us though from
adding new program initiatives.
So, how is
this going to work? Well, the Peaks
program, for the most part, is a research graduate student initiative, and this
is going to overlay the strategies that we are going to do. But, the next thing is to set – I can’t read
my own handwriting, so let me get my glasses out.
We’re going
to set tentative five-year objectives; they’re going to be mostly quantitative;
things that we will include – we’ll include enrollment, undergraduate,
graduate, professional, outside research funding, new construction, and
renovation (including the airport). But,
we will go through the list of all the things that we’d like to do. One of the things, if I have anything to do
with it, on it will be faculty salaries.
We will have an initiative in the five-year plan that deals directly
with faculty salaries. That’s because, I
think in my cursory review, and I’ve only had a chance – Margaret won’t let me
see the budget yet, but I got – I snuck in and got a look at it the other day
all by myself. So, I think that there’s
a significant to continue to increase faculty salaries on the campus. So, I hope to include that in the planning
process.
What we
hope to do is to then take those tentative five-year objectives, and let’s say
one of them is that we want to raise the graduate student enrollment here to 5,000
students. That’s probably one that’s going
be on there primarily because we have about 3,500 students and the trustees
have indicated they’d like to see us have 5,000 students. So, we will have that on as a tentative
agenda item. What we’ll then happen as
these tentative agendas will float down to the deans, to the department chairs,
and to the faculty. We will solicit
proposals on how you are going to meet this particular need; if you have a way
of adding 20 graduate students, how you are going to do that, and what’s it going
cost. We will then bring the proposals
up through the process, through the chairs, through the deans, and of course
you are going to see a pyramiding effect.
We expect to have a lot of proposals and as it moves up it’s going to
get a little narrower at the top. [At]
this point, we have a set of things that we would like to do that number one
meets our objectives, and the other thing I’ll point out is let’s say we get
back responses from the faculty, and we can’t add up to 5,000 graduate students. Well, then I think we’re going to have to
change that objective. So, what I don’t
want to do is, I don’t want to set quantitative goals for the university that
we don’t think we can do or don’t have the money to push in place. So, if it comes back and we can only go to 4,000
graduate students, fine. That’s what we
are going do, and we’ll alter that based on the input we’ll get from you. Once we have those in place then I think the
question is – is where are the funds going come from over the next five
years? I’ve talked to Dr. Large about
that, and if you’ve talked to Dr. Large about money, you’ll find him typically
non-communicative. Okay? [Audience laughter] To have so much money, he doesn’t like to
talk about it; I don’t understand that, but I’m just teasing, Don.
Don and I
have had a discussion about this before, and what we think is with all the
pressures, especially in 2005, that we anticipate on the budget that a lot of
the money that we’re going to have to put into the program – into the five year
plan – is there is going to be some reallocation inside the university. Because any new monies that we get most
likely are going to be focused on handling the year to year budget increases,
perhaps faculty salaries, there are other issues that are going to take
[Inaudible]. So, we have to look and
anticipate what our budget needs are going to be for the next five years over
and above what we do in the Peaks program, and then try to find a way to fund
it. Now, hopefully, Dr. Large can find
all the money that we can possibly spend and that we’ll be able to fund
initiatives. But, chances are we will
have “x dollars” in the first year; we will take the “x dollars” and will apply
it to the top rated proposals that we get.
We will fund those; we will go for six to eight months; we will assess
how well those are doing; if we have a second-round of funding, we’ll fund the
next level programs. What we’ll try to
do is progressively over five years add funds to the program – assessing as we
go.
Now the one
reason that we have to assess while we go is - I don’t know about you all, I
have never seen a five-year plan where I got to the second year. We’ll have a one-year plan, and we’ll see how
well we are doing, and then we’ll make the second-year plan. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to have
five-year goals, and we’re going to have five year goals; but I think we think
we have to do the planning year-by-year seeing where we are and, of course, if
any of you know what’s going to happen economically in the state of Alabama
over the next five years, we would love to have you on the committee. So, please send me a note, and I’ll see if I
can get you on there. In light of the
fact that we’re probably not going to know then I think it’s prudent for us to
think about following this and assessing this as we go.
I’m very
positive about this; I think the process is going to work. The nice thing about
it, I hope that you all will participate in pushing ideas forward and get those
ideas incorporated into the plan. If we
do this the right way, and we cycle every year, eventually people forget
whether this is a bottom-up or top-down planning mode; it’s just a university
planning mode that rolls in a circle and we depend, quite frankly, on the
faculty and the departments and the deans to generate the ideas and then our
responsibility is to try to pick the best of those ideas; find the funding for
them; put them in place; put the money back down where the rubber meets the
road and go to the next round. So, if we
can do that, I’m going to be very pleased.
Let’s all hope that this process can be in place by May, and let’s hope
that the funding scenario for ’04-05 looks pretty good. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.
John Mouton:
The next topic is brought to us by the Student Government Association
and it is going to be presented by Will Gaither, who is a Building Science
major in our program, and I’m always glad to see our Building Science majors in
a suit because it is a rare occasion.
Will
Gaither, Vice President, Student Government
Association: Okay, first of all I want to thank you for
letting us join you today. My name is
Will Gaither, and I am the Vice President of the Student Government
Association. Here with me is Tyler
O’Connor, who is a student that serves on the university committee, the Academic
Honesty Committee, or Dishonesty Committee (laughing). I just want to brief you all a little bit,
and then I will let
Tyler
O’Connor, Student Representative on the Academic Honesty Committee:
Like Will said, we do have an Honor Code here at
[Resolution passed by Student
Senate, projected on screen]:
WHEREAS, Auburn University prides itself as a top tier
institute of higher education and acknowledges the need for integrity in such
an environment; and
WHEREAS, in striving to maintain its due accreditation and
success, Auburn University pledges to set the example within the Southeastern
Conference and throughout the nation as a University grounded in the principles
of duty and honor; and
WHEREAS, we as a University and Auburn Family are proudly
bound to such authenticity set forth in The
Auburn Creed by stating, “I believe in Honesty and Truthfulness, without
which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men;” and
WHEREAS, an existing honor code presides over each Auburn
University student, yet lacks the visibility, respect, and obligation carried
by an Oath of Honor; and
WHEREAS, the intent of such an Oath is simply to instill a
code of conduct so rich in honor and integrity that one’s walk with virtue not
stall upon graduation, but rather propel him or her into society as an example
of those principles Auburn men and women hold most dear; therefore, be it
RESOLVED, first, through the consent of the Student Senate,
as a representative and protective body over the rights of each student, the
following be adopted as the Auburn University Oath of Honor:
“In accordance with those virtues of Honesty
and Truthfulness set forth
in the
family, do hereby pledge that all work is my own, achieved
through personal merit and without any unauthorized aid. In the
promotion of integrity, and for the betterment of
give honor to this, my oath and obligation.”
________________________ Signed |
________________________ Dated |
RESOLVED, second, that the
presence of the Oath be made known to all students and that the signing of the
pledge be effective Spring semester 2004 and first administered to incoming
students at Camp War Eagle or any other first year transition; and
RESOLVED, third,
that each student sign the Oath upon presentation of the individual syllabus by
each instructor at the beginning of the semester, and that the signing further
be encouraged at the instructor’s discretion on any other test, paper, or
related assignment.
That’s it,
two sentences. Its length is about
average for an Honor Pledge. Your first
sentence gets it all … you’ve got your pledge, and the bulk of it, you know,
the basis behind it all is that statement:
“Do hereby pledge to all work as my own, achieve through personal merit
and without any unauthorized aid”.
That’s it. The second sentence is
simply to hammer it home. You know…almost
make them feel as if they’ve got to buy into this, that this is a mark of
Auburn and as an Auburn man or woman, we would like to see you buy into
this. So it’s just two sentences.
I’ll move
on to what we would like to see done with this.
We’ve got a resolution; Will, if you’d put the resolution up – that we
passed like he said unanimously through the Student Senate, the last session
before Christmas break. If you will look
at the final two resolved…never mind.
The implementation is going to be key. We have passed this through the Student
Senate because it’s from the students, it’s for the students, and so that was
our first step. Our second step is here
today – implementation - and without your enforcement, this is null and
void. We must have your support. In addition to that, we must have your help
in holding us accountable.
We are
taking the step here; we have taken the initiative as students to hold ourselves
more accountable, and we must have you there to allow us to hold ourselves
accountable, if you will. We have to
have it implemented, and the way that we’ve got it done, if you look down to
the second and third resolves – the way that we kind of thought it out was,
that any first year transition period, whether it be Camp War Eagle, whether it
be SOS, every new student at Auburn will be introduced to the Pledge and will
be asked to sign the Pledge. At Camp War
Eagle in front of their parents, whether it be their
first day as a transition student, they’ll be introduced to the Pledge and
taught its background and its meaning, and then asked to sign it. So that, from here out, the incoming students
of Fall 2005, everyone out will have signed the Auburn University “Oath of
Honor,” which is what we’re calling it.
And so that is the first step, first year transition periods, each new
student, and then, after that, all we’ve really asked is that each teacher, as
opposed to the normal, how do I say this, lack of, I don’t even know, I don’t
even know exactly, instruction or what have you, on the syllabus every day, the
first day of class, I get my syllabus and it says “Academic Honesty” in
bold. And then under that, it says,
“Please refer to title so and so of article so and so of the Tiger Cub”. I don’t have the Tiger Cub. I suppose I could go get one, but I would be
willing to suppose that most students don’t have a Tiger Cub, nor are they
willing to go home and look up what it means to cheat and how
That’s a
big problem, because basically it’s a blurb in their memory, along with the
rest of the syllabus. It’s just getting
shot through one time – (Audience laughter) just FYI (laughing). So, what we ask is we will do the job of
administering it to each incoming student.
What we would like to see each faculty member do is put it on the
syllabus, whether it be on a separate sheet, whether it be under “Academic
Honesty”, we would ask that you put this pledge here and that you explain it to
them, and encourage the student to sign it.
That way, when I go in to my four or five classes, I’m going to sign it
four or five times the first two days of school. And that’s going to…if it’s not ingrained in
my memory, then it’s going to be pretty visible to me and I will know that
that’s there. In addition to that, we
would further ask you, and this is maybe up for debate, we would further ask –
or we don’t even ask – we leave this up to your discretion after that. After that it is entirely up to you….you may
stamp it on any bluebook, test, paper, quiz, or any related assignment that you
deem necessary. It’s in your hands. We ask that you put it on the syllabus so
that we know each student gets it once at Camp War Eagle, and then four or five
times with their classes, and then after that, you can stamp it in their memory
as much as you want. The only thing with
that is that some will say over repetition will devalue the Pledge. And that’s a valid argument. We as a Student Senate, surprisingly, gave
you the opportunity to do it any time you want.
You can do it four times if you like, but we would ask that you put it
on the syllabus and then any time else besides that.
Some may
have questions. What if a student
doesn’t sign the Pledge? You know, we
can’t very well make someone sign an oath.
My response to that is that if I’m a teacher, if I’m going to put myself
in your position, if I’m a teacher and I see that 99 people out of my
100-student class signed the Pledge and one student didn’t, my ears are going
to poke up and I’m going to say, “Well, this guy has given me the green light
to look into his work.” Students that
don’t sign the Pledge and students that do sign the Pledge can’t be held to any
different standard. All this is…this
doesn’t….If you sign the Pledge and you get caught cheating, you don’t get a
worse punishment. We can’t do that. This falls under the jurisdiction of any
University-sponsored Honesty Committee.
Right now, it’s the Academic Honesty Committee. So this is basically is just an
advertisement. It’s a visible
advertisement for the Code. And students
that don’t sign it, you know, won’t be punished any more or any less than the
students that do. We would hope that
with its presence, the students would think twice about cheating, and at least
they would know that
Cindy
Brunner, Pathobiology: I don’t want to address the
specific honor oath that you’ve proposed because this is the first time I’ve
seen it and I don’t really want to address the details of how you would
implement it, but I do want to give you a word of encouragement. You probably needn’t to have gone as far as
Vanderbilt to find an institution that operates with a pretty strict honor code
that’s actually adhered to in the program.
We’ve got one just down
Tyler
O’Connor: Thank you, and we did know that the
Jim
Saunders, Geology and Geography: One other point,
too. I just happen to be aware that, maybe
you’re not, that
Melissa
Brooks, Graduate Student Council: I think you have
sort of the right idea. I think it is a
little flowery. I do have a problem with
you implying that if a student does not sign it, that the professor therefore should
feel that they are dishonest. I think
that it’s sort of a Big Brother effect, and that students should not be
required to sign a statement. But I do
disagree about students who don’t know the academic policies here. I’m a GTA, and I know that if you have any
moral [inaudible] at all you know what’s right and what’s wrong [Inaudible] that
a lot students tend to overlook the Academic Honesty and Academic Code of this
University. So, I think you’re on the
right path, but I think that maybe you need to cut this down a little bit. I’d also like to know what the next step is
if someone is caught. What do you plan
to do? Do you plan to have a student
forum first, or will they go straight to the Academic Honesty or “Dishonesty
Committee…as it were?
Tyler
O’Connor: No, if a student is caught it’s the same as
if they’re caught today, without this Pledge.
This is so new, I mean it was created out of nothing, so it’s hard for
me to mandate, you know, because it’s open for interpretation. If a student doesn’t sign the Pledge, they
don’t sign the Pledge. We’re not making,
I didn’t mean to come across and say we’re making people do this. We can’t make someone sign an oath. We can ask them to sign the oath, and if they
don’t sign the oath, I’m not saying “guilty until proven innocent”, but I’m saying
as a teacher, it turns a light on, because what this is saying is that I did
this honestly. If someone doesn’t sign
it, it’s not saying that I didn’t do it honestly, but I don’t know how else to
react. You can’t hold anyone to a higher
standard for signing it and for not signing it.
Ethical principles are intuitively placed within each person. I know what cheating is, even though I don’t
have to go look up the Tiger Cub. I know
what it is. But a lot of students, you
would be amazed, they come in front of this Committee having no idea. No idea.
Copy and paste straight off the internet. It’s so widespread that it’s become
commonplace these days. I mean, people
copy and paste right off the internet, turn it in and put the web site, and
assume that, because they’ve cited it, you know, great. It’s their paper.
Christoph Hinklemann, Finance:
I’d also like to commend both of you for working on this. I think it’s very, excellent from that standpoint. The one question I had, or suggestion was;
are you looking for students to only sign this Pledge or write out the whole
Pledge? Because I think there’s a big
difference between these two things. I
think, as somebody previously mentioned, with repetition and things like that,
we all sign things everyday that we don’t read whatsoever. And I really wanted to suggest that be made
something to think about.
Tyler
O’Connor: That’s a great question. I don’t want to be the one to say whether we
do or whether we don’t. That’s up for us
to decide. You can almost drop the
bottom sentence off and write the basis of the Pledge. And that’s fine with me. We’re here today I guess as an information
item to show this to you and then we can do whatever we wish with it.
John Salvetti, ROTC-Army: Let me give you
Tyler O’Connor:
Yes sir, we sure did. We actually
talked to Dr. Hanley this morning about that.
It’s hard….that would be great.
The high school that I went to, you were just as guilty if you didn’t
report someone, just like that. It would
be hard to go from not to all out, immediately, right now. That would be great if we could do that, but
I don’t know if it would be reasonable right off the bat. I wish we could do that, and hopefully we can
one day. Maybe we can make a
modification to it, or whatever. I think
that would be, not impractical but would be hard to expect students to go into
that condition so fast. I think it would
be great if we could.
Norbert
Wilson, Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology:
Once again, like others, congratulations. It’s a good idea. I attended a program at one point where every
bluebook we would have to sign an oath similar.
But my concern is not so much about the Pledge itself, but in the
beginning it was stated that there are students that don’t seem to understand
whether the issues or whether the areas that a person can get in trouble – and
I think that’s a problem. It doesn’t
seem to me to be the case that the Pledge will help them if the concern is
“well, I didn’t know that I couldn’t do X, Y, or Z.” How are you all
going to actually do that or help students better understand beyond what this
Pledge could actually do?
Tyler
O’Connor: That’s something that we need to
think about, whether it be printing the entire Honor Code, you know unseen to
most, in The Plainsman, we could do that. We’ve pitched this to Dr. Walker, who has
thrown his support behind it and is very excited about it. One thing that he said, and is a good idea,
is putting a report in The Plainsman, with it being the only news source
and the loudest voice of the students beyond its faculty everyday. Put a report in there saying that each
semester we had 10 cases; 8 were plagiarism cases, these were the punishments
and everything. You can do that; you can
print the entire Honor Code, as far as I’m concerned, in The Plainsman. You can put it on your syllabus. I don’t know.
This is basically a mouthpiece for the fact that we have one. We expect you to work with integrity and with
honor here at
Bill
Gale, Steering Committee: As with everybody else, who has
spoken, I thoroughly applaud you for addressing this issue and I think you’re
certainly heading in the right direction.
I do explain to students at the start of a semester, both in writing and
verbally, what cheating is, what plagiarism is. I do remind them of this before every
exam. But there is another side to this
issue as well, which you do want to think about, namely enforcement and
penalties. Having people understand what
the rules are is very important, and it needs to be expressed in a simple and
clear way. But unless there’s also a
reasonable confidence of people who cheat or plagiarize will be caught and that
they’ll be punished severely, I don’t think you’ll stamp out the problem. When I was going through college, the system
was such, at least in examinations, the chance of
cheats being caught was extremely high.
There were very stringent security measures, and the normal response to
a first offense was expulsion from the university. That did give people something to think
about. Thank you.
Judith Lechner, Educational Foundations, Leadership and
Technology: I had a very bad case of cheating last
semester, and it made me realize that the web site that’s supposed to have the
Academic Honor Code on it is no longer up. So that’s another place where it really could
be publicized. It definitely needs to go
back up.
Tyler
O’Connor: Yes, ma’am, and you know exactly
what I’m talking about. We sit on the Committee
together, and I watch her. This is all
she does. [Audience laughter] I mean, it’s incredible.
Jim
Saunders: And while we’re in the planning mode…John,
particularly this question may be addressed to you. Can we look and entertain the idea in our
Enrollment Management Department, which to me is an oxymoron, but that’s
okay. Seeing that if students have had
past troubles with some of these issues in high school, is there a way to maybe
prescreen some of those instead of just using ACT and GPA (grade point
averages) and whatever else is being plugged into a computer to manage our
enrollment?
John
Mouton: We have an
Enrollment Management meeting tomorrow and I’ll ask that.
Bernie
Olin, Substitute for Pharmacy Practice: Again also, my
congratulations on the very good initiative.
Just to let you know, the
Tyler
O’Connor: Thank you.
As far as the question was asked, “What happens next?” Professor Mouton said the Board meets
February 6. We have spoken to Dr.
Walker. A few of the Trustees have been
made aware that this was going to be pushed.
Nowhere along the way have we encountered anyone that had a big problem
with it. Everyone, like you said…this is
good. It means a lot more, I think, that
it’s from the students and by the students and it’s for the students. As far as what happens next – we’d like to
see it proposed to the Board with the faculty’s consent, and with your approval,
and with your support to the Board to be made as University policy. In our third resolve, or in our second
resolves; we would like to see it be made effective. We were very optimistic that it be made
effective Spring Semester.
Realistically, it will probably be the first students to see the Pledge
will be Camp War Eagle this summer – realistically. But we’d like to pitch it to the Board in
resolution form so that they adopt it as University policy. In the new Tiger Cub, that oath will be there
on the front page next to the Creed.
We’re going to play our part making it visible, but we need to have your
support in order to enforce it and administer it.
Herb Rotfeld, Marketing, Not a Senator:
Teacher of a course in the legal, social and ethical environment of
business. I want to be pragmatic here.
How many students do not know the speed limit on I-85? And how many of them are likely to be driving
at 80 mph on a typical day as they go down that road? I don’t know if you talked to many faculty
here in terms of actual times that they’ve faced cases of cheating, but I have
talked to, e-mailed with, and discussed things with a large number of them – and
most of them will say, I brought a case once, never again, or I’ve had cases
where I could’ve done something but I’m not going to bother. The simple thing is the enforcement, the
approach, is a pain. It depends on the
college. Some colleges, or administrators,
I should say, are driven by the students-are-always-right sort of attitude and
the faculty is not supportive. One
colleague of mine that’s no longer here; she regularly tried to enforce it in
her class and it was a major part of her life.
Just dealing with cases, and it is not a matter
of student ignorance; it is a matter of enforcement. That’s where we’re weak here. It’s not student ignorance. It’s a problem with just trying to enforce it.
Tyler
O’Connor: I know….sitting on the Committee,
we have standards on the Committee. I’d
like the gentlemen here to be almost ruthless.
And I think students are almost harder on students within the Committee
than faculty members are. So I would beg
to differ there. I’d like to hear your
input on how to make the process easier in reporting violations. I’m sorry that there’s a bad taste in some
people’s mouth. I feel it should never
be an excuse not to report a violation.
Maybe we can make that process a little easier. I’m just a student. I don’t run the…I don’t make it. (Laughter)
John
Mouton: I think the one thing is we have a University
Academic Honesty Committee, and we’ve heard some things here that we need to
make sure get back to them, and perhaps as part of the process of addressing
that is we can include some students that have been engaged in this and see how
they can help us improve the process. Herb,
I concur with your statements. I think
we’ve got to identify specifically what some potential solutions are, if in
fact there are any. We will certainly
bring it to the Academic Honesty Committee. Anybody else? I’d like to thank you two fine gentlemen for
coming here. (Audience applause)
The next
item on the agenda is another Information Item.
We had a discussion about the Intimate Relations Policy in November, and
we have got a revise. There were several
suggestions, and we made an attempt to clean up the policy. Paula Sullenger is going to present it, and
I’ll just leave it up to her.
Paula
Sullenger, Steering Committee: The Steering
Committee didn’t feel like we had a real clear sense of direction of where to
go on this. So what we did was, we tried
to work on some of the words that people really had problems with, and see if
people liked this wording better so we can have a…more likely to present
something that people will pass at the next meeting. I also included on the agenda, people had
mentioned the harassment and nepotism policies that were already in the Handbook,
so I had attached those to the agenda so people can review and see what they
thought. Anything that wasn’t addressed here
was addressed on those other two policies.
So for that, we’re just going to open it up for discussion.
Proposed policy projected on screen:
Auburn University prohibits
discourages all faculty,
administrators and supervisors, including graduate teaching assistants, from pursuing
engaging in romantic or sexual
relationships with undergraduate students
whom they are currently supervising or teaching. prohibits discourages all faculty, administrators
and supervisors from pursuing romantic or sexual relationships with graduate students and employee subordinates
whose work they supervise. Anyone involved
in who intends to pursue a
romantic or sexual relationship with someone over whom he/she has supervisory
power must recuse him/herself from decisions that
affect the evaluation, participation, employment conditions, instruction,
grading and/or the academic status of the subordinate involved.
David
Sutton, Substitute for Communication and Journalism:
I think the problem that I have with this policy is that there are no
consequences for violating it. If you
look at a pack of cigarettes it tells you you’re going to get heart disease if
you smoke. But what happens if a faculty
member or administrator or supervisor chooses to ignore this policy? I would suggest that we add at least a
sentence, something that sounds like, “Violation of this policy might subject
an employee to disciplinary action up to and including discharge – or death by
hanging – whichever.” (Audience laughter)
John
Mouton: Is that on the record by
recording? So, we’ll have it for the
Steering Committee.
John
Mouton: Dave, thank you. The recording of that we have for the
Steering Committee, so I’m not going to modify the statement, but we have that
to bring to the Steering Committee.
Thank you very much. Please…
Ruth
Crocker, History: I can’t quite see the top line, but I
couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d seen a policy requiring female faculty
to wear skirts and males to wear ties when they teach. [It] seems to be clearly a step into the
past. Instead of prohibiting, we’re just
discouraging – what could possibly cause such a shift back into the battle
twentieth century. So, could you tell us? Secondly, there’s also a real problem – people’s
intentions you’ve got half-way down here.
“Anyone involved who intends to pursue.”
How can we possibly police people’s intentions or even know what they
are? So we need to just say, “Anyone
pursuing” I think would be better. But
this whole thing is just…..I mean, when I first saw it, I thought, well maybe
they want us to talk about sex instead of SACS.
(Audience laughter) Maybe, so perhaps just too much conspiracy thinking here.
John
Mouton: I will try to address that, and maybe some
other people on the Steering Committee could help out. I think that, as I understood it, one of the
key issues is that relationships between somebody in responsibility and
somebody they are responsible for should not exist in the University. So that’s kind of a core, a core issue in
this. So the question then begins as you
start to try and address this is you get to the lower part where it says “must
recuse himself or herself from decisions that effect evaluation”, and I think
the question is what happens if somebody doesn’t do that. If somebody gets involved with a person that
they have responsibility over, the relationship can continue if the
responsibility relationship ends. And I
think that’s kind of what the bottom piece of this is. When it was presented before, there was a
contradiction between the top statement and the bottom statement, because what
it said was if it was prohibited then how could you establish this criterion on
the bottom end to make a recommendation?
So I think in the struggle to do that is where this idea about
discourages comes. The thing we have to
recognize is that we were trying to struggle to deal with the input that we got
the last time it was brought up, and the conflict was between the first
statement and the second statement. My
concept, which wasn’t…didn’t float very far…was simply to eliminate the upper
statement and make a statement that says, “Anyone involved in a romantic or
sexual relationship with someone over whom he has supervisory power must recuse
himself.” And let that stand as a
statement, but that wasn’t very popular.
Janet
Saunders, Executive Director, AA-EEO:
I, in fact, presented this proposal at the November meeting. So it should be no surprise that I am very much
in favor of it. However, I am in favor
of the policy that prohibits the behavior.
I think it’s important for me to share with you the fact that we have
some new situations that have come to our attention where we have students who
are emotionally distraught, who are actually being harmed by these
relationships that go awry. The
University is helpless to do anything about it until the student realizes that
it’s the relationship that is the problem.
We will wind up losing students, either to illness or they will withdraw
because they can’t do anything about the problem. So I urge speedy action, and I would urge the
Senate to prohibit the behavior for the sake of our students.
Virginia
O’Leary, Psychology: It seems to me that the appropriate way to deal
with this perceived contradiction, if you’re going to eliminate something,
would be to eliminate the last sentence, and to restore “prohibit”. It seems to me that the confusion stemmed
from the acknowledgment that there are perhaps people, because of their
historical relations with one another, who might be put in a situation where
they would be, through promotion or something, find themselves over time in a
supervisory position. And that is point
at which recusing oneself is appropriate in lieu of divorce,
for example. (Audience laughter) That is quite a different situation than the
situation that the first two sentences address.
Case law in this country has been perfectly clear for over 20 years
regarding the prohibition of these kinds of relationships. And all it will take is one of these
distraught students to consult an attorney for that to be made perfectly clear
to this entire campus. The fact that
that hasn’t happened is surprising to me actually, because all you have to do
is to go back a few years and skim the Chronicle of Higher Education and you
will become painfully aware of the numerous campuses on which these kinds of
legal charges have been brought and the horrific consequences, both personal
and institutional, that result from that.
So if you want to make a division, I would urge, in terms of this
perceived contradiction, that the division be made around the issue of people
who come to the situation in ongoing relationships – a faculty member whose
spouse gains entrance into the graduate program which she teaches, for example,
who would recuse herself from any involvement as a Committee member, etc, etc,
would be appropriate. There might be a
section that addresses that. But the
first two, as I understand the intent of the first two sentences here, it is
the prohibition of involvement on the part of faculty, administrators, and
supervisors of romantic or sexual relationships with people who are powerless,
or at least perceive themselves to be, to deflect their advances, whether or not
in the beginning they perceive them as welcome.
Missy
Josephson, Anatomy, Physiology, and Pharmacology [Not at Microphone]:
I understand the argument just made about taking this out, because it
does seem to be contradictory to what was proposed at first, which is, “this is
bad, don’t do it.” But there are situations,
particularly in my college, where the person in responsibility is only one year
ahead of the person they’re responsible for in their career development. In other words, interns
over [Inaudible], residents over interns. While those are intense working
relationships, they’re very temporary.
And relationships may develop, and it seems awfully constrictive to say
that those people, knowing they’re going to leave the University in a year, might
be called on the carpet for going out on a date. Just keep that in mind [Inaudible].
Dan
Bennett, Dean,
Paula
Sullenger [Not at Microphone]: I still feel like
I’m kind of hearing people arguing both sides, and I’m not quite sure which is the majority opinion.
So I’m going to make a motion to hopefully feel out the Senate. I move that the Steering Committee bring back
a very restrictive policy next month for the Senate to vote on.
John
Mouton: Second here; please. Okay.
Now, do you want to comment on the motion?
Gary
Martin, Curriculum and Teaching: It may have
something that may be germane. In fact,
it seems that it’s two separate issues because the last part – really there are
all kinds of improper, well not improper relationships but entangling
relationships, like a son or daughter even might also come under this, you
know, it’s a relationship where the person should not be exercising supervisory
power. So in fact it seems that maybe
that last issue is not really completely germane to the first issue, in terms
of prohibiting those kinds of relationships.
Maybe there should be some sort of a broader attempt to deal with
non-work relationships and how that impinges on supervisory relationships.
Virginia
O’Leary: I just want to recommend that the
Women’s Studies Director, as well as anyone else that she might feel
appropriate, be called upon by the Steering Committee to consult on this
issue. I think that they have a
perspective representing students, as well as faculty and administration that
would be appropriate, and also some extensive background and knowledge.
John
Mouton: Thank you, that’s a good suggestion.
Christopher
Hinklemann: With this and a lot
of other things that we’re doing, we act as though we’re launching a spaceship
to Venus, that we’re the only ones that have ever encountered this. I would recommend to the Steering Committee
to somehow make available to the other Senators – maybe a sampling of similar
statements from other universities. You
can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a land-grant university. There are so many peer institutions to choose
from. That way perhaps we can see what
the consensus is, especially from universities that have probably been sued for
these types of things, as was mentioned earlier.
John
Mouton: We will do that. One of the things that I do want to make
clear is that we did not get here without research – that the EE Office
certainly did do research.
Christopher
Hinklemann: My point is simply if we could all
see it, either on the web site or somewhere else.
Unidentified speaker:
Call the question.
John
Mouton: Anybody else to speak on the
motion? We’ve got a call for
question. Now we have to vote on the
call for the questions. Senators …
Cindy
Brunner: Real quick, Paula. I just wanted to know what “restrictive”
meant in your motion? You said something
about introducing a new policy that was much more restrictive.
Paula
Sullenger: I wasn’t trying to get into wordsmithing; I just wanted to know if the Senate wants a
mild, medium, or very strong policy. (Audience laughter) If this motion passes, then the Steering
Committee will work on something that has stronger language than what we see
now.
John
Mouton: So, now we’re back to the call for the
question. Senators, please, all in favor
signify by raising your hand. Okay, the
motion passes. We have direction. The other thing is that we will take the advice
about consulting with Women’s Studies leadership, and we will get copies of
policies from some other universities.
The next
topic on the agenda is new business. Is
there new business before we move to the discussion topic? Okay, we can move to the discussion topic. Actually, this topic was brought forward in
November. A couple of things have
happened since November. (Audience
laughing) Boy is that the
understatement! (Audience laughing) One of the things that happened is that it’s
evident now that a presidential search is going to take place. The timing isn’t exactly known, but it’s
certainly going to come. The other thing that’s happened is that the
independent investigation that was called for referencing these motions has
reached a status point to where probation came forward. Please.
Paula
Sullenger [Not at Microphone]: There’s a little bit
of confusion about what we were voting on before, because you mentioned the
call for the question. Someone thought
maybe we were voting on the call for the question, so can we just very quickly
just vote on the motion?
John
Mouton: Let’s use a voice vote, please, on the
motion. The motion is for the Steering
Committee is to come back with a resolution that is stringent. All in favor signify by saying “Aye”.
Audience: “Aye”
John
Mouton: Opposed – “nay”.
Okay, the “Aye’s” have it. Thank
you.
John
Mouton: One of the other things that was brought to my attention after November is that it was
suggested that I bring forward some questions to stimulate the discussion. So, I’ve got some questions today. What we’re going to do is we’ve got three
resolutions. We’re going to look at them
individually. After that, we’ll be open
to other comments and topics regarding the presidential search. The first resolution that we’re going to look
at is the resolution calling for the assessment of Board performance before
providing a presidential search. There’s
several “Whereas’ “ – the actual
resolve statement is, “Therefore, be it resolved that the presidential search
not proceed until an external assessment of the Board performance as
recommended by the Joint Assessment Committee has been accomplished and
compliance with the recommendation of that assessment has been agreed to by the
Board.” So these questions don’t have to
be taken in sequence, but somebody had asked me to come up with some
questions. I attempted to. One of the questions might be, does the SACS probation detail the recommendations of the
external assessment as recommended by the Joint Assessment Committee? If that’s true, does the acceptance of the
probation requirements and the University and the Board’s plans to comply with
those requirements confirm agreement by the Board of Trustees? And then the last question, which is really
the significant, will the resolution as stated be satisfied by the Board
agreement, and at that point would the Senate be willing to support and
participate in the presidential search?
So do we have anybody that would like to address this specific resolve
statement?
Jim
Saunders: We had a whole lot of resolutions
before. They’re sort of moot at this
point, as you probably just alluded to.
I think the issue of the presidential search….maybe the best thing to do
is just kind of start from scratch and say this body needs to make, as far as a
recommendation, about how we’re going to do this. Because we’re going to get a new presidential
search, we don’t have time to hire somebody to look at our Board. We know what the Board - all that sort of
stuff is water under the bridge. I would
propose, and I have been doing a little homework talking with the leaders of
the Alumni Association and I’m willing to propose some of the ideas about how
we might go forward, and how the Alumni Association would like to see the
faculty involved in this. I would say
that what we need to do is come up with a process and have this body propose a
process to come up with guidelines for developing a presidential search that
people can buy into.
John
Mouton: Jim, I think that one of the things is that I
believe, as the leader of the Senate, I am bound by these resolutions. Okay?
Whatever the intent was, whatever the language was, I don’t think that I
can simply discount them and say let’s move on to the presidential search. If it is the wishes of the body, we can
figure out some way to do that. The
reason I bring these here is so that we can come to some idea about - these
were passed and they are the wishes of the Senate at this time. Please,
Virginia
O’Leary: I’m frankly flabbergasted that these are back
before us, because as you mentioned when you introduced this, things have
changed enormously. I’m sure that we
could go back through the resolutions of this body for the last ten years and
re-look at all of them and decide whether or not we still agree. There are so many things that have occurred,
including much more pressing issues as far as I’m concerned, such as the
Institution being put on probation by SACS.
I don’t understand why we would be compelled to revisit this, given the
things that we could not have possibly foreseen when we cast our votes at the
time that these resolutions were passed have now occurred, including the five
issues that must be responded to by the Institution. As you pointed out, most of
them having to do with the relationship among and between the administration
and the Board. There was no way
we could have foreseen that, and I quite agree with my colleague. This is now a moot point and we should move
on to discuss a process that this body could endorse under the current
circumstances.
John
Mouton: I appreciate the comment. The issue that I struggle with is that I
quite sincerely feel that if I launched off and took this body into a phase of
operation where there were standing resolutions that were opposed to, we’ve got
people coming out of the woodwork against it.
The external assessment that’s asked for here is...exactly what has
happened is the external assessment has reached a point that produced the
probation, and so certainly there was an assumption that something would
happen. The assessment would be completed
and something would happen, and that’s exactly where we are. Please.
Kathryn
Flynn, Forestry and Wildlife Services: I agree with
Virginia and Jim, and I think that maybe what we need to do at this point is to
determine if the Senate wishes to move on, as opposed to going through this
process. Because I think we’re beating a
dead horse. I think they’re so old at
this point, and we’re so far past what those are dealing with that I think it’s
sort of a waste of time.
Bill
Gale, Steering Committee [Not at Microphone]:
While
agreeing completely with previous comments, I think that we do need to move on.
I think just to avoid confusion, we need
to say something. It need be no more, to
my mind, than whenever we pass a new resolution about the way we think we
should proceed, that this ends with a statement that says, “This supersedes the
things that we said before.” Basically
saying this is our last will and testament and it supersedes our previous one.(Audience laughter)
Cindy
Brunner: I agree.
Whether or not we voted in favor of these resolutions, we do have them
on the books. The one that you don’t
have up there says that the presidential search be suspended until the members
of the Board have tendered their resignations.
We really can’t call these resolutions moot because we still can follow
the actions that they announced. As long
as that’s the case, they’re not moot.
But I really do think it’s time we set them aside. I don’t know how to do that in a
parliamentary fashion. Maybe Willie
could help us out there. If we could
pass another resolution that supersedes these or that sets them aside or
somehow acknowledges that at the time they were approved they were appropriate,
but due to the current circumstances we want to move on.
John
Mouton: I think that one of the things that we can do
is we can bring back amendments to these resolutions that basically bring
closure to these issues. Please.
Jim
Gravois, Library: Basically the same thing. Maybe there is a way of suspending previous
resolutions...? I think it’s very
important that we reaffirm, as has been said, the importance of these things at
the time that they were passed. However,
times have changed and we need to move on.
Virginia
O’Leary: My understanding of Robert’s Rules is that we
cannot take an action now, because this is a discussion, there is no business
before us on the floor. I would like to
recommend - I am violently opposed to an amendment of any of these
resolutions. They were passed at the
time that they were passed in good faith.
People voted as they understood the situation to be at that time. So to go back and rescind them or do
something I think would be just totally inappropriate. However, it seems to me that it would be
appropriate for a resolution to come forward from the body, individual Senators
or the Steering Committee that suggests that under the circumstances, in light
of the situation as of a date certain, we move forward in a following fashion.
John
Mouton: We can bring that to the Steering Committee. Thank you.
Paula.
Paula
Sullenger: [Inaudible] We can’t wish these away. We cannot say something that says “oh, we
supersede it” because that would contradict what we’ve already said. That’s why there is provision for rescinding
or amending resolutions because circumstances do change. We can’t just ignore them or pretend they’re
not here. We’re going to have to address
them, each of those therefore statements, in some fashion. After we hear what the administration and
Board has to say, this one, we could vote that we think the resolved statement
has been complied with. The other two
probably won’t be so easy to deal with.
Willie
Larkin, Chair-elect of the Senate: I wish I could say
everything in this book…let me just say on the resolutions, it says that “resolutions
are permanent in nature in force, until rescinded – page 85-86.” So I’m going to have to take some time to
read through all of this. The cursory
look at this says that, and I forget the exact amount of time that this has to
be put before the body and then there has to be a two-thirds majority vote before
that can be rescinded. But resolutions can
be rescinded, and I’ll have that information for you certainly before our next
meeting.
Christa
Slaton, Political Science: I don’t understand the problem
here. Maybe I’m just dense, but the
resolution calling for Board assessment before a presidential search. In a sense, we have had a Board
Assessment. SACS has slapped us on
probation, and they said it’s the Board’s fault. So we’ve had that assessment. That’s done.
That’s fine.
John Mouton: I agree with you, and maybe that clears it. It says that the assessment has been agreed
to by the Board. It does say that.
Christa
Slaton: Okay. That was an oversight on our part, I think. Okay.
Then, resolution calling for resignation of the Board of Trustees – we
still want that. Does anybody here want
to rescind that? We still want it! Number three: resolution opposing removal of
“Interim”. It’s moot! We opposed it, it was removed. It’s moot!
Why do we have to act on this at all?
I don’t understand. What’s going
on?
Gary
Martin: I was just looking at the resolution on
John
Mouton: Not having gotten there, that was
the question I had. If the investigation
is complete, this one goes away. If we
agree as a body, then that completes the SACS investigation. Then this one is complete.
Jim
Saunders: Since this is a discussion item, and since we
all seem to have an agreement, then we need to move on from this and whether we
have to vote on it or not. I just wanted
to lay on the floor some ideas that have come back and forth from the Alumni
Association and my discussions with them, so that we can start this process of
coming up with a presidential search, which has to happen – whether or not the
legal matters or whatever. So let’s get
some of that discussion going on right now, whether or not - because we’ve got
to start that. I have three points that
have come out of my discussion with the Alumni Association, and again, I am an
Alumnus of Auburn so I do know some of these people.
Number one,
we are going to get some new Board members.
The Board is empowered, as John has pointed out to me, to come up with a
new president, and that’s their constitutional job. What we want to do is come up with a
procedure that everybody can buy into and is happy with, and doesn’t think
somebody is pulling strings from behind and all that sort of stuff. So that’s where we were sort of talking
about, just some ideas to throw out real quickly and I don’t want to take up
your time because I hate the way all this important stuff gets thrown to the
last of the meeting.
One thing
would be that, okay, we’re going to be getting three or four new Board members,
and we have a Governor that we seem to have some confidence in. That’s enough of the Board of Trustees to be
involved in the new presidential search.
Maybe let them do that, instead of the old people, that
may be one idea. Another idea is to be
involved in the Board search. If the
faculty are going to be involved in this, and again there’s no reason to think
that we’re not but we don’t have to be, that because of the nature of the past
history here at Auburn that maybe the faculty representatives to this search
committee might be elected by the entire faculty by electronic vote, as opposed
to the usual suspects, as my friend at the Board of Directors of the Alumni
Association said, that get appointed to these sorts of committees.
Thirdly,
since we have some concerns, some people do, that a lot of administrators who
have served at the pleasure of the Board of Trustees in the past and are - some
may be suspicions about some of their motives and whatever. Why not, Dr. Hanley excluded, we start fresh
on a search committee with people from administration that haven’t been here
through this history?
Tom
Williams, ROTC-Navy : If any of you are wondering why this ROTC guy
keeps getting up and saying things -I am an Auburn graduate as well and I have
a deep and abiding love for this institution and I want to see what’s best for
it. But, on the topic that we’re
discussing right now – I think the answer is that we need to rescind those
resolutions, even though they were passed in good faith at the time. We put some things in there that have painted
us into a corner. When we say things like don’t do something until a member of
the Board resigns, knowing full well they’re not going to resign, we’ve put
ourselves in the position where we will have to contradict ourselves sooner or
later. We need to rescind these
resolutions, draft a resolution that addresses the salient points from the
previous resolutions that we still believe in, and then resolve what we want to
put into that, whether it be; conducting a
presidential search now or whatever we want that to be. I think we’ve got to rescind those first and
then put those elements that we want included.
Kem Krueger, Pharmacy Care Systems:
I think the questions that you raised about the first whereases, if the probation and if the Board
agrees to the probation, I think that does satisfy their resolution. So I don’t think there’s any need to rescind
that. I think we can move forward. Looking at the resolution that the
presidential search to select William Muse’s successor be suspended, I don’t
think there’s any need to rescind that because we are not selecting Dr. Muse’s
successor, we are selecting Dr. Walker’s successor. So I don’t think that moving forward will
violate that. And then, the other one that
is printed out here that the SACS investigation be completed and that the Board
of Trustees work cooperatively with the faculty to conduct a search – I think
that’s where we are now. So as I’m
looking over this, I don’t think any of these need to
be rescinded, and I don’t think we will be contradicting any of these if we
move forward with a new presidential search.
Cindy
Brunner: Boy, am I ever glad
I let him speak before I did. I
wholeheartedly concur with what the previous speaker has said. I did not have eyes good enough to realize
that we did state specifically presidential search to select William V. Muse’s
successor. That, as far as I was
concerned, was the only resolution we needed to worry about because it
stipulated calling for the resignation of all members of the Board and the
search would be suspended until they have tendered their resignation. We have no search underway for President
Muse, and we won’t have a search to replace President Muse.
John
Mouton: Okay, so what I would like to do then is if
it’s acceptable to the body that the resolution William Muse was succeeded by
William Walker, therefore, if that one is resolved...
This is the
one that I guess still holds, and my sense is that once the Board of Trustees
takes action or establishes a position in response to the probation, then in
fact they’ve made the agreement and this one doesn’t need to be removed either.
It seems to
me that I don’t think the presidential search will be ahead of the Board’s
response to the probation. I mean,
there’s not that sense of urgency. So I
think that those two speakers have made those points. I think the only one we’re dealing with is
waiting to see if the Board will act on this.
Okay, are there any other comments in regard to these issues and regard
to the presidential search? I think
we’re going to have other opportunities to discuss the presidential search, but
I don’t see it on the near horizon.
We’re having a Steering Committee meeting tomorrow and an Executive
Committee meeting tomorrow. If anybody’s
got any comments or input, forward them to one of the members of those
committees. Is there any objection to
adjourning? We’re adjourned. [The meeting was adjourned at