The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Sept. 23, 1999
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall

1. Professor Julie Lipovsky, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.

2. Members attending: Professors Bishop, Brown, Feurtado, Foster, Lipovsky, Maynard, McDowell, Pages, Silver, Thompson, Toubiana, Wolf, Woo, Zuraw, Trautman for Chen, Templeton for H. Ezell, Rembert for B. White, and Keener for G. Williams.

Members absent without substitutes: Professors Dunlop, Emanuel, Hurren, Pilcher and Wallace.

3. The minutes of the Sept. 2 meeting were approved without corrections.

4. On the motion of John Brown, seconded by Steve Silver, the motion of the Sept. 2 meeting that Citadel professors have the option of taking class attendance or having the senior student do it as section marcher was untabled. Prof. Silver, who had made it, amended it to say that professors should no longer have to have a role in enforcing attendance but leave it to Jenkins Hall to decide how to do so via students or otherwise, but (after concern that Jenkins Hall would mandate a section marcher who would take up class time) with the mandate they not intrude on class time. Tom Thompson seconded this motion. After some talk including memories of the days when section marchers were mandated and worked, and discussion of whether a change was necessary and what use attendance records were to professors, the motion was defeated 8 to 6 with two abstentions.

Jean-Marie Pages moved and Ken Wolf seconded that faculty be encouraged to really observe the present system of turning in absences. After some griping about the too-early Friday deadline for the absence reports (and Data Input's problems if they come Monday) and the lack of scope to note if a student's absence is excused (Jenkins Hall decides that), this motion passed by a vote of 11 to 5 with one abstention.

5. Prof. Lipovsky announced the new policies for Parents' Day, namely that instead of professors being available for parent-teacher conferences all Saturday morning, each department would have a shorter open house. This is because The Citadel now intends to catch up with the Privacy Act of 1973 which prohibits discussing students' grades or performance with their parents without their written permission. After discussion of the form available for this permission, whether it would be coercive to ask our students to sign it, and whether this prohibition goes too far in preventing us from giving guidance to students (it's the law, so this concern is moot), Faculty Council noted the new system and took no action.

6. Prof. Lipovsky reviewed the history of former Vice President for Academic Affairs Cliff Poole's idea that The Citadel make its Department of Education into a distinct School of Education, and how his successor Harry Carter put this idea on hold until the school decided whether it would be profitable to organize all departments into three or four schools with their own deans. There was discussion, as there had been in the Academic Board meeting of Sept. 21, of whether this change would genuinely decentralize power and give the new deans real scope in hiring, nurturing and funding in departments they knew close up or whether it would just add another meaningless layer of bureaucracy. Jane Bishop moved, and Steve Silver seconded after offering the preamble as an amendment, that Faculty Council adopt this position: "While Faculty Council is in favour of exploring such benefits as decentralization and the expansion of doctoral programs, it feels that the division into schools is a huge change which requires thought and debate, and that therefore The Citadel should separate this issue from the urgent search for the department heads of Education and Physical Education, and move to fill the latter quickly." This motion passed unanimously with one abstention.

7. The Council took up the draft proposal on procedures for post-tenure review written by Faculty Council in 1998 and disseminated with the Council's proposed amendments on May 7th of that year; noted that we were being unrealistically rushed to adopt something on this issue by Oct. 1st or 15th; decided that there was too little time left in this meeting to discuss these amendments; and agreed to handle it in a special meeting a week from this one, Thursday Sept. 30th.

8. Prof. Lipovsky did an abbreviated report on the Academic Board meeting of Tuesday the 21st, most of which had been about the proposed schools reorganization as in item 6. The other thing was the Administrat-ion's plans for rebuilding the stadium and then Capers Hall and others if it gets $38 million from the state.

9. Tom Thompson reported on the Vice-Presidents' meeting: topics had been the funeral of Col. Floyd Brown, the decision about how to make up class days missed because of Hurricane Floyd, and the fact that they want everybody from now on to call the Riverview Room the Regimental Commanders' Riverview Room.

10. Steve Silver brought up the grievances of many faculty about being given tickets for parking their cars in A Lot outside Capers when it was too full with cars of graduate students. Lisa Zuraw moved and John Brown seconded that we ask Col. Tomasik to find more parking spaces on campus; Tom Thompson proposed and Prof. Zuraw accepted the addition that A lot should be limited to faculty from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. as soon as possible and at least by spring 2000. This motion passed 17 to 1 with one abstention.

11. Steve Silver was nominated by John Brown and seconded by Lisa Zuraw as Hughes Hoyle's successor as representative to the Facilities Planning Board. This was carried unanimously.

12. Prof. Lipovsky showed the Council her letter to Gen. Grinalds expressing her concern about the lateness of class cancellation and campus evacuation before Hurricane Floyd. Tom Thompson moved and John Brown seconded that Faculty Council endorse this fine letter as written, and this passed unanimously.

13. Jane Bishop moved and Roger Keener seconded for purposes of discussion that in future classes never be cancelled by the Administration for non-emergency reasons unless they were made up during the next drill period. This motion was tabled on Prof. Lipovsky's proposal that she simply go talk to Gen. Carter about the concerns we had over classes being cancelled for funerals of eminent alumni and just where this policy had come from.

14. The meeting was adjourned at 12:31 p.m.