The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Oct. 24, 2002
Bond Hall, Room 161

1. Prof. George Williams, chairperson of Faculty Council, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.
   
   
2. Members attending: Profs. Allen, Bishop, Briggs, B. Carter, Chen, Davakos, Kelley, Lally, Lipscomb, Matthews, Murray, Niksch, Snively, G. Williams, Woo, Zuraw and D. Moore for Foster.
   
   
3. Members absent: Profs. Andrade, Dunlop, Pilcher, Silver and two representatives as yet unchosen by their departments.
   
   
4. This meeting featured two guests invited to speak to concerns of the faculty and staff; many people besides the Faculty Council members were there, including some from Staff Council to discuss the issue of parking. First, however, Provost Carter addressed the meeting about the issues raised by the schools reorganization. He described one of the rationales: that the previous Designated Dean system was unclear as to chains of authority, and the system of deans of schools would be clearer about this and possibly attract more money. He affirmed that so far three of the five positions of deans of schools had been filled without spending extra money, since they had been made out of department head positions in Business, Education and Engineering; that a fourth, the Deanship of Humanities, would be made out of the now-vacant Deanship of Undergraduate Studies and Women, and filled by a search this year; and that the fifth, the Deanship of Mathematics and Sciences, could be filled by a search next year without cost to The Citadel either by soliciting private money or by making it out of the now-vacant Deanship of Graduate Studies. The other concern was about the core curriculum; he hoped the reorganization would not affect it at all, and stated that no school would have the power to opt out of it.
   
   Prof. Zuraw asked how the reorganization would affect committees: what if one school were shut out of a committee, as happened with one cluster on the Appeals Committee in the past? Provost Carter replied that clusters were indeed the old analogue to schools but that there would be no change in the representation of standing committees, which would continue to be by department. The Appeals Committee would be organized by schools, with one representative from each. Prof. Zuraw noted that this meant Engineering, with 15 members, would have the same representation on the Appeals Committee as Humanities with 57. She then asked which school would not have a representative if a Library person got to be on the Appeals Committee; it was determined that Humanities would then be the school not directly represented, and Provost Carter said this issue should be looked into. Prof. Briggs raised the concern that Business, Engineering and Education are all professional training courses which answer to definite, single outside accrediting agencies, while the remaining two schools are heterogeneous groups of subjects with no one outside accreditor; would this difference in priorities and answerability split the first three schools off from the other two and damage the collegiality we are trying to keep? Provost Carter said that that was a concern he had long pondered, but that two things worked against it: first, accrediting agencies nowadays are moving away from being dictatorial and making over-specific demands of the departments they accredit as they did in the 1960s and '70s, and second, by the nature of those three subjects the danger of their becoming isolated from the rest exists however the college is organized internally.
   
   Prof. Williams led a round of applause for Provost Carter and he left.
   
   
5. Col. Mike Bingham of Public Safety appeared to talk to the Council and the numerous interested others about the state of, and the new policies for, campus parking. He distributed a list of talking points and went through them, including the student parking fees ($180 for the school year and $30 extra if here in the summer) and the numbers of faculty/staff cars and slots (for instance, 184 cars are now registered to park in Capers Lot and it has 191 spaces). We have just lost an overflow resource because after some trouble on Parents Day the city has said Citadel cars can no longer overflow into Hampton Park; but when all the current construction is over, there will be enough parking on campus for everyone.
   
   The main topic, however, was the new policy that general annual parking fees for faculty and staff are raised from $30 to $60 and anyone who wants can pay $120 a year and have a space reserved for them alone. Questioned about some specifics of how this worked, Col. Bingham said the reserved space was its reserver's during duty hours, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and people teaching an evening class could ask Public Safety for a traffic cone to put in the space while they went to dinner. The policy on the four special days when parents or alumni come in large numbers is still that anyone who wants to park in the non-quarters lots in order to work on those days has to get there by 8 a.m., after which all lots will be thrown open to the public. Owners of reserved spots can give their parking tag to someone else's car, but not just give oral permission for the other car to park there without visual evidence of legitimacy. Prof. Lipscomb brought up the subject of campus non-residents who park in the reserved spaces outside residents' quarters; Col. Bingham said if these were reported to Public Safety they would be ticketed. On further questioning, he ruled out the use of WLI Field for overflow because cars there created ruts which were unsafe for student athletes, and ruled out the option of a vertical parking garage on campus because studies had determined it would be prohibitively expensive, raising campus parking fees to $500 a year.
   
   Prof. Greim unfurled a printout of his extensive e-mail correspondence with Col. Bingham and asked for the specific figures on how many spaces there are in each lot and how many have been reserved so far. If there are so many that ordinary unreserved parkers are shut out, would it be possible to go back to the policy of all spaces not reserved for special officeholders being general? Col. Bingham said he could not decide on the latter, as it was an Administration policy. He began to read aloud the lot-by-lot statistics; Profs. Bishop and Greim, unable to keep up by writing, asked whether he could give us a written form of that, and he said it would take him a long time but he could put it out in a huge e-mail after the meeting. There was a frank exchange of views during which he asserted that no one had the right to demand answers from him unless they were Col. Tomasik or had two stars, and Prof. Moore demanded to know why faculty members with legitimate work concerns, such as having to carry heavy loads of books from a remote non-reserved space, did not have the right to ask him about these things. He replied that he was here to answer now. Further questioning brought the reply that there was no maximum permitted number of reserved spaces in each lot and he had received no guidance on that, so that theoretically every space in a lot could be reserved; Prof. Bishop asked whether Faculty Council could give him guidance in a resolution, and he and several others said that was a matter to ask the Administration.
   
   Prof. Saylor and others pointed out how much more expensive parking was at MUSC or the College, indicating that even with the new fees and reserved-slot rules the Citadel people were well off. Others vehemently disagreed, saying the parking fees were outpacing inflation and our raises were lagging behind it, and that this was not downtown. Col. Bingham reiterated that when all the construction was finished he sincerely believed there would be paking for everyone; he intends to put some two-hour parking slots in the space between Summerall Gate and the MECEPS' trailer for people who want to drive to the snack bar.
   
   In response to other questions, Col. Bingham said that people not here in the summer could have their parking fees prorated to reflect that; that the old policy of free parking at the stadium was now impossible because of construction and that he would like to see the stadium spaces given to cadets whose parking spaces were not now around the barracks; and that he agreed that parking fees should be prorated for part-time workers and lowered for low-salaried people but that he did not have the power to do this. Prof. Moore questioned the basic philosophy of the reserved slots: she does so much of her work at home that she would have an ethical problem with taking a reserved spot only to leave it empty so much, yet would suffer from having to park in a remote spot when she comes with heavy loads. Col. Bingham noted that anyone who pays the general parking fee can park in a reserved slot after 5 p.m. if it isn't coned, and said he understood that the policy of reserved slots at higher fees was initiated partly to raise money rather than let Citadel employees go.
   
   Prof. Williams halted the discussion and praised Col. Bingham for facing us as the bearer of this news when he wasn't the inventor of the policies. He was applauded and left.
   
   
6. Prof. Bishop called attendance and found that there had been a quorum but that, due to the lateness of the hour, several Council members had left and there no longer was one; hence, three sets of minutes of previous meetings could not be approved.
   
   
7. As Staff Council members and other visitors left, Faculty Council members came to a few conclusions. These were that we should invite Col. Tomasik and someone from Finance to a future meeting to address these issues farther; that Faculty Council should return to the policy of having standing subcommittees; that we should try harder, perhaps by influencing department heads to admonish them, to get non-attenders to come so we would have a consistent quorum; and that we should have a special meeting before the next regular one to discuss other issues besides schools and parking. This meeting was set for Thursday Nov. 7th.
   
   
8. The meeting was adjourned at 12:43 p.m.