The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to discuss next week’s Senate Assembly agenda and faculty sanctions.
A majority of the meeting was spent planning the agenda for the Senate Assembly meeting that will take place on Jan. 29.
The first agenda item is a resolution condemning the University’s cancelation of voting on two Central Student Government ballot initiatives. The two ballot initiatives, AR 13-025 and AR 13-026, were up for a campus-wide vote in last semester’s CSG midterm elections before the U-M administration halted the process, citing a breach of election integrity after an email was sent to the U-M student body urging them to vote yes on AR 13-025 and no on AR 13-026.
The resolution argues that the University was unjustified in canceling voting, as CSG is meant to be independent from the administration.
“Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate Assembly deprecates this unwarranted interference in the free expression of opinion, and calls on the University’s leadership to protect and encourage the practice of deliberative democracy within the student community,” the resolution reads.
Next on the agenda is a resolution asking the University to divest from companies with financial ties to Israel. The resolution, which cites the University’s previous decisions to divest from companies connected to Russia and South Africa, comes in the wake of numerous student protests calling for divestment.
The final item on the agenda is a resolution that would allow members to join the SACUA Nominating Committee, a subset of the Senate Assembly that nominates individuals to the 18 committees in the assembly. According to SACUA Chair Thomas Braun, the approval of any new members to the SACUA Nominating Committee may take place virtually next week.
“We don’t expect to have enough time to formally vote on the members of that committee, but (Faculty Senate Director Luke McCarthy) suggested that we do an electronic vote after the meeting for this one,” Braun said. “It seems a little less problematic to have this vote take place outside of the meeting than the first two.”
Following the agenda planning, the assembly discussed faculty sanctions. According to Braun, an overwhelming amount of these sanctions are filed under Regents’ Bylaw 5.09, which covers faculty tenure and any removal of a tenured professor. Once the compliants are filed, SACUA has the responsibility of ensuring that the hearings are fair to all parties and that the procedures in 5.09 are followed. The hearing committee at SACUA must also ensure that the charge is appropriate and explains steps for proceeding, and the level of proof needed for a recommendation of dismissal or demotion of a faculty member. Braun said this process overwhelms the committee.
“I think this just isn’t a manageable process for a nine-member committee, who has so many other responsibilities,” Braun said.
SACUA does not make a final decision on issues underlying a 5.09 case but makes recommendations on the proceeds and decisions of the Tensure Committee, which does make the final decision.
Rebekah Modrak, SACUA member and Art & Design professor, said she believes faculty often choose to file complaints under the regents’ bylaw because they perceive other channels, like the Equity, Civil Rights, & Title IX Office and the University’s grievances system, to be ineffective.
“This is a problem because the grievance system is broken, and Title IX is broken,” Modrak said. “(Bylaw) 5.09 might be the only process that is equitable, and it’s clear and has enough faculty representation and faculty input in the process. So to me, it does make sense to put them in the 5.09.”
Modrak also said SACUA is working on recommendations to the University to the 5.09 complaint process more streamlined, which will be discussed at SACUA’s Feb. 5 meeting.
“Telling the administration that (faculty sanctions) now have to be in 5.09 indicates to them that they have to start working with us to fix some of these other processes,” Modrak said.
Simon Cushing, U-M Flint associate professor, said in an interview with The Daily that the alternative idea of submitting complaints to Regents’ Bylaw 5.09 might be a good thing because the complaint process is heavily regulated.
“We have the problem that 5.09 requires a lot of work because their oversight is regulated,” Cushing said. “We don’t want an incentive for people to try and (go around) 5.09.”
Daily Staff Reporter Anna Jerolimov can be reached at annajero@umich.edu.