University Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
4:30–6:00 p.m.
701 Clark Hall
DRAFT MINUTES

I. Call to Order

J. Marwell called the meeting to order at 4:45 p.m.

II. Roll Call

J. Marwell welcomed the new faculty members and asked them to introduce themselves.

Elisabeth Sanders introduced herself as a faculty member of Government.

Abraham Stroock introduced himself as a faculty member of Chemical Engineering.

Dan Brown introduced himself as a faculty member of Animal Sciences.

Finally, J. Marwell welcomed the new student clerk from the Office of Assemblies, Diane Lee.

III. Call for Late Additions to Agenda

J. Marwell asked for late additions to the agenda, but there were none.

IV. Announcements and Reports

A. Chairs:

J. Marwell said that reports will be conducted first. She said they have been discussing the campus code, getting feedback and working with the CJC in terms of leadership and the direction that UA will go in this semester.

J. Glenn said the GPSA has been working with the SA and has finally ratified the trustee resolution requiring that one seat be reserved for an undergraduate and the other for a graduate or professional student. Also, next week, GPSA will be having their semester retreat.

J. Marwell cleared up that the “Board” being referred to was the Board of Trustees.

B. Constituencies:

There were no constituency reports.

C. Codes & Judicial Committee:

J. Marwell welcomed the CJC to talk about updates to the campus code of conduct. She also reminded the assembly about the forum on 2/5 from 4–6 p.m. in Willard Straight Hall.

M. Hatch asked all four constituencies to get their assemblies involved in understanding the code and registering those comments on the website as well as at the forum.

The Committee needs to get more opinions from the University community. From what he can pick up from The Daily Sun and from individuals, there is a big gap in the understanding of the student body.

The CJC wants more feedback so that it can construct a report that will reflect that opinion in their recommendations. The CJC and the UA will have much more power and strength when presenting this report to the President if extensive community input has been received.

The CJC is doing all kinds of things to gather student opinions, both off-the-cuff opinions, and educated opinions. They will pass everything on to the UA, which will directly report to the President about the strengths and weaknesses of the Krause report.

There’s nothing at this stage that involves taking away rights. That stage may come later when the UA makes its decision and the President acts upon that decision.

As for the educated opinion, the CJC had two meetings since the last University Assembly meeting. We had a representative from the central administrations Office of Policies and Administration, which was the agency that would superintend the code if it were taken away from the UA. We had a report on what that office does, and it’s completely independent of any student or staff input. We had a report from a representative of that office on how the code might be examined and implemented in that office should it come that the Krause report was implemented in that division. The representative said they didn’t have any idea how this could happen. It doesn’t become relevant for them to consider it until some steps are taken to change this code and take it out of the UA’s hands.

At the second meeting, M. Opperman, the VP for Human Resources, came to speak about the splitting off of faculty and staff adjudication of the code from the students and what the impact might be in the Office of Human Resources. She didn’t say it would be problematic to institute this, but she did say she couldn’t imagine how it could happen because it would involve each faculty and staff or supervisor unit taking on the job of administering and adjudicating individually the punishment under the campus code.

There was a comment from a member of the UA that the CJC does not seem to be engaging enough with the administration. M. Hatch said he invited every member of the former administration working group to come to every meeting of the CJC. He has been corresponding with Susan Murphy, and she will be at the forum on Wednesday.

The forum is useful because it will get more campus opinion and input. The CJC digests this information, and it’s really useful to have a good understanding of the documents before the forum.

M. Hatch’s last point is about what the CJC has decided to focus on. Of the eight or nine points in the Krause report, they have chosen to focus upon four points that are condensed into three. For the first point, to whom does the code apply? The second part of the first point is where does the code apply: How does one define off-campus; how far away from Cornell is off-campus? The second point is who is in charge of the code? The third point is should the judicial administration be independent or under the Dean of Student’s office.

A male representative asked if the two VPs who came to meeting were extensively canvassed by Barbara Krause before she wrote her report.

M. Hatch replied that the first one wasn’t a VP because she was involved in evaluating policy. She looked through it and didn’t understand. To M. Opperman, they asked what would happen if faculty and staff situations were transferred to the Dean of Student’s office. M. Opperman said it could be done, but would be unusual.

A male representative asked if the representatives from the administration that showed up at the two meetings showed any interest in the code, in implementing code, or even being consulted by Barbara Krause. Did they contribute to it or think about it being a good change?

M. Hatch clarified that at the first meeting, not only was the Office of Policy Administration representative there, but also Kent Hubbell and two other representatives from the Dean of Students. Kent Hubbell said he was happy in his role in the Dean’s office, acting as an advocate for students. An evaluation report for the Dean of Students Office had proposed that, since the Dean of Student’s Office was now in high favor with the students, it might be a good time to move disciplinary function into that office. The report observed that the modern thinking about discipline is that it should be done through the Dean of Students. K. Hubbell also clarified that he wasn’t advocating the change, but just clarifying. Carol Brumbach, a new member of the Dean’s office, felt there were possibilities in the Dean’s office being used for disciplining, but that it was good to have it independent.

The third representative from the Dean of Students office sent M. Hatch a long memo asking if he was aware that there is a professional organization of judicial administrators. This representative had previously been a judicial administrator at another university in the Dean’s Office, and felt that M. Hatch should be aware of the views of the professional organization.

M. Hatch noted that the CJC surveyed ten other universities looking at other judicial systems.

D. Forum: February 5th, 4–6 pm in Willard Straight Memorial Room A male representative said he has the feeling 99% of the community is against it, and maybe 99.5% if you add Day Hall people. Will there be somebody at the forum that can try to convince us otherwise — that the Krause report is really a brilliant piece of legislation?

M. Hatch said his opinion was that no one has that responsibility to tell us what’s good about the Krause report.

The male representative said he meant is someone like Barbara Krause going to be there?

M. Hatch responded that Susan Murphy will be at the forum, but it’s not saying that she will be a spokesperson for the Krause report.

A female representative said it’s not so much about what’s good about the Krause Report on the code, but what aspects of the report will benefit the community.

M. Hatch said it seemed as if the Krause revisions were proposed because of external reviews of both the Office of Judicial Administration and the Dean of Students Office. Both external reviews proposed movement of discipline into the Dean of Students Office. The university community must determine if the recommendations are relevant or good. It’s very important for the university community and the UA; all the people who worry and complain about the abrogation of their rights have a responsibility to talk to you folks in the UA. Then, the UA has the responsibility to evaluate all the information and decide whether the present practice is appropriate for the community.

A. Stroock wanted M. Hatch to clarify the extent to which his committee is responsible for making decisions on each point. He knows they are only focusing on four points, but all are detailed points. What is the process forward?

M. Hatch said if you read President Skorton’s 2nd letter, he just wanted a report on the code by 4/1. If things need to be extended, he’ll entertain that. We need to process changes to the code in a way that’s responsible to the Cornell community. Extensive changes to the code and judicial system need to be debated in front of the UA before they go to the administration.

L. Lawrence asked if it should say “2006” on p. 3 and on the table of contents. It should be 2007.

A. O’Donnell will tell A. Epstein about that mistake.

V. New Business

A. Appoint a TAC chair, and decide date of first meeting

J. Marwell said the first matter was appointing a Transportation Advisory Chair. The committee didn’t operate last semester. We will also need to schedule the first meeting. Any nominations?

D. Rosen asked if the issues include parking.

J. Marwell recommended checking the description. She said they need to convene the committee and get it running again. We’re trying to start it again this semester.

A male representative said parking was a major issue as well as sustainability.

A male representative said the committee itself can’t set parking regulations, etc. but it can bring things back to the UA.

J. Marwell said the chair will act as a liaison to the committee and make sure they meet.

Another male representative asked if the UA recommendations were binding or non-binding recommendations to the administration. If we brought something up to the administration, do they have to act on it or just take it as a recommendation about how the University feels.

J. Marwell said they have to.

A male representative said at one time, there was a division of authority in the administration where some things were under the UA and some things were under the administration. These committees are ghosts of what used to be. By default or action, someone started assuming that the administration became the authority and the UA became advisory. Since these committees aren’t meeting, is it because there’s no authority and that people aren’t interested?

J. Marwell said that the committees are not meeting because they are lacking in leadership. No chair has been appointed so a chair must be appointed today.

A female representative said it’s also because the Krause report has taken over.

A male representative said they have legislative authority over all those things. It wasn’t that there wasn’t interest in those subjects because nobody took the power away. If you were to become chair and want to be proactive, you can make a recommendation. The President has to do something about it. He has to write a response why he rejected it.

A male representative asked if a recommendation is rejected, does it go to the Board of Trustees?

The male representative said he didn’t know.

A male representative said we should clarify that.

J. Marwell said to the comment about committees becoming ghosts, they realize they have lost touch with all their committees. That’s why we need to appoint chairs to all committees. We need people to step up to make sure these committees convene, then report back.

A male representative read the tasks that come with the position.

J. Marwell said TAC is fully staffed and ready to go, but needs someone to be acting as chair and make them convene. The Office of Assemblies can help get in touch with the TAC listserv.

D. Brown said he’d be willing to do it. A male representative seconded it.

J. Marwell took a vote. 11–0−0. D. Brown is the new TAC chair. J. Vertesi and M. Walsh need you to get in touch with them. They are working on stuff that needs TAC right now.

B. Discuss other committees, activities, and committee assignments for new members

J. Marwell said they want other committees to get moving. Is anyone willing to chair them? A chair is just required to go to meetings and report back to the UA. Anything representatives have said about the TAC chair applies to the other committees as well.

A male representative asked do they all become chairs to the committees or just reporters? Will they all be chairs or is it because D. Brown’s a UA member or because TAC needed a chair?

J. Marwell said he’s chairing because he’s the one calling the committee to convene. There are some committees that require the UA to call them to convene.

A male representative said that earlier this year, there was a call for what committees you wanted to be on. What happened to that?

J. Marwell said it should still stand but that there has not been much action in regards to this information.

A. O’Donnell said the Office of Assemblies was campaigning for all committees to meet once a semester or schedule regular meetings if need be.

A female representative wanted to know if J. Marwell was asking for people to be chairs or to be members of the committees.

J. Marwell said either would be great.

The female representative said she worked with the Multicultural Issues Committee in the past and she wanted to work with them.

J. Marwell said okay.

A male representative said he wanted to be part of the CJC, but he’s not and he doesn’t know where that stands.

A male representative suggested they all get an email for all committees they signed up for in the fall. It will help us see if we need to fill in other committees by appointing chairs, etc.

J. Marwell said she would send that out tomorrow.

A female representative just wanted to clarify that they were going to volunteer to be either a member or a chair, with involvement in those committees.

J. Marwell said she would send emails of committees and what has been signed up for already.

C. Discussion of academic integrity, and approach for the semester

J. Marwell asked if representatives wanted to continue with their ideas regarding academic integrity this semester or save the conversation for next semester. She solicited ideas and comments from members.

A male representative asked if they wanted input from us.

A female representative said last year they worked with E. Loew and made recommendations to bring back to the Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate claimed ownership of academic integrity, away from CJC, and wanted input to see other perspectives.

A female representative said the goal is to establish a University-wide academic integrity policy.

A male representative said last year, the Faculty Senate did pass a motion that if a student was caught cheating, they couldn’t just withdraw from the course and call it even. The Senate took care of this issue entirely even though it was an academic integrity issue.

A female representative said this is an area where we do lag compared to other universities. We need to reconcile that this will be University-wide, not college specific.

A male representative said in the College of Arts and Sciences, it wasn’t a University law.

The female representative said it was a piece of the university formalization, but not a huge part.

L. Lawrence said he wasn’t exactly sure what was being sought, but if we want a liaison or a point person with Charles Walcott that he would be willing to do that.

J. Marwell clarified that she was just asking if it was something we wanted to look into or do something about. Last semester, K. Whalen became very interested in this issue and talked a lot about the honor code and started attending meetings, etc. She also said this was something that our members took interest in. It was put before us a couple years ago, and we’re just coming back to that.

A male representative said this came up out of discussion when some professors came to us. They had problems with the students cheating. Through discussion, most of the problems came down to honesty and integrity. H. Granison collected all kinds of honor code information from all different universities.

A female representative said she knows a lot of people have been talking about this for a while and feels that, as a body, it would be good to continue on this path.

A. Stroock asked if all questions of authority within the decision making process in the University are this ambiguous. This body doesn’t even know, and there are problems of academic integrity floating around.

A male representative responded that the UA charter tells us what we’re responsible for and what we’re not. Some things we are but for other things, we have to ask the President.

A. Stroock asked if it makes sense for the UA to get involved in this issue. He wondered if the UA would be short-circuited next year when it finds out that the Faculty Senate has full authority over the issue.

A male representative said to half answer the question, we discussed this earlier when Jeff Lehman was President, we assumed authority and he didn’t question it.

M. Hatch made a clarification. He said that while discussing the Campus Code of Conduct, the issue of whether or not a code of academic integrity should be included in the Campus Code of Conduct arose. Anytime the issue has come up in the past, faculty members have said no. In the Senate, there has been some discussion of the relationship between the code of conduct and the code of academic integrity.

A male representative asked if people accused of violating the code of academic integrity end up at the Office of the Judicial Administration.

M. Hatch responded no, that it’s a different system. There’s a hearing board that runs separately from the Office of Judicial Administration. It is run through the Dean of Faculty’s Office, and if you want to get involved, we should send a representative to get engaged in it formally.

A male representative said if it ever gets that far, there’s machinery, but has a feeling that with 80% of those cases, they haven’t been through that machinery.

A female representative said that the problem is with the academic language.

A male representative said he was involved in one of these cases last year, and there was a primary hearing. It’s not a whole process that they go through. He added he thought it worked out well in the one case he was involved with.

A male representative said in terms of the campus code of conduct, if a student is caught shoplifting in the bookstore, they go to the Judicial Administrator. If a staff member is caught shoplifting, where do they go?

M. Hatch responded that this goes back to the campus code of conduct. If a staff member is caught shoplifting on campus, and the shoplifting has nothing to do with their work, it goes to the Judicial Administrator. If a staff member is caught shoplifting, and it does have to do with their work, it goes to their supervisor. If it’s prosecuted downtown, they may also be JA’ed, but the case may be deferred from the JA until it is resolved in court first.

A male representative said in terms of that process, it isn’t consistent because supervisors don’t act consistently across the University. That is a cause of worry of a number of employees.

A male representative suggested having them come speak at the forum.

The male representative said they may not want to stand at the microphone and say something at the forum because they feel they could be punished at work.

M. Hatch said he talked to M. Opperman about this and they talked about not giving over work related violations to supervisors, but maybe they should be in the campus judicial system.

A male representative had a follow up. If the alleged violator is in fact the supervisor, then we have problem.

A female representative asked if we wanted to finish the discussion about academic integrity or are we shifting the conversation and tabling academic integrity for later in the meeting.

A male representative said it looks like the latter.

A female representative said we could go on record that we want the UA to incorporate our discussion into the discussion about academic integrity.

Another female representative said we could also send someone to speak with Dean Walcott.

A female representative said so we’re going to say we’re interested and we have a representative.

E. Sanders said the code has been extremely time-consuming. Is the assembly just accepting that we must move on the agenda and maybe sacrifice all these hours that we put in and just treat it like it’s an enormous waste of time? Is the assembly accepting that they have the right to initiate drastic transformations to the code of conduct by spending all this time working on it?

M. Hatch had two points. His first point was yes, they are accepting that revisions could take place. So the assembly accepts that because it’s the assembly’s job, whether the revisions come from the UA or from elsewhere. He doesn’t think it’s possible or good for the community for the CJC to initiate drastic revisions in the time span of three months.

A female representative asked if it would be problematic to try everything out.

M. Hatch said no, three years ago, the CJC initiated processing to reframe the code slightly. There was some interest in doing some revamping to make it clearer, but the CJC realized it would take a lot of time, and there wasn’t unanimous support. It’s unfair to say that all of the work going in to change the code was because of the administration. The CJC had its own proposal to change it. One thing our chairs asked for was a retreat where the CJC would do a thorough rewrite.

A male representative said the Krause report was not written by prompting from the administration. Is the CJC was working only in response to things in the Krause report? To his understanding, the Krause report seems to omit employees because they have their own system.

M. Hatch said that 90% of cases that the JA deals with is for students. One of the things they are trying to do is find an efficient way to handle student complaints that aren’t felonies.

The male representative said the revisions involved with to whom the code applies is a concern.

M. Hatch said they can’t write the report before they get all the opinions. The code applies to everyone including the administration. This was affirmed by administrative members of the committee and the President.

A female representative wondered if faculty and staff would be okay having a separate system.

A. O’Donnell said that someone needed to move to extend the meeting or move to adjourn.

L. Lawrence made a motion to extend the meeting for 10 minutes.

A male representative said the comments are worth reading because there is information about what happened in the past when they tried exactly what the Krause report suggests now.

M. Hatch suggested that everyone read the comments in the packet for a better understanding of the feeling behind the report.

VI. Adjournment

R. Kay adjourned the meeting at 6:03pm.