November 10, 1995

Transcript, Faculty Council Meeting, November 10, 1995

MEETING OF THE FACULTY COUNCIL

Friday, November 10, 1995

Assembly Room, Wilson Library

[A complete transcript of the proceedings is available in the faculty section of the campus World Wide Web service.]

Faculty Council Attendance: Present 67; Excused Absences 18; Unexcused Absences 6.

Chancellor Hooker: I want to invite those of you who are standing to find an empty seat and please be seated.

I. Memorial Resolution for the late Stamatis Cambanis: Gopinath

Kallianpur, Chair, Memorial Committee.

We have a memorial resolution for Professor Stamatis Cambanis. I want to acknowledge Professor Cambanis’ son, Thanassis, who is with us today, and let me please call on Professor Kallianpur to read the memorial minutes.

[Professor Kallianpur read the memorial.]

Chancellor Hooker: May I ask you please to stand for a moment of silence? [There was a moment of silence.] Thank you, Professor Kallianpur.

II. Chancellor Hooker’s remarks.

I have a number of remarks to make. Let me begin by speaking briefly about the property that the University was bequeathed in the, by the Dubose family in the middle of the Meadowmont site. Everybody is familiar with the discussions that have taken place regarding the development of Meadowmont. I suspect that many of you have had an opportunity to go to a reception at one time or another at the Meadowmont estate which the University owns, and some of you haven’t. I had wanted to have pictures here today, an aerial photo, and I discovered that we don’t an aerial photo of Meadowmont, so you could see it in relation to the rest of the property that is to be developed. The property that the University has consists primarily of a manor house, a very large manor house, I think it’s a 27,000 square foot house. It’s gargantuan by anybody’s standards — and the immediate property surrounding it of about 17 acres. There is a sufficient plot of land around it that it will be buffered from the development to take place there, but the development that will abut our Meadowmont property as it is intended will be largely single-family houses and large lots of land, so even once it is developed we’ll still have a very handsome piece of property. The question is: what to do with it? And, as many of you can appreciate, it is both a blessing and a curse to have this property, because, a blessing because it is a marvelous piece of land and manor house, a curse because it is very expensive to maintain, and we have to find some use to make of it that will generate quite a substantial amount of revenue annually. The Board of Trustees and the Chancellor over the past year or more have been casting about for ideas. A number of ideas have come forth. The only one that is presently before me that looks like it satisfies overriding criteria of being capable of generating external support is a proposal from the Business School to convert it into an executive conference facility where the Business School faculty would teach executives from corporations, much as, say, Harvard, as many of you may be familiar with that program, or Duke, the Fuquay School at Duke does, Michigan does. These universities that do these executive programs successfully can make them quite profitable for their universities. So they at least have the promise of throwing off a sufficient volume of revenue to support the maintenance of the property. The Business School proposes to use the existing manor house to provide seminar space and dining space, and then the participants would be housed in a building to be constructed adjacent to the existing house. And the Business School anticipates putting, I think, about $11 to $13 million of capital improvement into the property, and to amortize that with that with the revenue that is generated from their seminars. The Board of Trustees has not received the proposal yet, has not received a recommendation from me and won’t for some time. But as I say, to alert you to the idea that is being developed, because it is something, an asset that belongs to the entire University; it does not belong to the Business School. And if we accept the proposal of the Business School, then its use will redound primarily to the benefit of the Business School, although I’ve said that there has to be enough time carved out for other departments or schools so that they could make use of the property to do so. And the Dean of the Business School has cheerfully agreed to that condition. So I wanted to bring that to your attention because you will hear about it at some time in the future, and I don’t want it to go to the Board of Trustees without the Faculty Council knowing about it, and knowing the use that’s being proposed.

Let me say something about the salary policy which you will discuss later today. Having an effective salary policy that everybody has confidence in, confidence that it can be equitably, fairly administered, and confidence that it will result in the administration of salaries in such a way as to promote the goods and purposes of the Institution and also treat people fairly, everyone fairly. It is very important to me and I just wanted to affirm that if more discussion is required following today, that I look forward to working with the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council to further design a salary policy that is acceptable to everybody and meets the criteria that I enumerated. It is crucially important for us, I think, to have a salary policy in which everybody has confidence.

Let me say something about admissions. I was reviewing this morning the admissions profile of the past decade and was pleased to note that there has been a steady increase in the average SAT of our incoming students. And I recognize that the SAT is not a great measure of the preparedness of prospective students, probably class standing weighted by some assessment of the institutions that our students are coming from. Institutions that our students are coming from provides a better measure, but it is the one subjective or one commensurable criterion that we have that enables us to compare across universities and across high schools, and it does provide at least the illusion of objectivity. And I’m concerned that this past year there was a slight dip in the incoming class as measured by the SAT. And that led me to reflect on and wonder about what involvement the faculty has, and particularly departments have, in recruiting the brightest and best from North Carolina and abroad. And I just want to affirm that is something in which I have a great interest and which I will be talking with the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council about getting our faculty more actively involved than they are now. And I have no idea what involvement you presently have in recruiting the brightest and best. But I do know that it is possible with the support of departments to establish very good ties with high school counselors across the state, and it seems to be high school counselors who exercise the greatest influence on students regarding their selection, their choice of colleges. And I would like to promote and encourage — I will do so — activities from our departments that reach out to high schools across the state and particularly to high school counselors and to influential teachers to encourage them to send us their brightest and best students.

An area that I would also like to focus on and will do in conversation with Executive Committee is that of output measures that assess — this is going to sound like a business talk — but assess the value-added from the education that we provide. Universities have come under assault from various quarters around the country over the last couple of years, or last five years, for not being able to measure what we do, or the quality of what we do, in educating undergraduates, in such a way that we can demonstrate that we have done a good job with our students. And as you know, it is exceedingly difficult to measure what takes place in the four or five years of an undergraduate education, to compare it with where students are when they come in and look at where they are as they go out. There isn’t a standardized test that students take as they enter and that they take as they leave so that we can measure the two performances, and there couldn’t be. Much of what takes place in education, one hopes, is conditioning of the mind, the nurturing of the soul, the molding of the character in such ways that it is very difficult to measure, even difficult to talk about. And yet you and I share a conviction that it happens and we have a greater or lesser degree of satisfaction that it has happened well. But I think we cannot afford simply to say to the outside world, “It’s not possible to measure what we do.” I think the challenge is upon us to find ways to measure what we do, to be able to therefore assess what we do and to determine whether we do it well, whether we do it better than we used to, or better than somebody else does it, and this is an area where I want to work with Faculty Council, because I think we ignore this challenge at our peril. We will be held to account for our activities for the expenditures that we make in education and I think we had best, in our interest, begin asking the difficult to ask questions, and far more difficult to answer questions, “How do you measure what goes on in an undergraduate education with respect to the quality of it?”

Let me say something also in that regard about the intellectual climate on campus. As you know, this was an issue which was raised by the faculty in its self-study report for the reaccreditation, and Pamela Conover did a very good job of writing her section of that report which I read, which was much larger, longer than what was finally included in the report. It is really a compelling assessment of the challenge of providing an intellectual atmosphere on campus that you and I can be proud of. I’ve had conversations with Dick Richardson who has enlightened me about the difficulty or the risk of taking the world as I remember it as a student and trying to apply those standards to today’s world, because the students just are different from my generation of students. Dick has convinced me of that. But I’m also convinced that we can do much, and should do much, to improve the intellectual climate of the campus, and I think that pertains both, or relates both, to our being willing to measure what we do, or to undertake the challenge of measuring what we do, and it relates also to my challenge to us all to become more involved in recruiting the brightest and best students. Because really the creation of an intellectual tone or an intellectual atmosphere or at least an atmosphere of expectation begins with the admissions process itself. So as we, over the course of this year, look at our curriculum and look at the intellectual climate on campus, I would like us to relate that also to the recruitment process for our students, and I just want to affirm with respect to intellectual climate or intellectual atmosphere that that is another issue in which I’ve taken a great person interest.

Finally, let me say something about the letter from the fraternity, the recruitment letter that surfaced in The Daily Tar Heel. As all of us, I’m outraged by what I read, but I’m not willing to hold the fraternity itself entirely to blame for that letter. I hold us all to blame. It relates, again, to the issue of the intellectual climate. For a fraternity to release a letter like that, and I understood, actually, that this is the second year that that letter was sent, not the first year, and not to see something profoundly wrong with it, is a sad commentary, not just on those fellows in that fraternity, but on the whole atmosphere that we have allowed to develop, in society. And I’m not condemning the campus at Chapel Hill. But if we know that that kind of thing is part of what defines the atmosphere of the broader society, or the sub-culture of fraternities, and we’ve done nothing about it, then we have failed in our obligation. And so I just wanted to — while I’m outraged by the letter and while I’m pleased that the student judiciary system and the fraternity director in the Office of Student Affairs are looking at this, and while I hope they will take appropriate sanctions — I did want to add the observation that we can’t rest smugly in the knowledge that the fraternity was brought to task for what they did because all of us allowed an atmosphere at Carolina to develop in which a fraternity would think that they could get away with something like that or that something like that was not profoundly wrong. So I did want to say that. And, Madam Chairman, I think that is what I had to say in the way of remarks. I would be delighted to discuss anything that’s on anybody’s mind.

Professor Richard Pfaff (History): I was struck, as I’m sure many of you were today, by reading the proposal for the closure of various degree programs at the University, and I was particularly struck by the inclusion of Music, on both the bachelor’s level and Masters, simply because it’s one of the seven liberal arts as they were originally comprised — that’s why there’s a Duke University. I hope this is a signal for some serious vigilance on all our parts lest there be further erosion of this sort. Can you comment at all on this issue? Chancellor Hooker: Yes, I found out about this at the same time you did. I read it in The News & Observer this morning. And so I fairly quickly tried to get to the background and then I discovered that the campus was informed over a year ago that this study was underway, it was legislatively mandated, the Board of Trustees had undertaken it. The campus knew full well that it was underway, and the campus had a fair amount of input. It was mostly provision of statistical data regarding enrollments and so forth, and I my understand is that — I haven’t seen the actual study that the Trustee committee, or the Board of Governors committee, was using, but I saw a precis of it, and what they were looking at, was five-year graduation rates in various programs, degree programs, baccalaureate, Masters, and Ph.D. And I’ve got the material here that I picked up at the Board of Governors meeting this morning. They, there’s a category called “exempted from review” for Carolina. These are programs that apparently fell below the threshold but for some reason they did not decide to look further at. One was Latin American Studies. Another is Afro-American Studies. That’s at the baccalaureate level. At the Masters level, M.A. in Communication Studies, M.A.T. in French Education. And at the doctoral level, the Ph.D. in Slavic Languages. Those they did not look at. The programs that were recommended by the committee for discontinuation were the Bachelor of Music Education, focused on K-12; that’s in the Music Department. The Bachelor of Music in Performing and Composition. Those are the two Music programs at the baccalaureate level. The B.A. in Italian, the B.A. in Portuguese, the Bachelor of Science in Public Health in Health Behavior and Health Education — I’m not familiar with that program, and the material I had didn’t have any other information about it. The special pre-professional Bachelor of Science in pre-professional Medicine, which I gather is for pre-med students, and apparently that’s not a very popular major with students because medical schools don’t like it. There was similarly a pre-professional Dentistry Bachelor of Science degree recommended for closure, and the B.A. in Astronomy. At the Masters level, there’s a Master of Education in Reading Education, literacy studies; a Master of Arts in Teaching Music Education; and the Master of Music in Performance and Composition and in Choral Arts — sounds like it pretty well covers the waterfront in Music in the Masters program. And, again, I don’t have anything about the data behind that. And in Dramatic Arts, an L.D.A. degree in Dramatic Arts — and I’m just not familiar with what an L.D.A. degree is. And nothing at the doctoral level was recommended for discontinuation.

My understanding is that the Board of Governors committee now will receive comment and refine its list and then will come back to the Board of Governors with a recommendation for discontinuing these programs. As I say, we have known about this for a long time. And I’m not sure what the campus did to respond, but it reinforces a perspective that I’ve had for some time in dealing with legislatures in public universities, and that is that if we don’t begin looking at the productivity of our programs and closing some of them ourselves, somebody else is going to do it for us. And I would much rather the judgments be made on campus by the faculty than that the judgments be made by the Board of Governors or by the Legislature. I just didn’t realize that it was happening this quickly in North Carolina. But it intensifies my conviction that we should examine all of our programs and look at the productivity of them; that is, by productivity I mean simply the number of students that they’ve turned out over the last five years, say. And ask ourselves whether it can be justified to continue them given our knowledge that there are other programs that were in high demand from students and not have adequate resources to sustain the quality or not enough courses for students. So I think we had best look at that very soon and it’s a conversation that I’ve already been having with the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council. Now I don’t know enough about these programs that have been targeted, so to speak, by the Board of Governors to know that it would just be an egregious error to close this, that, or the other program. Although I can look at some of them and see that they clearly have implications beyond themselves. They are providing service courses for other majors, but whether one can justify having a major that has turned out fewer than three students per year for each of the last five years I don’t know.

Professor Craig Calhoun (Sociology and History): Can I just follow up on that point in one small matter? One of the reasons the Ph.D. in Slavic Studies was exempted is that the campus did respond and did undertake to explain that these kinds of productivity figures might not be appropriate for assessing Ph.D. programs which are appropriately assessed on other kinds of indicators, and in many cases where downsizing the programs in accord in job markets is very appropriate and allows faculty to put attention into undergraduate or other programs, so that there was some campus response that did have some effect on at least the issue of the Ph.D. programs. Chancellor Hooker: I’m glad to hear that. That is a comment that I made to a number of members of the Board of Governors today at the break, that I was arguing with our departments that we should, because of the overproduction of Ph.D.’s, I’ve been arguing with Craig, that we should scale back the size of our entering classes of doctoral students in a number of the programs in the sciences. And Craig pointed out that if we do that, we run the risk that the Board of Governors will say, “Well, you’re not turning out enough Ph.D.’s, and so we’re going to close your program.”

Professor Paul Farel (Physiology): I’d like to pick up on what you discussed — the kind of language we use in defining what we do. I think we need to be very, very careful. We’re letting others define the value, even by their very vocabulary, of the benefits of an education. And I think that the easiest measures of the benefits of an education are those that are not in the least important, the least important values that we hope to convey to students, that the less definable ones that you enumerated, I think are what we really hope to accomplish. And I just hope that as we continue this discussion that we define these benefits on our terms and not accept the terms of others who perhaps never had these benefits. Chancellor Hooker: That is, Paul, exactly the point that I was trying to make. We need to seize control of our fate by engaging each other in a discussion of these questions. And we need to be prepared to articulate very clearly if it can’t be measured, why it can’t be measured. And you can imagine trying to convince a legislator of the importance of Philosophy, and trying to describe what a student really learns who has completed a major in Philosophy. I was trying to explain that to my wife, and she said, “You’re trying to ‘eff’ the ineffable.” And it really is largely in that role. And I pointed out, you can measure the earning power of our Computer Science graduates, you can measure the earning power of our Business majors, and argue that their education had something to do with establishing that earning power, but the value of a Philosophy degree is not measured in terms of what the person earns on the first job. I said it’s a, the real problem is you can’t, in business terms, you can’t establish the net present value of a saved soul. But just saying that and while it is convincing to you that that’s important, that that should be the end of the discussion, just produces looks of incredulity in legislators. And so we have to recognize the gulf between our understanding between the value of a liberal arts education and the questions that we are getting from the public. And we have to engage the argument. We cannot duck it, because we will duck it at our peril. So thank you. That’s the point I was trying to make. Please.

Professor Melissa Bullard (History): I was a little concerned about the categories by which this report to the Board of Governors is being presented, namely that, it seemed, at least from what you said, that the number of majors became the defining element for a department. And in two examples that you gave, the two languages, Portuguese and Italian, I think that would be very unfortunate to judge their usefulness in the University solely by the number of majors that are graduated. Because, as we know, the study of foreign language is absolutely essential in the creation of an educated person. Also those language programs send many students abroad. I would rather look at enrollments, rather than look at the number of majors. It would seem to me that that was being done. Chancellor Hooker: I haven’t seen the report that the committee was using so I don’t really know what all the criteria were. I do know that one of them was the average number of majors over the last per year or the last five years. But presumably they were looking also at head count enrollments. And the proposal was not, of course, to close these departments. It was to eliminate the majors. So, one could argue that it is crucially important to keep the department because of the importance of foreign language instruction, but that it is not necessarily important, or that important, for those reasons, to keep the major. I’m not making that argument. I’m just telling you that there’s a difference between turning out majors and providing service courses to other majors.

Vice Chancellor Garland Hershey (Health Affairs): All of the Health Affairs programs that you identified were programs that we had recommended, or agreed to, be closed down. I suspect that’s the case for at least some of the ones in Academic Affairs as well. So what we’re hearing about is not necessarily a decision by the Board of Governors to do something that we disagree with, but something that in some cases we initiated. In other instances there have been discussions and mutual agreement to close those majors. Chancellor Hooker: That’s good to know. I’m glad you said that. And I applaud us for having jumped in front of the curve on that and would recommend that we continue to do so.

Professor Pete Andrews (Environmental Sciences & Engineering): The reason that case, a potential translation problem danger, for example, the one in Public Health, I’m relieved to hear affected only the B.S.P.H. in one department because there are other departments where actually the undergraduate program is quite important, and dropped it. Professor Calhoun: That was a typo. Professor Andrews: In the paper? Yeah, it would send a very different message to the community of potential applicants among others.

Professor Frank Dominguez (Romance Languages): That agreement was certainly not the case in Arts and Sciences, and I want to ask you whether we’re going to have a chance to respond to this closure. Chancellor Hooker: Well obviously we can send a letter to the Board of Governors. That’s not at issue. But it needs to be a very thoughtful letter. We need to understand what the criteria were that they were using, and we need to be able to respond to the criteria, because I’m assuming that those criteria derived from the legislative mandate to close unproductive programs.

Interim Provost Dick Richardson: We do have one, one on the Italian question. I think the Chancellor pointed to an important alternative. The Board is making available to us, in that particular instance, simply the combining of those two languages into a degree. In other words, these are not closing down majors, even, in every instance. In some instances they’re simply saying that it seems reasonable for them to offer a combination program. So consolidating is an alternative that we still have open to us. We have responded last year to the request for these programs. I spoke with the Department of Music this morning. That Music Education degree has been one that is not a problem. There is an opportunity, I think, for us to speak again to the question of that Music degree. But we have written responses last year. Last year responses were written to their initial invitation that they were interested in looking these over. Chancellor Hooker: Let me make clear. I’m not objecting to the discontinuation of majors or closing doctoral programs. I just think that we should do it, rather than turning it over to someone who’s going to do a far less thoughtful job of it, then very likely end it. Thank you very much.

III. Chair of the Faculty Jane D. Brown (including report on the Faculty Assembly)

Professor Brown: As you notice, we have a very full agenda today. We also have a new seating arrangement. I’m sorry to keep moving you around. Actually I have a seating chart now. In case you can’t find your seat today you could look and see where we put you. Just come on in. The Council members who haven’t arrived, take their seats. I have just a few details before we get into the business of the day. That you noticed a green sheet there. This is from the Human Resources. They are doing a team on how to improve their information systems. This has some relevance to the further conversation we’re going to have today about salaries. They’re interested in creating a personnel information system that helps us do our work. It may also help us do research proposals. They’re hoping to get an information system that would allow us to calculate more clearly benefits, project benefits into the future, look at job classifications and things like that. And so if you have any interest in this, I encourage you to either call them or try, you need to, there’s not enough room on this questionnaire to adequately answer it, so to get in touch with them and say you’re interested and you have some ideas about what you’d like to see in such an information system. Let’s see if I can get this volume turned down a bit. I simply wanted to say that one of the diversity workshops was held, and I heard that it was excellent. I’m sorry, I apologize for having scheduled those so quickly. It was difficult to get time to do that this late in the semester. So there will be other opportunities we’ll schedule and give you more warning so that you can get those on your calendar. There will be one offered on December 8th, if that’s free, but I don’t know what time of day, because Council members are supposed to be here that day. So we’ll look into that.

I also have been putting off reporting about Faculty Assembly, and it’s actually relevant to do that today. The Faculty Assembly is the group that brings faculty representing all campuses from the System together four times a year. We meet down at General Administration. We talk about issues that are of concern to faculty across the System. Our delegation this year is Lolly Gasaway, Bill Keech, Miles Fletcher, Laurel Files, and myself. And we are open to any suggestions you have about issues that you think the faculty in the System should be talking about. What typically happens is President Spangler opens the meeting with whatever is of concern to him at this point, and then we break into subcommittees to consider various issues. This year, for example, we have been talking about the consensual amorous relationship policy that the Board of Governors is concerned about now. You will probably be happy to hear that, or maybe even surprised to hear, that the policy that we developed here last year is now being used as a model for what the System might want to do, what we might want to have at all the campuses. And we’re learning more about that every day, what they’re going to do, how they’re going to move on that. The other thing that we’ve done in the Assembly is to press for more adequate salary increases. We’ve had good success in working together as campuses across the System to ask General Administration to carry our need for salary increases forward. Last time, however, we were somewhat campus non grata, having raised tuition to support salary increases. President Spangler spoke forcefully against tuition increases, and we hold our tongue to some extent. But it was not a pleasant occurrence. We’ll continue to work on that.

The other thing that I thought I should mention is that three years ago the Faculty Assembly passed a resolution calling for each campus to make sure that their equal opportunity policies prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in educational and employment opportunities. So three years ago the Faculty Assembly called for policies that we have in place already on this campus. They encouraged all campuses to have such policies. The Welfare Committee of the Faculty Assembly has also addressed the issue of access to group health insurance for domestic partners in the past. They kind of dropped the issue last year, but I talked to the head of that Welfare Committee, and he’s willing to take it up again if we ask him to do so. So please let us know if there is anything else that you think the Faculty Assembly should be addressing. We’ll be happy to forward that.

Finally, I wanted to congratulate two of our faculty members who have received public recognition for outstanding work. I know many of us do, but these two have been public, and I think are especially noteworthy. Professor Bill Kier won the 1995 North Carolina Professor of the Year Award, which is quite excellent. And John Sanders, who is often a member of this body, who keeps us honest about faculty government and has for many years, was just named, just given the Board of Governors University Award for distinguished service. So I want to congratulate both of those colleagues.

IV. Reports from Executive Committee of the Faculty Council.

Professor Brown: Now, we have a packed agenda today. And what I’d like to do — and I’d also wanted to apologize for you might have gotten these materials late. We have extra copies here. Part of it was because we were trying to get, rewrite some materials in time to vote on them today. So we were a little late getting it to you. It was in the mail by Tuesday this week. How many of you didn’t get materials ahead of time? Ah, not as many as I had feared. Okay. If it’s okay with you, can we consider that you got the materials and that we could vote on these resolutions? Technically, we’re supposed to have resolutions 24 hours in advance. Could we suspend those rules for those of you who didn’t get those? Are there any objections to that? You’ve had time to read them now. And think about them. Well, we’ll have further conversation, and you can think about it as we converse. Thank you.

A. Resolution Concerning Domestic Partners: Steven Bachenheimer, Chair,

Faculty Welfare Committee.

Professor Brown: Domestic partnerships. This is the topic that we had, I think, an excellent discussion about at our last meeting in October. What we asked for was the Welfare Committee to bring this back to us in resolution form so that we could vote on it.

Professor Bachenheimer: So just to review. There was presentation of a statement concerning employee benefits for domestic partners presented last month, by Paul Farel. The statement was developed by a joint ad hoc committee with members of the Executive Committee, I believe, and the Employee Forum. There was a request from the floor, I believe from Howard Reisner, who was here, that actually a formal resolution be brought forward for the Council to act on. I volunteered the Welfare Committee to put together such a proposal, and that’s what you see before you. You’ll see attached to the resolution the statement from the last Council meeting. So you’ve all had a chance to look at it. I’d like to urge you to just consider it as a package, and I’d like to move its adoption. Great. Is there a second? Very great. Any any further discussion? We did discuss this pretty thoroughly the last time.

Professor Ron Link (Law): Some questions. First, does the proposed policy apply to heterosexual couples as well as homosexual couples? Professor Brown: Yes it does. Professor Link: Is it typically the case that domestic partner policies cover heterosexuals as well as homosexuals? Professor Brown: It varies. Some do and some do not. Professor Link: What does Duke’s do? Professor Brown: It does not. Professor Link: What does Stanford’s do? Professor Brown: I don’t know. Who knows? Professor Link: It does not. Let me ask what the first sentence of the definition of domestic partnership means? Professor Brown: I’ll call on the Committee members as well. Paul and Lolly, who helped draft this.

Professor Lolly Gasaway (Law): Which sentence are you asking about? Professor Link: The first sentence of the first paragraph, “A domestic partnership is….” Could you explain that to me? Professor Paul Farel: Can you express probably a little more clearly what part you find confusing? Professor Link: Does it usually contemplate a sexual relationship? Professor Farel: Does a marriage usually contemplate a sexual relationship? I’m not sure yet what the intent of the question is. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Professor Link: Well, what’s your answer? Professor Farel: Well, this is not a court of law. I mean if you can tell us where you’re heading, perhaps we can discuss your role, and then determine whether or not you want to consider that. Professor Link: It wouldn’t be as much fun. [laughter] Professor Brown: Come on, Ron, let’s just have a conversation. Professor Link: Well, the point is this, a contract based on a sexual consideration is unenforceable in North Carolina. [Unidentified person]: Then by your own account, that’s true of marriage. Professor Link: There’s an exception for marriage. And there are considerations other than that. I’m simply relating what the cases generally have held, but my colleague may disagree with me.

Professor Gasaway: What contract do you see there, Ron? Professor Link: “A committed relationship in which the parties consider themselves life partners” — partners certainly sounds to me like agreement; an agreement, of course, is a contract. “Share a principal residence and are financially interdependent.” I’ll tell you where I’m going with this point in a bit. Professor Brown: How about right now? Professor Link: Well, let me turn to the, on the simple question of the administerability of a policy like this. Why don’t I ask this, and turn to footnote 1. I’ll come back. The “possible criteria for establishing financial interdependence” — are all of those required to be met? Some of those? One of those? Professor Farel: We, first of all, this isn’t a policy, it’s a statement, and — I don’t know whether that’s a legal distinction that means anything, but I think it was meant to express the feeling of the Council that we wanted to include all members of the University community in whatever we could and that no segment of the University community feel excluded. So this wasn’t a policy in that sense. This was merely just a statement of support for all our colleagues. In our joint ad hoc committee we discussed whether or not we wanted to try to define a domestic partnership, and really the definition of a domestic partnership will depend upon what you’re defining it for. The definition for, and the constraints put out by the Carolina Club, for example, are different from those that are in there for the UNC gym pass, the UNC One Card or gym pass. The Carolina Club requires that there be a statement of financial responsibility that the associate member has to be able to pay the bill. For health insurance, there would be a different kind of definition, as for dental insurance, probably. So this is just meant to be an outline of the kinds of things which would be considered in that definition. But I think the crucial issue is the committed relationship, in which the partners consider themselves life partners. It’s not a casual relationship.

Professor Link: If it’s not a casual relationship, is there any requirement on the termination of the relationship by either separation or death that there be a division of assets between the former partners? Professor Farel: Let me ask the Chair. I find this line of questioning somewhat offensive because I think we’ve tried to be open and honest in our discussions. And I have no idea where Professor Link is going. If he finds the policy, or, I’m sorry, the statement, objectionable, I think he should come out and say so. I’m not sure where we’re going with this discussion. Professor Link: I’m simply trying to illustrate the difficulties with this policy. Professor Brown: But it’s not a policy, Ron. What we’re doing is saying that we believe that benefits that are now extended to married partners of employees should be extended to partners in committed relationships. And that’s what this says. Professor Link: Well I’m trying to understand what—. Professor Brown: There is already a policy—. Professor Link: Well, I’m trying to understand what a committed relationship is. Professor Brown: These definitions are based on lots of other policies that have been formulated, and so these give us some criteria so that in some, in different cases across campus, different pieces could be used to define the partnership, to define it. And so it’s at this point flexible so that some don’t want to go into the whole, don’t want to have all of these things, all of these criteria met, and some situations, they do. So they could do that. And they could establish which ones they want to use and which ones they don’t. Professor Link: Who would make that determination as to what the test was? Professor Brown: The unit. At this point, the Carolina Club has decided how they’re going to define it. The people who administer the UNC One Card have figured out how they want to do it. Do they want to ask people for marriage licenses, then they’ll have to use more of these criteria to find out.

Professor Link: Well, if you would like to be engaged on the merits, I think the merits are this. The difficult question to me in the policy is the heterosexual couple, because a very simple alternative is available if these folks want benefits, and that’s simply marriage. A homosexual couple is much more difficult because they don’t have that option available to them. And I will read you in close one of my colleagues who’s certainly a rather conservative, says this: “We might think twice about approving a proposal that’s unreasonably broad, that sanctions and provides benefits for parties who are in contravention of North Carolina criminal statutes, even though the statutes are archaic and stupid in my mind, that envisions support arrangements that are in all likelihood unenforceable and provides no real protection for cohabitants in the event of termination of partnership.” To read it closely, my comment, I think you will find it would not apply if, say, I had a dependent sister who lived with me, a disabled dependent sister who lived with me. I could not designate her as beneficiary under these policies. So my colleague said this: “If it means that I would be able to choose a joint survivor benefits plan for my lover, but not my brother, I am outraged.”

Professor Joe Ferrell (Institute of Government): I think a couple of points about the policy. First of all, this is not the forum for investigating, I think, some very legitimate legal questions that Professor Link raises. That would be appropriate if and when the organizations that extend health insurance coverage, for example, get into that issue. In terms of many of the things are designated, the life insurance beneficiary, designation of the beneficiary from the retirement system, at least under the state retirement system, as far as I’m aware, I could designate anybody who had any kind of a relationship as my beneficiary in the state retirement system the same benefits upon death as a spouse. From a legal standpoint, the closest analogy I can think of in these criteria is the idea of domicile, which is every bit as difficult to establish. As Professor Link will recognize, legal domicile is a subjective state of mind; it is where you intend to reside. Since the law cannot read your mind, it can only look at objective evidence. So if I want to look at where your legal residence is, I ask you many of the questions that you see here to find the fact to emphasize where my legal residence is. It is a very difficult thing to determine, but the law is up to it usually. And you’ve dealt with that particular concept for hundreds of years without too much difficulty. And I have confidence that we’ll be able to deal with this just as easily. Professor Brown: Thank you. We have many things to discuss today, so—.

Professor Jim Peacock (Anthropology): In light of Professor Ferrell’s points, which, I think clarify the ambiguities, and in light of the direction of the resolution which is really a quest for a policy rather than statement of a policy, I call the question. Professor Brown: Is there any objection to calling the question? If there is, we need a two-thirds vote to call the question. Seeing no objection, we will vote on the resolution as a set of resolutions. All those in favor of the resolution, say aye. Any opposed. [There were some noes.] The motion carries. Thank you.

B. Policy on Faculty Salaries: Jane D. Brown.

Professor Brown: Now, another interesting topic. Salaries. You all have this in front of you. Two pieces: the Resolution on Faculty Salary Policy, the Background, and Principles to Guide Action, and Mechanisms.

As soon as we last met, members of the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council have made only minor changes to the principles, given our conversation that we had at our last meeting. So what we proposed today is that we vote on these principles. We can have further discussion about those. I’d like to keep that to the minimum if possible so we can have further discussion on the mechanisms which we haven’t discussed before. We do not propose that we vote on the mechanisms today because this is our first conversation about those. And what we would like to do is to listen to the conversation about that and bring them back to you, if there is sentiment that we do need the mechanisms. That’s still a question, I think, about whether these principles will lead us far enough down the path we want to go. I hear some people already adamantly saying, No. So we will certainly have the discussion of the mechanisms, but first I’d like to talk about the principles and see if we’re ready to vote on those.

1. Resolution on Principles to Guide Action.

Do I hear a motion to vote on the Principles? [It was moved and seconded.] Okay. So further discussion on the Principles as rewritten? Professor Jack Boger (Law): I would rise to report a discussion that our Law faculty had yesterday in which we, in fact, found ourselves in opposition to going forward with these Principles at this time. Almost everyone present at that meeting — there was a 30-40 minutes discussion of these principles — shares the underlying concern for equity in faculty salaries and the procedures to set those salaries, shares the belief that if there are difficulties in some departments and some schools now that cannot be addressed within those departments or schools internally, that the University has clear responsibility for looking into those difficulties, and to redress them. However, the Law faculty, really by a 19 to zero vote of those who were present, and Lolly Gasaway wasn’t present and might well have voted to the contrary. [Professor Gasaway: I would have voted to the contrary.], had the following point of view. There are many departments in which there appear not to be difficulties right now with the setting of salaries, either the procedures or the outcomes. And to propose this sort of one-fits-all universal policy response to what may be a partial problem in some departments seems to be a mistake.

Professor Brown: Are you speaking, just to be clear, are you speaking about the principles or about the mechanisms? Professor Boger: About the principles as well as about the mechanisms. We actually took a separate vote on the mechanisms and on whether there needs to be a University-wide statement of principles at this point, and it’s really the latter vote, whether there needs at this point to be a University-wide set of principles that we received in fact a unanimous vote from everybody from senior tenured chaired faculty to the junior-most untenured faculty. The thought was is was not simply inefficient or even broad to have a universal solution for partial problems, but that in fact it might have unintended consequences. There might well be departments such as ours where the people are relatively satisfied both with the current principles in place and with the implementation of those principles. And to move down the road toward what the mechanisms suggest — I know the mechanisms themselves are not in stone — would risk, as the Law faculty saw it, sort of adverse consequences for collegiality there. The politicization of the faculty, the polarization of the faculty in a way that might be adverse. And so the question that was really put to this body, coming back, and I’m really a reporter for that, is: why a universal, one-fits-all solution if there’s not a universal problem? Why not deal with the departments directly that have the most egregious problems through the Provost, the Chancellor, or some other body [some chuckles] rather than adopt a policy in which the various units or schools themselves, plus we’re getting down some road of changes that may not be required. Professor Brown: Doesn’t the Law School at this point have a very open policy? Professor Boger: It is satisfied with the policy, that’s right. Professor Brown: Okay. Response to that?

Professor Carl Bose (Pediatrics, Medicine): Well, my question would be, in what way are the Law School’s policies in variance with these principles outlined? Professor Boger: I don’t think we made a, you know, point by point, a narrow analysis or comparison although we did look at them in some places where some faculty saw that. The basic response, the most heated response, came to the mechanisms, in which you set out a faculty committee — [Professor Bose: Which I can understand.] Of course. — to the dean who would actually superintend and supervise the dean’s sort of choices. In our department at least we find no need for that and are confident both with the Dean’s choices, but this present Dean and previous Deans, but with leaving those kinds of questions in the hands of a single administrator. But there was great opposition as well to the establishment of a single … University set of principles, with various faculty members objecting to different ones of the principles. So, you know, some objected to 1 and 2, some to 3, 4, and 5.

Professor Rich Beckman (Journalism & Mass Communication): Well these are separate questions. I have two questions. What is on point #5, and maybe I’m reading it incorrectly, but it seems that if salaries are somehow tied to the market conditions that what I read is that a, if we need to hire a Professor of Plumbing versus a Professor of Journalism, and we know that a plumber makes more money than a journalist [Professor Brown: Yeah, unfortunately.], then I’m a little concerned about the, how that balances out. I’m not sure that the University should place the same standards in terms of hiring faculty as society has determined and in turn set the relative value of people and their professions. Professor Brown: You’re speaking for the community part of the balance, rather than the market? Professor Beckman: Well I’m saying that I think that’s a dangerous connection to make. It says here that prevailing market conditions have some tie-in to salaries. I’m just not sure what that means, and I’m a little bit afraid of it. My second point is that — [Professor Philip Bromberg (Medicine): By Professor of Plumbing, did you mean a Professor of Surgery? (laughter)] I was trying, searching for a Professor we didn’t have. My second point is, since I just got this document on Wednesday, and if indeed I represent 25 people in my department, I would like to have more time to talk to them before I vote on this document. Professor Brown: Are you talking principles or mechanisms? Professor Beckman: I’m talking — well, I hadn’t seen either one, so– [Professor Brown: You were in Africa, right?] Right. Professor Brown: Okay, good. Let’s have further response.

Professor Peacock: This is just a point of information, but it does pertain to the first speaker. And that is, that in 1972, and then revised in 1990, the AAUP adopted a set of principles which are essentially the same as our first and second ones. So there is a kind of shoe-fits-all that at least a national body has discovered. Professor Link: Since examples have been asked for about the Law faculty’s concern with the statement of principles, I’ll give one in response to the comment about markets, and that was the question, what market do you mean? There is no undifferentiated market. Is it professors in general, is it professors by discipline, is it women, is it minority hires? That was just one. The feeling was there may be other latent problems in here. I’ll simply reinforce what Jack said. I’ve been here now 24 years through five different deanships, and our practice has always been, as Jane says, an open one, that the Dean sets the salaries, publishes to the faculty the salaries, anybody’s invited to discuss them with the Dean. And to my knowledge the only objection that has ever been raised is somebody going in and saying, “I think somebody else’s salary should be higher.” So, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Professor Farel: I think the general goal of openness is one that will do us a great deal of benefit, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the people who really pushed this decision forward. But I’m concerned about actually getting changes implemented. That, from what I’ve heard from our discussions I don’t think there’re very many deans who support either the principles wholeheartedly or the mechanisms. And part of it, even though they might do all the things that we ask for, they don’t support them now, and part of that is because they were not involved in the formulation. Faculty Council has no legislative power. We can’t force anybody to do anything. We just have a kind of moral weight. And we’ve heard from at least, from one dean, who said that if it’s not absolutely imposed, he would ignore it. And if it were imposed by the Chancellor, it would be a shell. We need to work out some way of actually getting what we want affected at the change. And to do that, I think we need to involve the Deans and Vice Chancellors more in conversation about both the principles and the mechanisms. So I’m hoping that whatever we pass today can be considered as a talking point for these further discussions. And I think this would be necessary to actually get what we’re talking about translated into effective action.

Professor Brown: Dick, can I call on you at this point, did you want to bring forward that proposal? Provost Richardson: Well, it’s hardly a proposal. But the Deans and Directors — I think, in fact, it was prepared yesterday — unanimously requested me to present to the Council words to that effect. Namely, that they would like to communicate to the Council their support for consultative processes of faculty salary determination, the implementation of fair and appropriate appeal mechanisms, and access to relevant salary information. But they would also like for me to express their desire for further consultation and discussion between those with experience in setting salaries and faculty representatives before adoption of mechanisms prescribing procedures for implementation of salary principles that were currently under consideration, and asked that a task force be appointed as soon as possible to engage in such a process and invite all academic units to discuss the proposed mechanisms and express their views on the advisability of the implementation prior to action of the Faculty Council’s recommendation on this subject.

Professor Jack Evans (Business): Nearly two years ago when the notion of creating a committee to study a number of these issues was proposed, those of us being asked to serve on the committee were asked to come forward with something along the lines of what is now being proposed. I asked that the charge to the committee be written more narrowly for two reasons. Number one, I wanted to concentrate first on gathering some background information so we could understand what the situation was. Second, I was particularly worried about taking on the challenge of trying to come forward with a recommended policy or mechanism that we could agree in advance would apply in all of the situations where we wanted to apply them, namely across the entire University. And that we could also decide, after the fact, retrospectively, whether it had or had not been implemented and followed appropriately in any instances that one wanted to test. And my answer to that was, a) that’s going to be a very difficult challenge, b) I see that fundamentally as an administrative challenge that, as our Provost has just said, really I would hope would involve people who have experience in setting salaries as well as involving some of us who are on the receiving end of those decisions. I think there’s wisdom in taking the information that has been gathered and then using a mechanism that involves people in the administrative challenges to deal with this. There are some mechanisms that I’m aware of that are of use in other institutions that I think do a good job at a unit level of creating a consultative process that provides advice to a chair or a dean or a director so that the effect that’s sought from these policies can be achieved but without the challenge of trying to do that at this aggregate level.

Professor Calhoun: I don’t have a brief for any particular principle or mechanisms but I’m puzzled by two of the issues in the discussion. First, it seems to me that the Deans and Directors currently, of Academic Affairs, are being disingenuous to some extent. It’s not as though this issue arose in the last month or there has been no opportunity for them to consider the matter whether it would be appropriate to have salary policies open and clearly stated in their units or for the campus as a whole. And, indeed, the Evans/Miller report which was the precipitating factor for the effort of the ECFC to make a proposal of Principles to Guide Action on salaries was circulated to all of the Deans and Directors so that they certainly had the information that suggested there was an issue that needed attention. Though I haven’t been a part of it, I understand there has been a certain amount of voluntary effort on members of the faculty to bring this to the attention of at least some of the deans as well. What I’m puzzled by is the idea that the problem is one of lack of consultation as simply a need for a more extended process by a task force. Now, with that in mind, and the objections that Jack Boger reports in the Law School, I’m also puzzled by objections to principles. I’m much less puzzled by concerns about mechanisms, though frankly I think the mechanisms that are imposed are of a pretty nonproblematic, non-threatening nature, but they are, nonetheless, mechanisms. They do attempt to set a kind of specific policy, and so I can see the point of debate about that. I still am waiting for a serious answer, not to the question of what, if this were a court of law, would be the precise contractual definitions and variety of terms, but rather to what is problematic about principles, indeed, even at the level of the University. I rather strongly believe that it’s important for the University to function as an intellectual community and to have certain standards as a University, not simply as a number of different units which, indeed, are not fully autonomous. In that connection, the Statement of Principles uses the word “should” recurrently precisely because it’s an expression of Faculty Council sentiment as to what should be the case in a variety of units, and it does not legislate any specific remedies or procedures or mechanisms precisely because the Faculty Council doesn’t have the role of such legislation. So, I would like to ask again the question that was asked by Carl Bose, “What are the provisions in the Statement of Principles that would hamstring the Law School or any other unit in its operations? And I’m particularly surprised that this comes from the Law School because I admire its Dean and I had thought it was something like a model, indeed, for fairness in these procedures.

[Professor Brown asked Jack Boger if he would like to respond to this.] Professor Boger: I’d be happy to respond. I can’t speak for everybody on the faculty who didn’t concur in this, but I think, Craig, that there was the perceived sense that the principles are fairly clearly and closely linked to mechanisms to follow. Indeed, Jane said we want to move quickly if possible through the principles to get to a discussion of the mechanisms which will follow. So the faculty saw this as not simply a statement about principles in general, but it’s tied to something that’s not enacted. When they looked at it in that light, I know people focused on part of section 2, for example, that requires regular review by the faculty, we would tie that to the kind of mechanisms that talk about a faculty committee to address salaries and to oversee what the Deans or the unit heads are doing, one sees that that principle is susceptible at least to interpretations that these mechanisms reflect. It would involve greater faculty autonomy vis-a-vis the decisions of the Dean. And in #5 as we suggested, there is a great deal of concern written by four or five very respected liberal members of our faculty about what market forces mean and how that might be used and so forth. So I don’t think it was simply frivolous on the part of the Law faculty. They’re worried that these principles were not simply an affirmation of particularly #1, public, openly stated criteria [“open, publicly stated criteria”], to which I think we all might have subscribed, but the first step in the door toward a set of mechanisms with which we might seriously disagree. Professor Brown: So you would say your faculty would agree with #1 under the principles? Is that what you’re saying? Professor Boger: I shudder to speak, but we didn’t vote on that. But I really can’t speak for them, since they took a vote deliberately on, “Are we opposed to the adoption of Principles, and so on, for the University as a whole.” And the answer, 19 to zero, with people like Lolly Gasaway not present, who might have made it 19 to 1 or 2.

Professor Henry Hsiao (Biomedical Engineering): I do have a concern with what’s not mentioned here, and that is the recruitment of new faculty. Nowhere in this thing does it say: how do we pay, how do we recruit new faculty? Now if we need to pay those guys more, does that mean the entire department’s salary should be raised? If you recruit less, does that mean your entire department’s salary should be decreased? New faculty — we have to get those people here. If you use a policy that inhibits getting good faculty here, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.

Professor David Pike (Germanic Languages): I’d like to just turn the question around and say, does building a better University require gouging the people who are already here, whose credentials may be just as good or better than the people you’re bringing in from the outside. Now we could focus on that problem all we want. But maybe it’s time to ask what needs to be done to take care of the good people who are here, who have done their work over many years, who may or may not be thinking about leaving, but who don’t think that they ought to mortgage their financial futures so that the University can bring in another person who may not be any better. So if you talk about that particular problem, that’s what I take the market discussion here to mean as much as anything in a single department. Let’s keep the other side of the equation in mind, because I think there are a lot of people on campus unlike, evidently, the Law School who don’t think they’ve been treated fairly.

Professor Sue Estroff (Social Medicine): I just wanted to make a couple comments. This is about process. This is about fairness. It’s not about a problem Per Se. It’s about ending the plantation. It’s about consultative process among professional colleagues. It’s not a critique of any dean. It’s not a critique of any department chair. It’s coming into the late 20th Century to say that we can have civilized conversations and a clearly articulated policy called for by the Chancellor and called for by any rational organization to have principles. I am distressed to hear some colleague say, it’s sort of analogous to, “Well, we don’t have problems with integration or racism over here, so we don’t want to have any laws for everybody.” You know? We are a community. And these principles are broad principles of consultation and participation. And even the deans now are saying, “Yes, we want to be involved in this process.” So I call upon all of you to move beyond your personal experience with your own department chair and become engaged in a more reasoned, civil discourse about what role we as adult, alleged adult, professionals in this community want to play in allocating resources. That’s really the bottom line here. There’s no trick about pulling people into mechanisms. These are principles of community and professionalism, and I would hope that we can come to some agreement about this, otherwise I really have a great deal of distress about our ability to engage in any business.

Professor Bill Smith (Mathematics): When I look at this, I see two very good principles, and I think the typical thing that a University committee of the faculty does is, we manage to stretch it out to six things, but those first two principles simply say salary decisions are going to be made in accord with an open, publicly stated criteria which will be developed with faculty consultation and that those principles would be reviewed by faculty. I think when you look at numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6 — at least when I look at them — you look at things that administrators and faculty will discuss and debate and talk about and reason about in trying to carry out the University policy. The important ones are #1 and 2. “Should” is probably not strong enough a word, you might ought to say “ought to” — but you couldn’t say that in a faculty document — and the reason we ought to is because it’s a wise thing to do. It makes for good decisions. It makes for good operation of the University to follow principles 1 and 2. I see 3, 4, 5, and 6 as being some of the things that faculty and administration in an open, publicly stated way are going to talk about. I just, I would hope the Council will adopt this policy, and I think you do have problems with procedures when you move into that, and I think you’ll have a long discussion of it, but the policy, I think, there’s no question about it, 1 and 2 especially. Why? And furthermore, there’re things that this University, and mention was made of the Association of University Professors document, and I think that’s stated in little more general terms and basic principles which, in fact, this University has held to four decades. And, in fact, ignores. And perhaps the size or the way we are now we’re not following well enough, and think it’s well and good that we restate these as being wise principles.

Professor Brown: Okay, let’s, can we try to complete this part of the conversation? We have slipped in mechanisms as well. But I — there is a motion on the floor to vote on the principles. Are we close to that?

Professor Pamela Conover (Political Science): Yes, these are the principles we saw last time with very minor revisions to reflect some of the comments made by this group. We had a very full discussion at that time. I think the ethical, moral force behind these principles is the one of community, that if we believe these principles are right, they are principles that ought to apply to the University as a whole. And because we have had a full discussion previously, and we have continued that discussion today, and we have a very full agenda, I would like to call the question.

Professor Brown: Is there any objection to calling the question at this point? Professor Farel: I’m sorry, I’ll need to object. Professor Brown: Paul? Okay. Professor Peacock: It’s a two-thirds vote, no discussion. Professor Brown: Okay, so we need to take a vote on calling the question. All those in favor of calling the question, say aye. [shouts of aye] Opposed: Noes. We need to vote on that, we need to have hands. Okay, hand vote. All those in favor of calling the question, stopping debate. Jane Brown: I got 19. George Lensing: 23. Okay. Who’s doing the addition? [Someone said, 42.] I can’t do it in my head. I’m a journalist, not a mathematician. Okay, all those opposed to stopping debate. Ok. I got 4. Professor Lensing: 10. Okay, what’s two-thirds? Fifty-six. Forty-two out of 56 is what? Okay, we have stopped debate. So now we go to the motion. All those in favor of adopting these principles — so, what we are doing is adopting this sheet of principles, and this would lead us forward in conversation at that point. All those in favor of adopting these principles say aye. Any opposed. [There were some.] I think it carries. Okay, so we have adopted these principles, and now we have a conversation about the mechanisms.

2. Draft of Resolution on Mechanisms to Implement Principles.

Do we have a problem? Is there a problem? Okay, Paul. Professor Farel: I just think it’s important to get on the record about the principles that it says we were striving for academic excellence, but unless we take former Provost McCormick’s definition of excellence as including diversity, the use of salary in order to achieve diversity on the faculty might be overlooked here. Because academic excellence will be weighed in the market demands, but we all know that to hire an African American professor at UNC in most fields will require more money than to hire a Caucasian with comparable credentials. And many of us feel that that’s a legitimate use of salary resources. I’m concerned within the principles that it’s not explicitly stated, and I would just like to have the people who wrote the principles state what their intention was, had they thought of that.

Professor Debra Shapiro (Business School): It seems to me the concern you just expressed may be addressed in principle #5 which says administrators should weigh market demands into their salary making decisions. Professor Farel: Excuse me, but the preceding clause is “in pursuit of academic excellence.” And unless one says, “excellence includes diversity” I don’t think it’s clear. Professor Brown: Could we assume that at this point in the record? Professor Farel: If it’s in the record, sure. If there’s general consensus. Professor Brown: Would there be general consensus about that, that excellence would include diversity and should be taken into account here as a part of market demand and community in the interest of… Professor Link: Objection. Professor Brown: Oh, boy. We’re still on principles. We just passed these principles. So I want to stop the debate on this. I think you’ve made the point about that, and I think that’s on the record about — and you have objection to it. We’ve passed the principles. We closed debate on the principles. And he was out of order [referring to Professor Farel] I’m sorry. [laughter]

So, now let’s talk about mechanisms. And we have half an hour left. I have child care at 5:00, but I was committed to getting us out of here by 5:00. It looks like we will not be out of here by 5:00. But let’s see if we can talk about mechanisms, remembering the Provost’s possibility of engaging in further conversation with administrators about this in the future, that we don’t want to vote on this, but I would like a preliminary conversation about this to get some sense of the body, and then we will continue looking at the mechanisms.

Professor Ferrell: Had you not cut off the debate on the policy I think I would observe [laughter] whether the Council was really ready to vote on the issue, whether you knew the minds of your colleagues in the departments. It was impressive to me that the only delegate here who said that the issues had been discussed in the department reported a vote which frankly surprised me. The issue has not been discussed in my department at all. Whether these documents have been made available to anyone on our faculty who’s not a member of the Council I do not know. I simply would have no way of telling you what my colleagues think about either the policies or the procedures. So my suggestion is on the procedures, which I think are the most difficult and probably controversial part of the whole thing, is that the Council should postpone voting on these until you have had an opportunity to discuss this issue in your departments and inform yourself and then come back. I think you will be better prepared to decide what the mind of your colleagues is. Professor Brown: Great. I think that’s exactly our intention, that the Executive Committee brought the mechanisms forward today, not for a vote, but for initial conversation, and then we’ve held the Faculty Council responsible for taking these back, serving as the representatives that you are. Take these back to your units and talk about them. Just as you did in the Law School, which we applaud you for. Thank you for doing that, and letting us know of the outcome as well. Professor Ferrell: I would just ask, the question is, whether the Council wishes to take this back for discussion at the departmental level? Is that the question? Professor Brown: No, I think that’s assumed, that it will be done. You are the representatives of the departments. It is your responsibility. [Unidentified person]: Not on an official one-to-one basis. Make clear to people that they are not elected as representatives of departments. Professor Brown: That’s true. [Unidentified person]: Is every department represented here, Jane? Professor Brown: No. That’s also accurate. But you are representatives of divisions, so I think it would be your responsibility to make sure that the departments in your divisions are talking about these policies, and the mechanisms.

Professor Bill Smith: The way we just had a good discussion is one reason to keep the size of the Council as it is. But I was going to ask the Executive Committee why, in their wisdom, in this draft you suggested a new or existing elective committee of the Faculty Council, rather than referring to a committee of the General Faculty. Professor Brown: Well, I was going to go through these, and in the interest of time I decided not to. Maybe, should I? Maybe I could go through them very quickly. [Unidentified person: As they come up.] No, what I was going to do is just say, “This is what I think these mean at this point.” Then you’ll get a sense of what I think the picture is of these mechanisms.

The first paragraph is about a pan-University committee, and we’ve already begun some conversation with the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee as the most likely candidate for this task. And what I would envision in that committee doing is something like Jack Evans and Arden Miller did in their committee, was to look at aggregate-level data across the University, how are we doing? And also to do the external comparison. How competitive are we remaining? And how are resources being allocated across the University? Number 1 suggests it goes back to the unit level, back to the departmental level, and says that the faculty in consultation with the administrative head would create policies for the unit, such as the Law School has already done. That those policies would be reviewed every couple of years. And that that is left necessarily flexible so that departments who want to say, “We want the chair to continue to it,” that’s fine. As long as the faculty has said, “We want the chair to continue to do it.” That would be okay. And Arts and Sciences has already gone through this process, and a number of departments have already said, “We want the chair to do it.” But that would have to be reviewed every two years. And then we have, we’re proposing another level committee, at the school level, so there’s an intervening level, which would look again at aggregate-level data, saying, “How are we doing across the units within the school? How are resources being allocated? Do the units have policies that are working? Are there problems in distribution?” It may flag problems like compression, suggesting that the unit as a whole address issues of compression.

Number 3 is related to that level of a committee, saying that they will review the policies of the units, consider that, may feed back to the department heads, “This is a concern, can you tell us more about that?” The last sentence in that paragraph suggests that faculty members, and some suggest that we should also say, units — that’s kind of taken care of already — should be able to raise questions and contribute information to that review process. We’re thinking about that as an also aggregate level, not individual grievances at that point, but that it would come back and say, “The policies aren’t working.” That an individual could say to that next level, “The policies aren’t working. This isn’t quite how we anticipated.” Or, “There’s a cohort of us who are suffering from compression. We’d like you to consider that.”

Four says that there would still be a Faculty Grievance Committee to look at individual grievances. Five is the need for data that these committees can use. The, what is it called, the Office of Institutional Research has already begun looking at what kind of data these committees would need and starting to put those structures into place to collect those data and make them accessible. And finally, that, deans, chairs, and other heads who are making these, who are setting the salaries, would be responsible and that would be considered in their reviews. Okay. And finally, one of the most important points, I think, is that this is provisional, that we would do this on a two-year trial basis, that we would look to see, “Does it work? Can we live with it?” And in two years we would say, “Yes, we can.” Or we could say, “No, there are missing pieces.” Or we can say, “Get rid of it. Let’s go back to where we were.” So that’s a brief summary. And this is about the twelfth draft of this. This has gone through many permutations. It is much more flexible, much broader, much, allowing much more for the cultures of individual departments, the cultures of the schools to be operation here. So that we would get to a place where we would say, “This works for us, but it doesn’t work for them.” And that’s fine. As long as faculty are involved in declaring that.

Professor Bose: I just want to say a word about the process and then sort of make a recommendation. I think that what we’ve done is to take a very thoughtful approach to principles and then how one might enact those principles. But in reality what we’re suggesting is a shift in governance. In, to many units. Perhaps not some, but in many units these decisions were made in a vacuum without a great deal of faculty input. And we’re saying to the administrators of those units that we don’t like the way you’ve conducted your business. In some cases we’re saying, “We don’t like the result of the way you’ve conducted your business.” And I think a lot, that may be part of the impetus for these policies, or principles and mechanisms, but not entirely. Some people are saying, “We don’t like the way you’ve conducted business, even though the outcome has generally been favorable to most faculty.” The danger in this approach is that we can only recommend change. And I think we all need to recognize that we can only, we are only empowered to recommend change. We carry with that, as I think Paul said, great moral weight, and that will have impact, I think. But I think the greatest likelihood of success is if we work with the governors as the governed and fabricate change with their advice and consent and work together with them to develop change. Now that may not be as radical as some would like. And the process may move slowly. I’m pleased to hear from the Provost that there are deans that are willing to participate in that process. And I think on the Executive Committee we may have erred a bit in not involving people who are closer aligned with administration more closely along this road. I think we would have been farther along had we done that. I think we need now to do that. And I think we need to have a dialogue with deans, chairs, and say, “Here are the principles by which we think you should act. Help formulate mechanisms that will enact those principles.” There will be a much greater likelihood of success by that process, I think.

Professor Bullard: I’d like to speak to Carl’s observations and say to them from the perspective of a person who has been working for four plus years very closely with various administrators about these very problems, getting ideas, getting input and things like that, it’s very appropriate at this point that the Faculty Council should be considering and has just considered, voted on the principles, and now be considering mechanisms, because the faculty needs to give, needs to have a voice and express its will which then and can exist in what I call in creative tension — and emphasis on creative there — with the administration. Because what we’re trying to do is to facilitate channels of communication between faculty and administration to bridge some of the gaps that have developed over the last number of years, and to provide some very reasonable means whereby important issues of University policy, and certainly salaries are a very important issue in the University’s policy, can be openly discussed, and there can be input going in both directions. So I think the timeliness of this, and also the flexibility of these mechanisms, are highly appropriate and it’s high time we do it.

Professor Barry Lentz (Biochemistry & Biophysics): I think that my main reaction to this is that it creates too many committees. I’m already on too many committees. And it’s too legalistic. The whole idea in the first two principles that there should be open discussion that’s the essence of what’s in those principles. And there’s got to be a simpler way of encouraging open discussion and looking at data and having a discussion of the data. I think that data collection is a very good idea. And having all of these committees, and all of this legalistic administrative structure where we administer to the administrators how they should be administering to us. It’s just, it’s too much. Professor Brown: How many committees do you see? Professor Lentz: Well I see committees, I mean, it depends on how I read this, but I could see potentially a committee at every departmental level. I mean that’s a lot of committees. And if you don’t mean that, then just precisely what is meant? And if you don’t mean that, then how do you have really frank discussions? I’d rather just say, “Let’s have a departmental faculty meeting with the chair every year in which we look at data and have an honest discussion of salary and give the chair some feedback.” And if chairs aren’t doing — Professor Brown: You could decide that as a department, that you want to do it that way. That’s fine. That’s in these mechanisms. It says a department could decide they want to have one meeting a year about it. That would be fine. Professor Lentz: Okay.

Professor Madeline Levine (Slavic Languages): I’ve been a chair for far too long, from 1979 to 87, and again since 1993, and I fully support principles 1 and 2, but I fail to understand how mechanisms 2 and 3 could possibly work. I think the problem for many of us who are saddled with this responsibility of setting salaries when there is not enough money to make an equitable decision for anyone in the department, is from year to year to go limping along thinking, “Well this year I’ll try to take care of one problem, and next year I’ll deal with another.” We have a 2% salary increase, and I can tell you it was not easy to decide among the various merits of people who are incoming and very low paid, very meritorious, people who have published very well, done extraordinary teaching, and mine is only a very small department. It was a very difficult decision. And I think how would I go and appear before a college-wide faculty and somehow explain how I implemented the policies and principles adopted in my department, which, by the way, has said, “You deal with it. We don’t want to know about it. That’s why you’re a chair.” But, you know, how would I report?

Professor Brown: You would complain about not enough resources to go around. Professor Levine: But what’s the good of that? This is a serious committee. This mechanism says I am supposed to explain what are the problems, what are the inequities. And I also can’t understand how I could get a committee which did not know my department to understand whether or not it was appropriate to throw lots of money to raise a low-paid salary member this year and to ignore a major publication from someone else, how they could believe in me unless they investigated my decision and they re-ran the whole thing. Not knowing my field, not knowing the individuals. And then what you’re doing is asking people to do a full-scale review of qualifications. And let me just say that I speak to this also as co-chair of the Faculty Hearings Committee, on which I’ve now served, I’m on my fifth year of service. And I have seen plenty of grievances about very serious issues. And over and over again, we’re looking only at the process. Process is policy and principles. But as soon as you move slightly off process and want to go into details, you are treading very carefully on the line of reviewing academic decisions about professional matters that no one outside the discipline or department can possibly do, and certainly, in this issue, no committee, let us say in the College, that is trying quickly to review salary decisions — and I don’t how many units, forty to sixty units — and so I think the mechanisms give a promise that can’t be fulfilled and will probably be a source of difficulty if enacted this way, leading to enormous dissension, tension and hostility.

Professor Beckman: I’m just wondering whether the committee that wrote these is counting on me as a faculty member to have access to all of the documentation that I would need to even attempt to do this. Am I going to see all of the student evaluations that now only go to the Dean? Am I going to review every vita in the department? Am I going to see notes that the Dean made when students came in and complained about a professor? Or am I going to look at how many classes a professor missed? If the Dean has that information now and I don’t, and whether I agree or disagree with him, at least he has all that information. I mean, am I going to — Professor Brown: In some departments that is exactly what’s going on. In the Math Department, for example, they are looking at complete vitas every year. Six faculty in the Math Department independently look at everybody else’s vitas. Professor Beckman: Are they looking at student evaluations? Professor Brown: And then they make recommendations to the chair. I’m not sure. But the point is, as I understand it, is that we, as the School of Journalism in this case, could decide how we want to do it. Do we want to be, do we want to elect a dean to do it, or do we want to have some input into the process? And how much of it do we want to have. Professor Beckman: Maybe we don’t need a dean at all. Maybe we could just—. Professor Brown: Okay, we are going to need to stop. Let’s see, who will be the last three hands: Steve, then Miles, and then Paul.

Professor Steve Leonard (Political Science): I’m a little bothered by the absence of faith in the capacity of our colleagues to both make good arguments in defense of decisions that they arrive at, and also at the capacity of colleagues to judge those arguments in defense of decisions that have been made. I think that if administrators feel uncomfortable making arguments in front of committees in defense of decisions that they have made, perhaps those decisions are questionable. And if we don’t trust the judgment of our colleagues to decide whether the arguments made in defense of the decisions are adequate or not, I don’t know how we can conduct our business here as an intellectual community. There are a number of committees on which I serve that require me to make decisions about what is going on in other disciplines outside my own. Unless my judgment or unless my capacity to make a reasoned judgment about what’s going on in those other disciplines is respected, there’s no way that I can even say anything about endeavors taking place in disciplines outside my own. So I would expect that administrators should be capable and willing to defend the decisions they make, and I would expect that most of us, as highly educated people, would be capable of recognizing a good argument when it’s presented to us.

Professor Miles Fletcher (History): I’d like to address the issue that was raised about the burden of committee work that the mechanisms would impose. I found myself last spring elected to the first elected salary committee in the History Department, and then that committee turned around and elected my chair of that committee, my colleagues did that. [laughter] And, you know, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of bother that I wish sometimes I didn’t have to deal with, but basically I believe in this kind of openness in communication and I’m willing to put in the effect. And these new mechanisms will mean more work for some people, or a redirection of effort, but I think the overall goal of trying to foster more communication, and to get more equity into this salary process is worth it. I think Madeline’s point is well taken about the difficulty of having a unit committee review one’s own work through this work on the History Department’s salary committee which is advisory to the chairman. I’ve come to appreciate even more the difficulties involved in recommending salary increases especially when the increases are so small. But I think some kind of mechanism is needed to address or to prevent some of the problems that have occurred in the past. Unit-wide committees might not be the perfect solution, but I don’t know of any alternatives.

Professor Farel: I just wanted to review with Professor Leonard about trusting your colleagues with a slightly different slant. I think that we have many different cultures that have developed in the different units on campus, and we have a set of principles. What I would like to see is not imposed mechanisms, to trust our colleagues to come up with a set of mechanisms that suits their unit, and then to come back and see in two years whether or not what was developed from that unit really meets the principles, rather than trying just one-size-fits-all.

Professor Brown: Here’s what I’ll propose. Steve, do you want to respond? I said last three comments. I think we’ve had a pretty full discussion here. What I would like to propose is to accept Dick McCormick’s proposition [laughter], excuse me. [Unidentified person: Just deal on a first name basis from now on.] Dear Provost. I would like to propose that we accept the Provost’s offer and that we include the Health Affairs — you’re not, that was Academic Affairs’ invitation –. [Interim Provost Richardson: That’s correct.] I would definitely like to have the Health Affairs colleagues, the equal partners in this, be included as well. So what I would propose is the Executive Committee of Faculty Council take on in the next month, if possible — it may go longer than that, to engage in dialogue with administrators, the people who have been setting salaries, and see if we can come up with a set of mechanisms that we can then bring back to Council and have further conversation about, and see if we can vote on, see if we can come up with something that will work, taking into account the concerns that have been expressed here today. Do I hear an objection to that? Or a counteroffer.

Professor Estroff: Can I just add emphasis that that’s a small piece of it, that consultation with all of our colleagues and going back to department and talking these and putting it in everybody’s box, and being in their face about responding to them, is as important as these meetings with the deans. What’s going to make this work or not is if we want it to work and we implement it. Sitting on these committees, doing all these things. We’ve got to consult with our colleagues and find out what they think and to let them see the principles and mechanisms.

Provost Richardson: I think in that context, Jane, and this is just a comment, that we received a request the other day that the chairs have never received an official mailing of this statement that I’m aware of, and the chairs in particular feel strongly, some of them, that they’ve not been brought together in a group. I met with one group of six chairs, to the Chair of the Advisory Committee, two weeks ago. I believe they need to be specifically brought into the discussion as well as the deans. I would like to say that the Council, the Executive Committee, could not have been any more outreaching to me than it could have been. I’ve had far more than I’ve wanted to. [laughter] Professor Brown: Very great. Thank you. We will persist in communicating with you and others who want to be communicated with, and I encourage you all as representative of the Faculty to take these back and talk about them, and then give that feedback to me or other members of the Executive Committee: what are you hearing, do you have alternative suggestions about what might work?

Professor Laurel Files (Health Policy & Administration): Will the suggestion that was just made be followed up? Will there be a formal mailing to chairs, of this? My chair saw it mentioned in the newspaper. He never got it. He got it from me and he saw the newspaper. Professor Brown: They all should have them. They have been sent to all chairs and directors and they may just not be there yet because of the mail problem. Professor Files: Well, that’s true. I got this a half hour before the meeting. Professor Brown: Right. So they should be on their way to all the chairs, department heads and directors. So they should be receiving them. Okay.

Could we, we need a little bit more time because shortly — anybody who really needs to go and has child care at $5 a minute, go. And I have to pick up Lily, so.

V. Special Report and Resolution of Committee on University Government to

extend Faculty Council voting and office-holding privileges to Full-time Lecturers and Lecturer-Equivalents, first reading and vote: Joseph S. Ferrell, Chair.

Professor Brown: I think we’re going to have to put off voting on fixed-term faculty. Okay. The only thing we necessarily must do today is the candidates for Distinguished Alumnus Awards, and the rest of it we can put off until the next meeting. Can we do that? Okay. Let’s do one other thing. If you can bear with me on this. Let’s wait until the shuffling stops.

VI. Annual Reports of Standing Committees:

There are four annual reports of standing committees we may be able to talk about quickly. There are no resolutions on any of them, and what we have proposed is that if there are no resolutions on any of them, we simply ask are there any comments.

A. Research: Michael T. Crimmins, Chair.

Professor Bachenheimer: I have a comment about the Faculty Committee on Research. Professor Brown: Is Mike here, is Mike Crimmins still here? No, he’s not. Any member of the Research Committee still here? We may need to put that off, then, Steve, since there’s no one here. Professor Bachenheimer: Well, are you saying that you’ll bring it back in December? Professor Brown: Yes. Professor Bachenheimer: Fine. Professor Brown: Yes, we’ll do that, Steve. Professor Lensing: Unless it’s a question that we could take to them, Steve. Professor Bachenheimer: Well, it’s just some general comments about the report. I think it would be better if some members of the Committee could be here. Professor Brown: Okay, let’s do that. We’ll bring it back in December. I’m sorry that we ran out of time, but we will bring it back.

B. Catalog: Clifton B. Metcalf, Chair.

Professor Brown: Are there comments about the Catalog report? Thank you, Clifton. Thank you for your good work on that.

C. Instructional Personnel: Richardson J. Richardson, Chair.

Professor Brown: Dick Richardson said he didn’t want to say a thing about that. Unless somebody has a comment.

D. Athletics: Frederick O. Mueller, Chair.

Professor Brown: Professor Link: I might as well make it three for three. Just a couple of questions, Fred. I appreciate the written report. I have some concerns the Athletics Committee is not fully responsive to the Faculty Council legislation. Let me ask just a few specific questions directed to your page 16. [Professor Mueller: I have no resolutions.] Your report on that effort related to the resolutions. Page 16, item 1, first long paragraph, the last sentence: “These numbers are very small,” relating to the number of tickets which the Athletic Department has in perpetuity. What are those numbers? Do you recall? Professor Mueller: I don’t have an exact number. All I was told is those numbers were small. Professor Link: And were those small numbers an annual figure, as the ones that come up if somebody doesn’t renew, and they’re a resell? Or is that total in the aggregate that is subject to? Professor Mueller: I don’t know have an answer for you, Ron. I could find out for you. But I don’t have an exact number. Professor Link: I would appreciate it, because my guess is annually there aren’t very many people who don’t renew, but in total practically all those seats are committed to the Ram’s Club. And my thought is that this is sort of a generational thing. When the first generation that built the Smith Center dies, when they make their heirs beneficiaries, many of them may not want renewal.

And then down a couple of paragraphs, about 18 folks moved up, 18 moved down. Was there any attempt to ascertain how many young faculty were bumped, even only a few of those? I had specifically three of our young faculty who were only bumped a couple of rows, but they were quite unhappy with that. Professor Mueller: We didn’t separate the faculty and staff. We just know that 18 faculty or staff moved from the upper to the lower or the lower to the upper levels. Professor Link: Item 3. The Committee agrees that the proposed plan is not administratively feasible. Why not? Professor Mueller: That was one of the items you mentioned that we thought would be just an administrative nightmare. You go into those types of things and people will get half tickets for part of the games, and then get the other half, and they wouldn’t be happy with the half they got this year. So after a long discussion we decided it would be a real problem, and would not alleviate the problem. Professor Link: What do you see, and then would not alleviate the problem — What do you see as the problem? Professor Mueller: The Committee felt that this wouldn’t alleviate the problem that people would still complain about the tickets they were getting and where they were sitting. I mean it’s a continuous thing. Just changing that would not help it. Professor Link: Item 4. If the IRS limits the faculty discount 20%, that would not prevent the Athletic Department from reducing the price of upper level seats and then putting a 20% discount on that, would it? Right now, they’re charging the same rate for the worst seats and the best seats. Professor Mueller: We didn’t discuss with the Athletic Department the price range for particular tickets. The question you asked was about the 20% discount. So, the faculty and staff do receive a 20% discount. Professor Link: And, finally, item 5, information from the ticket office reveals no deterioration in football seats. Was there any attempt to ascertain faculty facts about this? I’ve got some anecdotal evidence of colleagues started on the 30 ended up in the end zone. When they did the fund drive and …. Professor Mueller: The Committee was twice advised that the number of faculty requesting football has decreased greatly over the years. Only 1300 faculty and staff requested football tickets this year. There are about 3500 tickets that are available in Kenan Stadium that are not being used. Professor Link: To what did the Committee ascribe that, because it would seem to me that if the team is improving over the decade of the 80s, the demand would increase. Professor Mueller: I have no idea why faculty are not going to football games. Professor Link: It could be that their seats got worse. Professor Brown: Thank you, Fred.

Now we will go into closed session. All the Faculty Council members, please stay. No, I’m sorry. All faculty may stay. Professor Pfaff: Not may, must. Professor Brown: Must.

VII. Old or New Business.

A. Graduate School Reorganization and Graduate Education at UNC: Craig J. Calhoun, Interim Dean, The Graduate School.

[Copies of his report to the Faculty Council were available at the meeting.]

Closed Session

VIII. Presentation of Candidates for Distinguished Alumnus(a) Awards for 1996 University Day: Beverly W. Long, Chair, Committee on Honorary Degrees and Special Awards.

Professor Long: Let me make an appeal first. When you’re not busy in committee meetings, I hope you’ll talk to your colleagues about nominees for honorary degrees. Those nominations will be due in January. And there are wonderful people out there on whom we could confer those degrees if you would just nominate them, do please do.

I present five candidate for Distinguished Alumnus and Alumna Awards for 1996 and ask your approval.

[Professor Long read the names and a brief biographical sketch for each. The slate of five was unanimously approved. The names will now be approved by the Board of Trustees.]

Professor Brown: And I understand the folders are available in our offices. Professor Lensing: They’re here now. Professor Long: And they’ve been up there all week. Professor Brown: Thank you all for your patience and civility.

The meeting adjourned at 5:15 p.m.

George S. Lensing

Secretary of the Faculty

Pdf of meeting materials