Panel to refine censure proposal
FSEC creates subcommittee composed of former senate chairs

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee has formed a panel composed of former chairs of the senate who currently sit on the FSEC to refine a proposal censuring the administration for its actions in folding the former Department of Statistics into the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine.

The subcommittee, created at the FSEC's Feb. 3 meeting, would have a range of options in dealing with the proposal, from sending it back to the senate to killing it.

The proposal had been returned to the FSEC for further work by the full Faculty Senate at its Jan. 26 meeting. Some senators speaking at that meeting objected to censuring the abstract "administration," as opposed to specific persons or offices.

The censure resolution, which had been offered by John Boot, professor of management science and systems, asks the senate to censure "the administration" for not following UB and SUNY procedures regarding the abolition of degree-granting programs and for its "brazen disregard" of faculty input via established faculty governance councils. It also seeks the censure for the "actual steps taken"-the dismantling of statistics as a department and its incorporation as a biostatistical unit within social and preventive medicine, effective Sept. 1, 1998.

Boot asked to review with FSEC members "what I consider very false accusations made by Professor (Nicolas) Goodman against our chair."

At the January senate meeting, Goodman, vice provost for undergraduate education, had insisted that the senate was in fact informed of the administration's actions regarding the statistics department because senate Chair Peter Nickerson had served as a member of the committee that was created to recommend a structural organization for statistics, aside from departmental status.

Boot told FSEC members that Nickerson had served on the committee only at the insistence of Irwin Guttman, chair of the former department, and in the capacity of a medical-school faculty member who served on a medical-school panel that was considering the issue.

"There is no document that shows that his (Nickerson's) name ever was mentioned in the context of chair of the Faculty Senate," he said.

In any event, there was nothing to discuss with the senate "because there was no proposal made; it was in debate," Boot said, noting that paperwork on many topics under discussion on campus may be circulated to the chair of the Faculty Senate but "are labeled very carefully 'not for distribution'" to the rest of the senate or any other group on campus.

"The fact that our (chair) knows it does not mean that it is ipso facto shared.

"In this particular case, there was no reason to assume that it would be shared and it's certainly not ludicrous on the part of Professor Nickerson not to have shared it with us.

"He knows a lot, he doesn't have to discuss it all with us and he can'tÉbecause it's in debate.

"For Professor Goodman to stand here (at the Jan. 26 Senate meeting) and say it's ludicrousÉfor Professor Nickerson not to discuss it is really a misrepresentation of the sequence of events."

Boot also challenged the sequence of events regarding the dismantling of statistics that Goodman had outlined at the senate meeting, implying that documents had been altered and individuals had been added to document-distribution lists after the fact.

"In this day and age of word-processing, it's perfectly possibly to add things later," Boot noted.

"I think it's all an indication of fraud," he charged.

The panel of former senate chairs formed at the meeting includes Nickerson; Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering; Claude Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science; William Baumer, professor of philosophy, and Boot.

Malone suggested that the panel, in addition to deciding what to do with the censure resolution, offer wording to be included in the Standing Orders of the Faculty Senate that "sets out the process by which these things (departmental reorganizations) are brought to the attention of the senate."

Don Schack, professor of mathematics, agreed. The subcommittee should not serve as "wordsmiths," he said, but rather should develop a "more concrete plan about when and how the Faculty Senate should get involved in issues such as these."

The senate, he said, should have "an agreement with the administration as to the approach to be taken, so that both the administration and the faculty have confidence in the way such matters are handled."

Boris Albini, professor of microbiology and chair of the senate's Governance Committee, pointed out that the senate's charter states that the body should be "informed and consulted" on all proposals regarding the formation, renaming, reorganization or dissolution of academic units.

"I think it's not really necessary to have new prescriptions before these old prescriptions are followed," Albini said.

Nickerson praised Senior Vice Provost Ken Levy for his efforts in informing the senate about such matters. But, he noted, the issue is not whether the senate should be consulted, but "when (at what point in the process) should the senate get involved."