The process of electing faculty members to the Department of Public Safety Oversight Committee caused a heated debate at yesterday’s meeting of the Senate Assembly Committee on University Affairs.

While some present at the meeting were not immediately satisfied with the proposed election procedures, SACUA — the leading faculty governance body on campus — passed a resolution outlining how faculty members would be elected to the DPS Oversight Committee — a policy that will take effect immediately.

The oversight committee is an organization that is meant to act as a check on University Police and investigate grievances filed against the Department of Public Safety.

The election procedures passed by SACUA will accommodate a decision to split faculty elections between tenured faculty and non-tenured faculty, so that each votes only for the representative within their respective group.

SACUA will be charged with overseeing the election of a representative for members of the Senate Assembly — a body of more than 4,000 tenured faculty, researchers and librarians — while Human Resources will head the election for more than 2,300 non-tenured faculty.

Approval of the revised faculty election procedures will set the faculty election process in motion for the first time since 2001, when the last election of a faculty member to the oversight committee took place. Michigan statute Public Act 120 requires the election of student, staff and faculty representatives to the committee — with each member nominated and elected by its respective constituency.

While the decision to hold a faculty election will bring elections to the committee more in line with legal requirements, no action was taken to address other procedural concerns raised by independent attorneys in a Nov. 16 article in The Michigan Daily, who stated that elections appear to violate state law because not every person is allowed to vote for a representative to the committee.

Instead the newly passed election procedures will limit tenured faculty to voting only for themselves and the same will be true of non-tenured faculty.

SACUA Secretary John Lehman, who has been charged with overseeing the tenured faculty election and drafted the new procedure approved by SACUA yesterday, explained that members of the tenured faculty will be able to nominate one of their peers. The nominees will be posted on a website with their biography and election statements so that voters can learn about the candidates.

Voting will be open online for one week. To keep the election confidential, tellers will be able to see which faculty members voted, but not who they voted for. This will enable tellers to make sure nobody votes twice, Lehman said.

The candidate who receives the highest number of votes will win the election.

Lehman, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said he hopes to finish the election process by the end of the month.

“I want to do it as fast as I can— as soon as we’ve got all our procedures set up,” he said.

However, SACUA members at yesterday’s meeting did not say when the winner’s term would begin.

Lehman said one option is for the term to begin April 1 — the same time as the non-tenure track faculty position — while the other is for it to start as soon as the election results are announced.

However, the process approved at yesterday’s meeting had some concerned over how representative and independent the oversight committee would actually be.

Former Pathology Prof. Douglas Smith explained to SACUA members his belief that the new election procedures will make it difficult for a non-tenured faculty member to rule in a case “where there is likely to be opposition from the administration.” Smith is not a member of SACUA.

“You need four out of six votes for this committee to sustain a grievance.