The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Dec. 11, 2003
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall

1. Prof. Lisa Zuraw, chairperson of Faculty Council, called the meeting to order at 11:20 a.m.; this later time was intentional, so that people could finish with their 8 a.m. final exams.

2. Members attending: Profs. Allen, Bloss, Bishop, B. Carter, Chen, Darden, Davakos, Davis, Hewett, Lally, Matthews, McKinney, Moody, Woolsey, Zuraw and Hines for Niksch.

3. Members absent: Profs. Andrade, Briggs, Knapp, Lipscomb, Miller, Murray and Snively.

4. Prof. Zuraw announced that ten finalists for the Provost position had been chosen and would be examined in airport interviews. Council members asked her to get the names of the resulting five finalists by the Jan. 22, 2004 meeting; the possibility was discussed of inviting Dean Finch to that meeting to report on the five. The consensus was that Faculty Council members ought to get a special meeting with the finalists besides the general faculty meeting, with perhaps half an hour to talk to each candidate.

5. Prof. Zuraw reconfirmed that Provost Carter would attend the Jan. 22 meeting to discuss the Quality Enhancement Plan. Since there is no provision for a general faculty meeting about the QEP, the question was raised whether the Council should invite all faculty to this meeting. The conclusion was that this would be too inefficient and that non-Council members on the faculty are only invited to Faculty Council meetings if they have specific business there, though no one is thrown out if they come. The schedule calls for the QEP to be presented to Academic Board on Jan. 20.

6. Prof. Zuraw called the Council's attention to the e-mail announcing that instead of a raise the faculty was going to get a lump-sum bonus based on each member's 2002 evaluation in the last paycheck of the year.

7. Prof. Woolsey reported on his first President's Meeting. The issues had been Gov. Sanford's proposal to privatize state colleges that wanted it; the proposal to save money and defuse the molestation lawsuit by shutting down the summer camp and other such programs; and the recently concluded Employee Climate Survey, all of which were too new to have produced any decisions or actions yet.

8. A volunteer was solicited to be the faculty member who would be interviewed by South Carolina Educational Television when it came to film a documentary here in the spring. Prof. Bishop volunteered for this.

9. Prof. Zuraw raised the issue of whether to deactivate the Campus Affairs Committee, since it rarely met and had not informed her of its current chair or revised its charter. Prof. Bishop claimed that Prof. Briggs had appointed her as its current chair a couple of Faculty Council meetings back and asserted that it should not be dissolved because it could become a hot committee by taking on the campus parking issue. Action was postponed.

10. The rest of the meeting was devoted to the latest campus parking development, Col. Tomasik's proposal to put a card-activated gate on Capers Lot and keep it permanently as an overbooked all-reserved-spaces lot. There was lively discussion about the parking issue as a whole, including observations that a majority of the faculty was against reserved spaces and many are just buying them in self-defence as the only way to get in; that faculty need to park close so as to carry heavy items to the office; that staff members must be at their work during fixed hours so they have the more urgent problem, but also vacate their spots more regularly so that they are a slightly different audience than the faculty; that faculty and not students should be seen as the customers for campus parking; that this is true of cadets but graduate students are customers for parking and the better situation for them here, as opposed to the College, helps recruit them; and that the new policies about parking are part of a trend to devalue faculty and take away their perquisites. Prof. Hewett noted that carded gates are self-defeatingly expensive to maintain because people tend to crash through them. Prof. Davis observed that the Administration is not deliberately devaluing the faculty but simply is not being analytical enough about the impact on it of parking politices; they should improve their methodology and better prioritize who should get parking access. It was suggested that faculty needs both a committee for parking issues and a change in the culture of the school so that our concerns and our expertise are listened to.

Prof. Bishop moved and Prof. Bloss seconded "that Faculty Council opposes the proposal to gate and oversell A Lot as delineated in Col. Tomasik's e-mail to Prof. Zuraw of Oct. 13, 2003." This passed unanimously.

11. The minutes for the meeting of Nov. 20 were read and approved.

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