Senate unit takes 'censure' out of proposal

By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor

An ad hoc committee of the Faculty Senate has toned down considerably a measure asking that the administration be censured for its actions last fall in folding the Department of Statistics into the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine.

The committee instead has drafted a proposal, which will be considered by the full senate at its final meeting of the semester on May 11, asking that the chair of the senate be brought into the loop as early as possible whenever any kind of reorganization of an academic unit is under consideration by the administration.

The proposal, which was forwarded to the senate by its Executive Committee at the body's April 28 meeting, specifically asks that "whenever initiation, termination, amalgamation, division or major reorganization of an academic unit is under consideration, that shall be reported promptly by the cognizant dean, vice president or the provost, to the chair of the Faculty Senate, who shall report it to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee shall determine the actions to be taken by the Senate."

It defines academic units as departments, including the University Libraries, research units, any interdisciplinary program recognized formally by the university, any degree-granting program and any school or college.

The ad hoc committee also presented to the FSEC a "statement" supporting Irwin Guttman, former chair of the Department of Statistics. The statement, which was forwarded to the full senate as well, says that "the faculty recognize that Dr. Irwin Guttman is an excellent scholar and wishes to extend their appreciation of his stewardship of the Department of Statistics. We look forward to his continued contributions to the discipline and to the university and wish him all good success."

Guttman now holds a faculty position in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The ad hoc committee-composed of former senate chairs who currently are members of the FSEC-was formed by the FSEC to refine the censure proposal after the proposal was returned to the FSEC for further work by the senate. Some senators had objected to language in the resolution asking the senate to censure the abstract "administration," as opposed to specific persons or offices.

The censure proposal, which had been presented to the senate by John Boot, professor of management science and systems, accused "the administration" of 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.

Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and a member of the ad hoc committee, told FSEC members on April 28 that in addition to acknowledging the contributions of Guttman, the panel's intent was to "establish a procedure so that it makes it clear what happens when an issue like this should occur in the future."

Part of the problem, Malone noted, was that senate chair Peter Nickerson, who was serving as a member of a committee that was created to recommend a structural organization for statistics, "did not feel comfortable bringing the issue to the senate, partially due to confusion on somebody's part as to his representation on that committee."

Nicolas Goodman, vice provost for undergraduate education, has insisted that the senate was in fact informed of the administration's actions regarding the statistics department because Nickerson was involved in the discussions.

Nickerson has said that he viewed his service on the committee as that of a medical-school faculty member, not as the senate chair, but acknowledged that his role on the committee was not clearly defined in the letter of appointment.

The statement asking that the chair of the senate be notified when unit reorganizations are being discussed makes it "very clear that the chair of the senate need not be perplexed about whether he should bring this to the attention of the senate," Malone told his colleagues. "The major point (of the statement) is that this sort of thing should not happen again."

Samuel Schack, professor of mathematics, pointed out that the ad hoc committee's work evolved from a motion designed to censure the administration "for what was construed as misbehavior, and in particular a failure to follow already-established procedures.

"They're already supposed to inform usŠI think we should be aware of that and consider whether this really does say anything that we haven't already said."

President William R. Greiner said that the statement does have a purpose: When the chair of the Faculty Senate is informed of such issues, he or she is to report them to the FSEC. Nickerson was unsure about what to do about the statistics issue, Greiner said. "I think this makes it clear. It also makes it clear that your desire is that the communication from the proper officer should go to the chair of the Faculty Senate."

James Holstun, associate professor of English, noted that the word "censure" has disappeared from the resolution, adding that Malone had said that the major point of the statement is to ensure that the issue never happens again.

"Well, the major point about this, as I read it, is that you don't think it has ever happened yet; there's no reference to the disappearance of statistics in either one of these statements," Holstun said. "I do not think the moon would turn red or the stars fall if we would say, at some point, that the administration should not have proceeded in this fashion, and then we censure them for doing so."

Malone said he understood that censure disappeared from the statement "because this committee felt that was totally ineffective at this point. The president has already said, 'Yeah we screwed up and we're not going to screw up again.'"

The committee felt, he said, that censure "was just ineffectual and, frankly, not likely to pass the senate."

In addition to Malone, members of the ad hoc committee include Boot; Nickerson; William Baumer, professor of philosophy, and Claude Welch, Jr., SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences.