Faculty Assembly
Faculty Assembly
College of William and Mary
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Feb minutes approved 3:40
Present: Archibald, Lee, Meese, Watkinson, Canuel, Diaz, Abelt, Kulick, Beers, Leslie, Orwoll, Van Dover, Meyers, Brown, Mooradian, Fuchs, White.
Provost's Report
We have a very busy few weeks coming up. Investiture is coming up. We have 110-120 representatives of other institutions and higher learning organizations coming, then admitted students' weekend, then SACS.
The budget situation is knotted up. The Senate and the Governor are "semi-aligned" on how to proceed. The Senate is in session, House will reconvene on Thursday. It is hard to know what's going to happen. There was a continuing budget bill put in the hopper, which would just annualize changes. There is very little intelligence coming from Richmond. There is a meeting in DC in August with the Board, will update them on things. We hoped to have a budget by then, but we won't. We will take a budget to the board at the late-April meeting. This gives us an opportunity to have a tuition increase, having no money. If the budget gets passed, we might have a flush year with an ability to do more things. The House leadership has made it clear that it will go after people who break with them. It is unlikely that there will be a rump that breaks from the House.
A couple of Virginia Community College Presidents wrote letters to the Editor endorsing the Senate Budget. They were "taken behind the woodshed" by the House leadership. We are pretty well treated in these budgets, don't have a dog in this fight. It is a difficult situation and fraught with risk.
Meyers: City voting registrar said that if students vote, they'll be well on the way to being instate students.
Feiss: He's blowing smoke. He's doing that in responding to the President's saying that denying votes.
Canuel: If tuition went up, would we be going up past restructuring?
Feiss: Some institutions are going up 9.3 or 9.9 percent.
Canuel: Would all the units be required to follow this?
Feiss: We have restructuring almost, sitting on the Governor's desk. There are changes that we could be taking advantage of. We didn't expect to be here. All our tuition models have been based on a different level of state funds.
Meyers: Re: inauguration and cancellation of class. There was some grumbling from students whose classes were not cancelled in late afternoon on Friday.
Feiss: the problem is labs, and could mess up many in Area III.
College Diversity Statement, 3:50
Beers: President sent out Diversity statement, was hopeful we wouldn't get into wordsmithing. He wanted to get a sense of what the assembly felt.
Meyers: is this a document that we are being asked to consider and not revise?
Beers: Said he wants the sense of the group.
Michael Blakey and Kate Slevin addressed the Assembly.
Slevin: Reason for this: Sons of Liberty bake sale. Was enormously controversial, hugely insulting to our minorities. Our minorities were hurt by the implication that minorities got in free and didn't have to pay. At teach-in, students felt that the administration did a terrible job of responding to this. Sullivan set up a diversity committee to deal with the issues of majority and minority issues. We are behind on this issue. Most other institutions have committees that have been dealing with this for more than a decade. Most institutions have documents that put out a university perspective on the importance of diversity to this institution. Our committee has 20-some strong. It has been wordsmithed to death. President wanted every organization on campus to endorse this.
Blakey: Under Mel Ely's leadership we sought to create a document strong enough
and clear enough.
The first paragraph refers to certain national ideals that are likely to be
held in common by all of us, that justify our approach. The second paragraph
is about the intellectual and pedagogical effects of those ideals. The third
paragraph is historic and current impediments on this campus. The final paragraph
refers to humane responsibility as a community of scholars.
Meese: I've been perplexed by the University's objection to the bake sale. The message conveyed by the group was that the bake sale was an effort to disagree with University's policies. Maybe people feel that these people were wrong and misinformed. I was reminded of the comment by Thomas Jefferson at the front of Swem library: "Where truth is free to combat error, truth will win." (Jefferson's Inaugural address, 1801: "[E]rror of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.") Would a protest to disagree with University policy justify this diversity committee document?
Meese: I understood that the University closed this bake sale down. Sadler said it violated the student handbook. Someone else said this protest was unlawful. Neither Sam Sadler nor anyone else could point to a place in the handbook where this kind of activity was barred. It's fine to object to a message and say the message is wrong. Am I wrong?
Slevin: I can't get in the President's head. We all support freedom of speech. The President felt that as a result of that event, that we as a University have a long way to go about the place of everyone on this campus.
Blakey: My sense was that the bake sale was mean-spirited. Given what the students were doing, they clearly didn't know what the policies were. They made assumptions about what college's policies were. This is prejudice. There are other manifestations of concern about minority students. Problem was what I saw was that there was essentially no response from the administration. This kind of response allows assumptions to fester. The administration rightly established this committee to be able to respond. In fact, Sociology put together a colloquium on affirmative action. This was the only means by which anyone had any discussion.
Slevin: Sons of Liberty was invited to this forum.
Beers: Part of my understanding is that we want to get this conversation going, but that this document is a first step towards getting a conversation started. Each unit has its own method for dealing with the problem.
Feiss: Let me add one point. In 1976, the institution did respond to the office of civil rights with a document outlining College policy regarding Affirmative Action. You have to dig in the records of the Board to find it. But this document is not where we are in terms of court issues. It is an operational statement, not a statement of values.
Slevin: We are looking at diversity through many lenses: sexual orientation, geographic diversity and all the ways that diversity can make us a better place on multiple fronts.
Archibald: Where would this document go? In the faculty handbook?
Slevin: I don't know. When you get onto the website, somewhere you will click on diversity where you could find the philosophy of the University.
Archibald: Where this is going to be matters a lot. The document is too long for some places, too short for others.
Meyers: Mission statement says "diverse student body". Two goals: Students from diverse backgrounds and diverse faculty.
Watkinson: something like that is already on the admissions page. It was a result of dealing with the summer program on minorities in grappling with and adjusting this. There is a statement on diversity, but it is not for most people.
Lee: Diversity is deliberately without a context here. Virginia has as long a history of economic as racial discrimination.
Slevin: Our Jewish students feel there are very, very many things dismissive of their religious tradition at this College.
Meese: I'm trying to figure out why the students were mean-spirited or prejudiced. They may have been wrong. I think what students were trying to convey, that in the admissions process, being a minority group militates in favor of admission. It operates in this way. Some students have these advantages for financial aid and admissions. Using the bake sale it seems they were, in a way, starting a conversation. It seems they did start a conversation (because now the diversity committee is planning to create a document). All this reaction has suggested that this protest had the effect of getting the issue discussed. We may not have diversity in politics on this campus, as conservative groups are shut down without warrant. Maybe it's irrelevant. These kids have been excoriated in many forums.
Blakey: Since I chose to use the term mean-spirited, let me elaborate. Critical students in the classroom, I hope, bring these issues into the classroom. We can have a serious debate that is respectful of others, that honors their sense of self. But a debate that is belittling goes out of line. Once you start going for emotive appeal to make someone laughable, and to belittle without information those people or those policies, there is a problem. The form that it took in the bake sale was meant to make fun, apparently. One of the things we learned from the surveys is that all things are not equal. If the advantages of affirmative action are what you (Meese) say, the demography of this campus would look very different. Affirmative action is meant as a corrective, given that minorities do not have an advantage. The range of SAT scores is the same for all ethnic students. There aren't black students allowed in with lowered scores. The premise of their position is unsubstantiated. The idea is to look at this thing fairly and to look at other values. I think the Michigan case was clear that there are pedagogical issues here.
Brown: The History Department responded immediately to the Bake Sale with an editorial in the Flat Hat. There were numerous and invidious discussions of these Sons of Liberty students here on campus. It is clear that we're committed to diversity. There's no concomitant discussion (besides commitment to diversity), to a discussion of our commitment to civil speech. (With the Bake Sale) It wasn't so much that there were conflicts between ideological opponents, but the issue is that we got uncivil speech.
Brown: I also had problems with the last sentence.
Blakey: How would what you want adjust the last sentence?
Brown: I'm not sure I know what a University on a human scale is. What's an inhuman scale? The discussion of "upholding the dignity" only obliquely mentions civil speech.
Blakey: This is obviously a compromise resulting from vetting by the community as a whole. If being specific about the need for civil speech is what you want, we could bring this back.
Slevin: we have to have agreement about the broad parameters.
Meyers: I worry about demanding civil speech. The student humor in our magazines is vulgar, coarse, and crude but I don't want to militate against uncivil speech.
Mooradian: I want to agree about bringing in civil speech. It's terrible that we are dismissive and hostile to Jewish students and others. The Sons of Liberty's activities seemed dismissive and hostile, as was the response. There are ideas on the conservative end of the spectrum that deserve respect.
Slevin: This committee is in complete agreement that we hear all voices. We've heard from focus groups that were all white males. We've tried to hear from many groups on campus.
Blakey: We also did disabled and athletes.
Meese: How does your committee feel about the college's policy on admissions?
Slevin: I don't know.
Blakely: There's a tendency to see these documents as about black people, or women. In the second paragraph, when we talk about cultural pluralism and diversity, we are talking about everybody. We're talking about intellectual diversity: we include the Sons of Liberty.
Mooradian: Adding something about valuing civil discourse is important.
Meyers: I think some of what Todd's looking for is here: in the last few words of the first paragraph.
Mooradian: It should also be in the last paragraph.
Feiss: When this committee was created by President Sullivan it wasn't necessarily directed at the Sons of Liberty, it was directed at ourselves. We didn't know how to maintain a civil environment that responds to uncivil acts. This committee was as much about us as about what they did. It was a critical assessment of us as a community.
Mooradian: This is a good start.
Feiss: That commitment to civil discourse is in faculty handbook and in student handbook. We aren't silent on that issue at all. As a consequence of that Supreme Court decision. Diversity can be a consideration if it's abundantly clear why you do that: it must be imbedded in your mission. It was clear that we should be explicit about that. Decision says that if we want diversity, we have to say why.
Mooradian: We're not all equal.
Blakey: That's a philosophical point. The language was designed to respond to this: equality as human beings. As human beings we have the same and equal human rights and capacities. We can argue that some have greater capacities in some areas than others.
Meyers: "national ideals of human equality" harkens back to "all men are created equal."
Slevin: If we include language about civil discourse, are you okay with this document.
Meyers: I believe in free speech without fetters.
Brown: Some of our syllabi require civil discourse.
Meyers: When I look at campus publications, like the Pillory, I worry about a civil discourse policy. If we worry about civil discourse we will open a can of worms. We are a government institution and allow free speech. I support this document, but am uncomfortable, with a restriction on us to use civil speech. That's the price of discourse, but if I wanted to get crude and satiric it seems I and all others have a right to.
Mooradian: I like the statement, the bake sale problem was about civil discourse.
Meese: I'll vote no to this policy or statement. I don't think it's true that we equally value diverse statements. 100% of this faculty who gave money over $500 to political candidates gave it to the Democratic Party. We value some forms of diversity and not others. There are other examples: there are few conservative Southern Baptists here. We're ratifying our current policy when we ratify certain forms of diversity. To the extent that this defends the U of Michigan style argument before the Supreme Court, I don't support it. I don't think it's consistent with equality of humans as people. There's a tension when we take race into account into admissions policy. I'd prefer that we value all people as human beings, not because they're diverse or because they're not diverse. That's where we get to the point of equality.
Beers: If ideas or thoughts come out, will you get back to us?
Nelson: do you want a straw vote?
Archibald: I'm concerned about where this is going to go.
Beers: Where will this document be used?
Feiss: If you have a statement of this sort, it's a public document. I can't speak to where it would be. It would be fairly visible on website, and college catalog, not as policies but as a statement of our values.
Slevin: There is a very silent group here.
Beers: With the caveat that we don't know where this will go, what think you?
Fuchs: This vote would be in respect to its present version.
Beers: also the sentiment behind it.
The straw vote of the Faculty Assembly was 13 in favor of the statement. 3 opposed. 1 was not supportive in its present form.
Faculty Transition to Retirement
Feiss: This hasn't gotten PRC and PPC (PRC plus Deans) approval. It has to be signed off by the Governor. We're looking at an indeterminately long process.
Beers: We may have a special meeting to discuss this.
External Review
Beers: We will move this to April discussion, given time constraints.
Feiss: This has come from difficulties from getting external reviews, given problems with confidential letters. We found UVA and VT allows confidential letters. We've sought Dick Williamson's input, whose view has migrated over time somewhat. This is a top-down conveyance of a bottom-up litany of problems from a substantial minority of departments.
Beers: We will meet in Tidewater B.
