Special Assembly

Minutes

May 13, 2003

A Special Assembly was called to discuss Assembly Quorum and the Establishment of a Faculty Senate.

Discussion Items:

The Chair of the Assembly, John Thurber, mentioned to the Assembly that there are two Constitutional Amendments that we will be voting on in two weeks.

I.   Rewrite Article III, Section 4, Item c:   Quorum

Currently the Constitution defines a quorum to be no less than 50% of the Assembly membership.   At the last election that we had our assembly secretary identified 240 members of the assembly.   Which means that a quorum would be 120 members.   The Assembly membership includes on and off-campus members, classified staff committee members, and student government representatives.

The Executive Committee is proposing an amendment to the Constitution to redefine the quorum as being no less than 50 members.   A discussion took place.   It was suggested to strike the quorum requirement.   It was suggested to amend the proposal to say “no fewer than” and we could set up ballot boxes for absentee ballots.   We do the ballot boxes for amendments.   As far as the general assembly approvals, that would not be conducive to the business of the assembly.  

A question regarding the potential for setting up an interactive website for voting was asked.   We are working on on-line voting possibilities.  

This item will be brought forward for vote at the June 3, 2003 Campus Assembly.

•  Establish Faculty Senate:

John Thurber gave an overview of the Proposed new constitution that was posted to the Assembly website that reflects the addition of a Faculty Senate. It was indicated that this topic that has been discussed on and off for several years.   There have been a lot of questions regarding what such a change would mean for Assembly.   It was noticed that there are a couple changes that need to be made to the current posted proposal.   The changes made were discussed.

The floor was then open for discussion.   The intent of the proposal is to

1. Replace the current Assembly Personnel Committee with the name Faculty Senate Personnel Committee, using the same structure and function.
2. Add the phrase “that the Assembly is responsible for addressing non-educational and non-academic issues” of the University to the section on Assembly Responsibilities.

A question was raised asking what the distinction between non-educational and non-academic is.   A brief discussion regarding this question took place.

For clarification purpose, the question was asked whether or not the Assembly would decide whether or not to amend the Constitution?   Yes, this would be a new Constitution to be voted on by the Assembly. The vote has not been scheduled yet, and will be postponed until we have had an opportunity to discuss whether or not this is the right way to go.  

Discussion regarding the Faculty Senate concluded.

NOTE:   for further information on this Assembly, contact Assembly Secretary