The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Dec. 14, 2000
Computer Lab, Daniel Library

1. Prof. Tom Thompson, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:03 a.m.

2. Members attending: Professors Bishop, Brown, Briggs, Chen, Jones, Lally, Matthews, Moody, Nath, Pages, Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Templeton, Thompson, G. Williams, Woo, Zuraw, and Greenawalt for Moody.

3. Members absent: Professors Britz, Dunlop, Gordon, Kelley, Lineberger and McDowell.

4. Both Prof. Bishop as secretary and a quorum were not present when the meeting began, so the first item was the meeting with Col. Holland about the allocation of supplies. Rather than simply come in by himself and discuss who gets new copiers and why, the original reason for inviting him, he brought his full panoply of slides, pie charts and assistants and gave his regular hour-long speech on financial resources and management at The Citadel which he also gives to legislators, alumni and such. Topics, raised by Col. Holland and by Council members asking him questions, included current construction projects (Padgett-Thomas will be replaced but the money to replace Capers Hall and park its professors elsewhere is not to be found at the moment); which aspects of the school are making and which are losing money (Prof. Briggs asked how much the biggest drain, in Athletics, was and how it was made up, and Col. Holland said it had to be done from sales like the Cadet Store's, not fees); the need for better athletic scholarships; the issue of maintenance and repair, especially in faculty housing which by law has to be done from rents only; who decides how surpluses are allocated (the Vice-Presidents, not the surplus-generators); the trends in the numbers of cadets and issues of FTEs; whether the new Development office is in fact bringing in money as Gen. Grinalds hoped (yes at first, this year no because of the transition to a different fundraising structure); why Instruction is so low a percentage (24% only) of total expenditure (because of keeping up the physical campus, though Prof. Greenawalt pointed out that even if that were removed Instruction would still be only 36% and still too low in proportion to Administration);

how much it will cost to do the schools reorganization if it happens (not a lot, but Prof. Nath was suspicious when there were no exact figures); and some "dragons", things that people think are bad but aren't, like the new Alumni House (built with alumni contributions, not tuition money), ownership of College Park (we need a general-purpose athletic field, especially for women's sports) and such.

5. A quorum was achieved during Col. Holland's speech but lost again before it ended, so no voting on anything was possible.

6. Since it was now 12:02, instead of having a comprehensive discussion about Schools reorganization the Council confined its discussion to the proposal to replace Academic Board and Faculty Council with one Academic Senate. Prof. Greenawalt noted that the Business department was against the proposed Senate, run by the Vice-President with all the deans and department heads in it and regular faculty members being almost outnumbered by administrators and quasi-administrators, because there is now an academic voice for purely faculty concerns and it would be lost. Many agreed, saying that this would be a perfect recipe for a rubber stamp (or, as Prof. Bishop put it, a Stalinist-style official legislature), and it would tend to return us to the days (Prof. Nath cited the late 70s) when there were nasty repercussions for people who advocated unpopular positions. It would make the parade of issues raised into not real discussions but briefings, the Administration conveying its policy, as the general faculty meetings now are (as opposed to schools where the whole faculty really meets to do business). Also, some issues raised in Faculty Council, like cadet runs or interference with classes, might be considered too trivial by administrators. Prof. Brown asked: who decided Faculty Council was a bad idea? Prof. Thompson pointed out that it was Gen. Carter, on the grounds that discussing things separately and bouncing issues around between two deliberative bodies for a couple of years was inefficient. Prof. Briggs pointed out that committees like Scholarships and Tenure are now real faculty committees, while before they too were briefings on Administration policy; if the committees came out of this Faculty Senate they might return to this. Prof. Thompson summarized that he was hearing a strong current of opinion that the two bodies should be kept, and even if we did get a Faculty Senate we should also continue to meet as a group of just professors.

7. It was decided to hold an extra meeting in January on the 18th, before the meeting with Gen. Carter on the 25th, to discuss among ourselves the other issue, the schools reorganization.

8. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 p.m.