Transcription of the Regular Faculty Council Meeting
January 26, 2015
MAI 212
[0:56:16]
Bill Beckner (chair and professor, mathematics)
The meeting of the Faculty Council now will proceed. First item of business is Report of the Secretary.
Dean Neikirk (secretary and professor, electrical and computer engineering)
The Secretary’s Report has been posted D 12033 through 38. And, in summary, I would, again as it has become my tradition, would like
to mention the memorial resolution committees that have been appointed by the president since the last meeting. There are six, Robert
Palter, professor emeritus, history and philosophy; V. R. Cardozier, professor emeritus, Department of Education Administration; Alberta
Castaneda, associate professor, curriculum and instruction; Fred Ling, professor emeritus, mechanical engineering; Joseph Lagowski,
professor emeritus, chemistry and biochemistry; and Eugene A. Ripperger, professor emeritus, aerospace engineering. Those are the
new memorial resolution committees appointed by the president since our last meeting. There are still seventeen memorial resolution
reports pending. We have five that are pending only until I finish them. So, we should five posted and sent to the president for his
signature shortly.
There was one change in Faculty Council membership since our last meeting. On January 13, Vice Provost and Director Harrison Keller
has replaced Dr. Jeffrey Treichel as an ex officio member of Council.
Since the last meeting, we have items completed, eight, all of which are catalog related. We have nothing with the Board of Regents
right now. We have one item that is still with the president, that was only past in the last Faculty Council meeting and that’s the list of
core courses. The other item, which President Powers mentioned in the General Faculty meeting that has now been completed is the
proposal from the Academic Calendar Committee to extend the Thanksgiving break. So that is now finished. We have one item that has
been referred by the president to the provost for review and that is related to the Faculty Education Benefit proposal that came through
Council, I believe, two meetings back. We do officially have two items under review by the General Faculty, but we just finished one of
them, well actually, both of those. One was the change in the protest, and the other was the General Faculty resolution on President
Powers. And I believe that that concludes my report. Bill?
Oh, I guess I do the last piece, I forgot. The minutes of the regular Faculty Council meeting from December 8, 2014, have been posted
at D 12039 through 069. Are there any corrections? And, hearing no corrections, the minutes stand approved as distributed. Thank you.
Beckner
Now is the time in the meeting for communication with the president. President Powers do you have comments that you want to make? I
submitted three questions to the president, which I think will not require detailed comments. First question, the Association of American
Universities intends to conduct a “sexual assault climate “ survey in late spring. What do you expect that we might learn at UT from this
survey?
William Powers (president)
This is a very serious and important issue on campuses on sexual assault and safety of our students, and I think we’ll learn a lot as to
what is going on, what the attitudes of students are about their safety. And, I think it’s something that the information that we’ll glean will
be able to craft policies and programs that will be more effective in addressing this important issue.
Beckner
My second question concerns athletics. News media have recently emphasized the increasing role of “big money” in college athletics:
the ESPN $7.3 billion contract for 12 years for rights to the College Football Playoff; the increasing list of college football coaches with
annual salaries above $4.5 million; and the competitive switch for select coaches from professional teams to college teams —the
University of Michigan is an example. Has money fundamentally changed the nature of college athletics?
Powers
I think the nature of college athletics ought to be on the model that these are student athletes. It adds to the campus, it adds to our
alumni connections, and it needs to be done with integrity and following the rules and with the best interests of the student athletes in
mind. I think money—increased revenues per se don’t alter that. And even within this new framework, we need to work hard. And, I think
here at the University and at many other universities, and in the conferences, we’re working hard to make sure that that happens. I think
one other aspect that will change is as full cost of attendance and there’s revenue for that. That revenue is not evenly distributed across
all divisions of college athletics, and I think this will put some pressure--even in Division I--of universities that are in that position to meet
those obligations and those that are not. So, I think it changes the landscape, and we need to work very hard to make sure that changes
that are going whether it’s in the NCÅÅ or a conferences or the so-called more visible conferences with telling them, you need to do that
in a way that bolsters integrity as student athlete welfare, but it’s a challenge.
Beckner
My third question concerns health benefits. Recently, this fall Harvard University put in place increases in the cost of employee health
benefits which were attributed to requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Since our healthcare is managed by t UT System, do you see
any possibility that UT System may have similar issues that will impact our health care costs?
Powers
Well, healthcare costs have had a lot of drivers over the last ten years. They had been going up—healthcare costs have been going up,
insurances have been going up. That’s something we talk about in budget council. We want to keep that cost to faculty and the quality of
the insurance and the cost as low as possible, and the quality of the insurance as high as possible. So, healthcare costs in and of itself
put pressure on that. The Affordable Care Act itself has changed a lot of the landscape. And we’re sorting through those. One issue that
we do have is, we currently provide healthcare insurance to part-time… full time employees. There’s a certain definition of that—if
somebody’s, certain definitions of that that we have, the Affordable Healthcare Act requires employers to give insurance to people that
do not fit our definitions, and it will add to the rolls. And that will have a cost impact and a reporting impact. So, the reporting and the
Affordable Healthcare Act does change the landscape. But, healthcare costs themselves are probably a bigger driver. [Becknerinaudible] Okay, thank you Bill.
Beckner
Next item is Report of the Chair and followed by the Report of the Chair Elect. Both Andrea and I last week attended the UT System
Faculty Advisory Council. And I have some brief—Andrea will have more focused remarks. I have some brief remarks about that
session. First of all, we pick up a lot of background information but you can read it in the Statesman the next morning. As you know from
the Statesman article regarding the presidential selection, three finalists reportedly have been selected. They were picked on Tuesday,
I’m not sure which day. There are going to be off-campus interviews by faculty, students, and possibly staff with these finalists. I’m not
sure it’s really set in stone, but a date that was given to us by the vice chancellor was March 4 to announce a single finalist. That will be
the process. Also, remarks were made about the strength and vigor with which our three faculty representatives served on the advisory
committee. I think in broad terms they did, well possibly they did what they were supposed to do, but they were not shy in expressing
their thoughts. We did not meet Chancellor McRaven. Chancellor McRaven, I understand, will come to campus on March 23 and will
meet various groups of faculty, staff, students, and administrators. I believe that the Faculty Council Executive Committee is one of the
groups that he will meet with. There was sort of, from the vice chancellor for health affairs, there was a suggestion that among his
priorities would be development of the two medical schools, one, the Dell Medical School here. An effort to—following the governor’s
suggestion—an effort to possibly provide more resources or more support for UT Austin and he was interested in the issue of how the
University System, UT System could be engaged in providing a wider healthcare service or help to non-urban areas of Texas. Finally,
there was the third item I wanted to briefly say something about. The committee on rules and governance under Hillary’s leadership is
looking at faculty voting rights, and the Council—let me see if I can try to read this clearly—The advisory council passed a resolution
recommending that each UT System campus establish guidelines and policies that clearly define the categories of non-tenure track
faculty who have instructional responsibilities comparable to those of tenure track faculty and provide for including them in the faculty
governance system. The ability to vote, serve on representative bodies and be appointed to appropriate committees. Policies should be
adopted to ensure fair representation to maintain the integrity of the academic community. And as we all know, we are moving from
community, which nearly all the instructional faculty were tenure or tenure track to incorporating lecturers, clinical faculty, research
faculty in instructional responsibility.
And now I have a question for the provost, which came to us, I think, as a result of new policy changes in CNS. But, the question briefly
is, How does the provost office see the summer instructional program as related to graduation rates?
Gregory Fenves (executive vice president and provost)
Well, thank you Bill. First of all, let me make a comment about graduation rates. This campus under President Powers’ leadership has
been making tremendous progress in improving graduation rates, retention and graduation rates—retention and graduation rates. For
the class that graduated in 2014, we had the highest percentage graduating in four-years. It was 55% of the students who matriculated
in 2010 graduate in 2014. That’s the highest four-year graduation rate in the University’s history. We have historical highs in freshman
retention. So, students who spend their first year here come back for the second year. And we’ve had the highest sophomore retention
rate—sophomores who come back for their third year. So, the campus and especially the schools and colleges and the departments
have been working very hard, very diligently to improve graduation rates. On other statistic is, I think for the first time in history of the
University, the average semester credit hours taken by a student is over fourteen hours. And so, that’s a pretty significant change in a
fairly short period of time.
So, how are we doing this? Well, it’s a very complex, a very complex problem, and we need a very integrated approach to improving our
graduation rates, ultimately to the goal that we have talked about of 70% four-year graduation rate. And, this is taking place, this goal,
achieving this goal is taking place in the context of very difficult financial times. We’ve been under pretty flat budgets since 2008, in fact,
I think I’ll be speaking in a few moments about some aspect of that. And so, maintaining the quality of the faculty, the strength of our
research programs, the innovations in undergraduate education, the changes in undergraduate education in getting our students to go
through a high quality program and do it in a short period of time has been quite a challenge with the tight funding over the past five or
six years.
The instructional budget is the name of the budget that’s used to fund large parts of the instructional program, teaching assistants,
lectures, and so on. The instructional budget has been very tight. Never the less, over the annual budget meetings that we have with
deans, we work on what’s the enrollment management, semester credit hour generation, the instructional needs, and ways to fund it
under a very tight budget. And, we look at the entire academic year, the two long semesters and the summer. So, we don’t pick one
piece and say this part you need to maximize, this part you need to do something different. We look at the entire year. And, certainly
there is capacity over summer. Classrooms are available. Sometimes students are interested in staying in Austin. Many times they are
not. We do have some faculty who are interested in teaching over the summer—tenure, tenure track faculty, but, many of those faculty
are working on research projects or are off-site on digs or pursuing other scholarship over the summer months, which is an important
part of their research mission. And, so a large part of the summer teaching has been done by non-tenure track faculty. Several years
ago, the University introduced a Summer Enhancement Program. The goal of the Summer Enhancement Program was to increase the
number of semester credit hours taken over the summer. So, a metric of whether that was successful, did semester credit hours go up?
And, there was a system for allocating additional money if a school went over a certain number of credit hours. Well, during the time of
the Summer Enhancement Program , the number of semester credit hours went down. So, I would judge that not an effective
mechanism for incentivizing summer instruction. Clearly it was not working. So, we have discontinued the summer, what was called the
Summer Enhancement Program. Whether that has impacted individual schools or colleges’ decisions on what courses to offer—it
probably has. But, we did not see an increase in the number of semester credit hours over the summer as that program was intended to
do. But, we are looking at the allocation mechanism for the instructional budget very carefully. Again, integrated over the entire year, the
long semesters and the summer. And, we’re in the early planning stages. I started to talk with deans and associate deans in the schools
and colleges of a new and fairly comprehensive instructional resource allocation process that will try to incentivize—the goal is to
incentivize semester credit hour generation. And, we’re agnostic about what semester it take place, whether it’s a long semester or a
summer semester. We find these specific things, let try to do this and incentivize a certain way, or let’s try to do this, and let’s incentivize
this. We find that usually we don’t get that right. And so, we’re looking at an overall program with the goal of increasing semester credit
hour generation. And, especially, that’s not really the ultimate goal—the ultimate goal is having students retained and graduate on time.
And, to that extent, we are making very good progress. [Beckner: inaudible]
Arturo de Lozanne (molecular biosciences)
I have a follow-on question [Fenves: Sure.] Arturo de Lozanne, biosciences. So, the colleagues in my department were very concerned
about the idea behind this program. The way that it was explained to our department was that the incentive program would pay for the
faculty salary based on the number of students that would register for a summer course. When the incentive program was stopped, the
main effect was that we could not offer as many courses in this coming summer. So, I have just obtained a list and I think we’re going to
have in the order of sixteen fewer courses and sections this summer. Courses were filled to capacity—courses that are clearly needed
by many of our students. So, we were trying to figure out, in our asyndeta, the rationale and trying to understand the numbers better.
When you say that the program didn’t work, is that across the entire University? Or, clearly it seemed to work within biology. So, if you
could explain a little bit more.
Fenves
Sure. So, when we looked at summer semester credit hour generation across the University, it declined in total across the University
during the years the Summer Enhancement Program was in effect. There are going to be differences in colleges—some went up, some
went down. And, the reason, there are a number of reasons, but one of them is just the way that program was structured. It may have
over incentivized certain courses, under-incentivized other courses. And, the… what we would like to do in thinking through a new
instructional budget allocation process is a much more uniform way of doing it so that schools and colleges and the departments in
those schools and colleges can make consistent decisions about what is the best way to meet the student demand.
de Lozanne
Is there a timeframe in which this new program might be at work?
Fenves
We’re going to try to do it for the next fiscal year. So, beginning September 1, 2015. We’re now in discussions with deans and associate
deans, as I mentioned. We are going through the annual budget process with the schools and colleges, and this will be an important
topic of discussion to get feedback, to look at some of the levers that need to be set on that, with the goal of starting to roll it out in the
next fiscal year.
Okay? Thank you Bill.
Beckner
Now is the time for Report of the Chair Elect. Andrea?
Andrea Gore (professor, pharmacy)
Thank you. I’m going to keep my comments very short since we have a very long agenda. So, as Bill mentioned, we went to the UT
System Faculty Advisory Council meeting last week. This may not be news to you, it was news for one day until it came out in the
newspaper, but I just wanted to say a couple of words about the new regents. There were two appointees announced by the new
governor. They need to be confirmed, but at this point, we have Sara Martinez Tucker, and I guess what I wanted to point out is that with
her, David Beck, and the reappointee that ‘s on the next slide, all have degrees and have very strong ties to UT Austin. So, the message
that we got at the UT System Faculty meeting was that these are potentially going to be good appointments for the faculty here. So, I
wanted to share that with you. And you can read their credentials. The reappointment is Steve Hicks who has been a great friend to UT
Austin. So, that’s also good news.
I just wanted to point out a couple of the issues that the faculty are grappling with at the System meetings. And, we got several
messages from many, which were not necessarily as good news as reappointments or as these potential appointments to the regents.
One is tuition re-regulation. That came up several times and will be on the agenda as Bill and I continue to work this committee.
Community colleges offering baccalaureate degrees, even though that’s not necessarily right in our bailiwick, it is something that we
probably have some thoughts about and may potentially affect us as well. And, finally, the phrase “competency-based education” came
up a few times and gave some of us a few shutters. So, these are the topics that are being mentioned by some of the administrators at
UT System. And, we will continue to keep you posted, and you will probably also read about them in the newspaper over the course of
the next year.
Finally, just a quick announcement to remind you that the joint UT Austin-Texas A&M meeting is on March 2. We now know that Donna
Howard has accepted the invitation to be one of our guests. So, that’s great news. And, we’re still waiting to get confirmations from a
couple of the other legislators that we’ve invited. So, I’ll continue to keep you posted. Thank you.
Beckner
Thanks Andrea. So, our next item for which we have items, there’s new business, and I have asked Provost Fenves to talk about the
Faculty Investment Initiative. [1:22:04.08]
Fenves
Alright, thank you Bill. Well, as I just mentioned a few minutes ago and should not be any news to anybody in this room, we have been
under a pretty tight budget since about 2008, national recession and all factors that affect that. We have a… we do have a diversified
source of… sources of revenue, general revenue appropriation. We have the Available University Fund (AUF), a great resource for this
University, and of course, tuition—and, more than 50% of the cost of education is paid for by students through their tuition. So, that’s
been a big change in American higher education over the past twenty years or so. For the first time since about 2008, we have some
new revenue coming in and that is from the AUF that is allocated by the Board of Regents. The AUF are based on proceeds of the
Permanent University Fund (PUF), which has been going up. And, the regents have also been increasing the payout from it. So, we
hade about $30 million of new money coming to the University. Just to put this into perspective, if we think about our academic core
budget, we need about $40 million a year just to keep up with cost escalation and inflation, which is primarily the cost of keeping our
excellent faculty and staff. So, $40 million a year for the past five years, we have not received. So, but, when you get $30 million, you
actually think, well, now we can start think about how best to use that. And so, that was the decision process over late summer and early
fall. And as President Powers mentioned in his state of the University address at the end of September, he sort of introduced this
concept of the faculty investment initiative. And so, we made the decision that we need to address what I feel is the biggest threat to the
quality of the University, and that is our faculty competitiveness. We track faculty salaries, that’s not the only measure of faculty
competitiveness. There are many other factors, quality of life, research support, and so on. But, salaries are important. And, we’ve seen
increasingly over the past couple of years, more and more retention issues in almost every department across the University. And so,
we decided that we needed to focus on what was the highest priority, and that was maintaining the competitiveness of our faculty. So,
through a series of meetings and decisions, the faculty investment initiative has four components. I’ll briefly describe those.
One is to provide central funding for merit increase pool for faculty and staff. This is the first central funding for a merit increase since
2008. Up until then, we either not had merit increases or the merit increases have been funded through cuts in the schools and colleges.
So, we will be matching deans and other unit directors for a merit pool total of about 2%, and we’ll use central funding to provide about
half of that. Again, the first new central funding, which will help relieve pressure, at least for the next year.
The second component is dealing with faculty salaries. As I mentioned, we track those by department quite carefully, up through about
2008 and 2009, tracked against our, what we call our peers, major public research universities. We were doing pretty well. But, we are
falling, we’ve actually fallen quite dramatically in some areas, most areas, but some areas dramatically, not because we haven’t had
increases. We’ve had some modest increases against funded, but because the other public research universities, public flagships have
been focusing on faculty competitiveness. So, we have been losing ground. So, we’re going to be—in the second component—I’m
probably pushing some buttons here I’m not supposed to—excuse me, even though I am a Mac person—so, the second component of
the Faculty Investment Initiative is to work with deans. And, we can’t address all of the salary issues in one year, in one step, but to work
deans, who will then work with their department chairs on which are the areas in faculty that we’re most concerned about
competitiveness. We want to try to get out ahead of retention issues, when a faculty member seeks another position or has an offer from
another university, in some cases, it’s already too late. And, we don’t want other universities setting our salaries through that type of
process. I think it’s very bad for morale, and it’s very bad to think that you have to go out to get an offer to have a competitive salary. So,
we’re going to be working with deans and at least getting a start on it. We don’t have enough funding to solve it all at once, but at least
get a start on it.
The third and fourth components are, I’ll just say this up front, are going to be much more focused. Those first two components affect
every department across the University, the third and fourth components--we’re going to have to be more focused. Again, we can’t deal
with improving excellence, bringing every department into preeminence at once. We’ve got to start with a small number, work on them,
and as funding develops in the future, and I’m optimistic that it will, we continue with that process. So, we’ve identified departments in
five colleges for a very targeted faculty recruitment process, where we’re going to be looking at what I call mid-career faculty. Hiring
them... very outstanding individuals. Go out and look around the country, around the world for who are the people to bring to UT
Austin… In some cases these will be cluster hires. So you bring groups in in a program that’s absolutely essential to move a department
ahead, to establish a new program, to build…that will build in the future, to continue developing preeminence and rankings and all the
good things that come from that—student interest, faculty interest, research, additional scholarship. And, so we’re going to be focusing,
and it will be focused, because that’s the only way we can make a difference. But, it will be about fifteen or sixteen departments in five
colleges. We’re going to be working very closely with the deans to make sure that these recruitments are wisely invested. Do everything
we can to help them help the deans and the department chairs be as effective as possible in recruitments that should very much
advance the departments. And, the fourth component is very coupled to that. When we’re recruiting faculty at that level, graduate
students are really important. And, the second biggest threat to the University, after faculty competitiveness, is our low funding for
doctoral students. Judy Langlois, the dean of the Graduate School now, is doing, is working with the deans on graduate program
reviews in every department. This has been a mandate by the Coordinating Board. It’s a good mandate in my view. We have been
bringing in great external reviewers. Every single external graduate program review that the Graduate School has done has talked about
our low stipends. I mean really low, lowest quartile. Comments like, I don’t know how you’re getting the students you’re getting with your
low stipends. It is a real problem. So, the fourth factor of the Faculty Investment Initiative is again, we can’t solve this University-wide. It
is a huge problem that has developed over a long time. But to focus some of this funding in competitive graduate fellowships that can be
an assist in recruiting faculty, bringing in great faculty, bringing in great graduate students, they go together. Now, this faculty
recruitment in the departments that have been identified and selected for, this investment initiative, this is not to eliminate junior
recruitments. We need a good mix of junior level recruitments and very targeted senior recruitments as we build departments. But it is,
to put some funding into the senior mid-career recruitments, because that is hard to get. As a former dean, that is really hard to do. So,
we wanted to incentivize that type of recruitment and advance departments where we can. Our hope, the president’s hope, and my hope
is that as new funding comes into the University, again there’s…it’s diversified. We’ve got, I think, great interest, especially by the new
governor, in elevating the rankings of research universities in the state of Texas--that we can continue this process and spread it broadly
across campus as funding becomes available.
So, I’d be glad to take any questions about Faculty Investment Initiative. And I hope I didn’t mess any thing up. [Beckner: Debbie’s going
to come up and fix it.]
Okay. Thanks for the opportunity. [1:32:21.2]
Beckner
Alright. We’re going to have an update from Janet Dukerich from the provost’s office, senior vice provost for faculty affairs, on the
Faculty Gender Equity Council.
Janet Dukerich (senior vice provost for faculty affairs)
Okay, Hi. My name is Janet Dukerich. And, I have been working with the Gender Equity, Faculty Gender Equity Council and which is a
council that we kind of reformulated over the summer to deal with gender issues, making recommendations, etc. One of the things that
we did was we, because it’s a very large council, there is a representative from each of the colleges as well as a number of ex officio
members. So, we split up into three standing committees. One working on employment issues—anything to do with salary, endowments,
etc. One on… and this… Tasha Beretvas and Laura Starks co-chair this committee. There’s one on family and health that deals with,
you know, the University policies that we have and how’re they’re communicated. Lynn Westbrook is chairing that committee. And then
there’s a committee on climate. How does it feel, how supportive are the policies that we have on campus? And, Hillary Hart is chairing
that committee.
We met… So, we kind of met in the beginning in September. And, people signed up for, you know, one of these standing committees,
and then they charged off and did stuff. And then, I funneled data as I could, as I had it to the chairs, and the committees just did all their
wonderful things. And, then we met December 10. The provost attended that meeting. And, each of the committees reported what they
had done over the semester. So, the employment issues committee, they are currently analyzing data with ten years worth of data on
salary, which is broken out by gender across the ranks. They also had endowment data from last year for tenure track male and female
faculty across ranks by college and department. And, so they’re looking at patterns and seeing what we’ve got. We also have data on
associate professor in terms of years to tenure, length of time in rank by gender. So, that is the stuff that they’re working on.
Family and Health Issues Committee are working on identifying the current existing policies that have regarding family and health issues
and procedures; conducing some analysis in terms of what do we see in comparable policies for our peer institutions and then looking at
trying to conduct some studies in terms of, you know, how are faculty, what are faculty attitudes towards the policies that we have.
And finally, the Climate Committee would like to focus on replicating parts of the 2008 Gender Equity Survey, in particular, focusing on
issues surrounding faculty mentoring, navigating the service demands that we face, and the use of family friendly policies. And they
would also like to develop a compilation of best practices around the campus. One of the things that becomes evident as you work with
these committees and you hear that we actually have a lot of good policies and procedures, not that they couldn’t get better, but we
actually have a lot, but it’s not necessarily being disseminated in effective ways throughout the campus. And so, a good question, How
can we better disseminate good practices and procedures that we currently have? And, they also seek to solicit input in terms of how to
better communicate and respond to faculty issues to seats in the Campus Conversations as a forum.
So, in terms of next steps, I’m meeting this week with the chairs of the three standing committees to kind of say okay, now that we’re
launching into the spring semester, what are the steps that we need to take in order to make sure that I’m doing what I can in order to
facilitate their work. And, we’re also, I am going to hire a GRA to help with the analyses, because we have a lot of data. So, that’s where
we’re at. Any questions? I tried to keep it brief. Thank you.
Beckner
I want to applaud Janet’s efforts in this direction and leadership in putting the council… assembling the council and putting it to work.
As some of you recall, we had an interesting exchange with Steve Patterson when he came to talk to us about the athletic program.
And, he offered and we immediately took up the opportunity to appoint an ad hoc committee to meet with him and discuss some of the
issues that came up in that conversation. Martha Hilley, Angeline Close, Michael Clement, Louis Harrison served on that committee,
along with Jay Hartzell, who has a brief report for us.
Jay Hartzell (professor, finance)
Thank you Bill. I’m Jay Hartzell. As Bill mentioned. Steve, at that meeting, offered to let us form a committee to weigh in on issues, the
main issue that was at the forefront was the discussion of something near and dear to many of our hearts, which is faculty tickets to
sporting events. We also, though, thought that it was an opportunity for us to just do a little bit of work and just further the
communications between the faculty and athletics. Work that many of my colleagues on the committee, Louis, Michael, and Martha as
part of athletics council, they work on quite tirelessly. So, we had a couple of meetings both with Steve and Chris Plonsky and their
senior staff. We also did some market research to find out what kinds of deals other schools were doing, peer schools, at least peers in
athletics sense to find out what their deals look like. And we came away with a sense of what athletics is planning to do, and that’s what
I want to talk to you a little bit about today. I talked about this with the Faculty Council Executive Committee, and I think we’re broadly
supportive of it. I think there are a couple of outstanding issues that I’ll come back to. But I want to give you a sense of what things look
today. What Steve talked about at that time were some broad sets of concerns, which I think would be broadly as being thought of as in
three buckets. One was over the revenues, which we’ve already talked a little about today, the head winds facing athletics, both across
the country and ours in this case. There are tax implications, so, those of you who may recall, he mentioned that according to the
reading of the IRS regulations, if faculty receive tickets at any deeper discount than 20% off face value or then that is a taxable item that
would be… that faculty would have to pay those taxes, and if not, there’s a liability for the institution. The issue that came up was that of
resold tickets. I couldn’t quite type “scalping” on the slide, it felt funny. But, what came up quite a bit was this idea of that it was known
through, they could follow transactions on Stubhub for example and find that faculty were taking their discounted tickets and turning
around and selling them at a profit via Stubhub. And that causes concerns on various levels as well as just competing with what they’re
trying do in athletics. So, we had a discussion, and I think, Michael is here, I think others had to leave, and Angeline’s here, and I think
Martha’s here, Martha’s here… Hi Martha. So, any of us can kinda of jump in and wing it as well. I think we came away with the idea that
we have, we were completely supportive of the idea that they can enforce their own rules. And those rules amount to things like, that
you need to be a current employee of UT. It turns out that many of us have colleagues that have gone to other institutions and they’re
still getting their season tickets. So, they’re plan to clean that up. That’s, I think, on them. The resale issue, we as a committee, and I
think it’s supported by the Faculty Council Executive Committee, have no problem seeing them enforcing their scalping rules. So, we
think of this as being a benefit of being a faculty. We’re happy to get our tickets at a discount, but we don’t see it the same need to turn
around sell them on Stubhub. We anticipate that they will start enforce that as well. Then the other thing was the number of tickets
where a faculty member, they found when they went back to their data, they had some faculty who had as many as fourteen or sixteen
tickets, when I think the policy or rule or benefit, if you will, is two tickets each. So, they plan to enforce that as well.
So, that group, I would think of as things they’re going to do to get their own process back in line with their own rules, and we were
supportive that.
Then the rest of it comes down to two broad buckets of faculty and staff. As I have learned now, there are faculty and staff, which are
essentially grandfathered, those are us that have had season tickets for roughly four or more years. We buy our tickets through the
Longhorn all Sports Pass (LASP). In rough dollar terms, two season football tickets plus this all sports pass is about $350ish for the
year. People who are not grandfathered in, who came in in the last three years to buy tickets or are new faculty or staff now today, the
way they will get their tickets, and have been getting their tickets is what athletics calls the 20/20 or 80/80—20/20 I think—20/20 percent
discount. They get 20 percent discount off the face value of the ticket and a 20 percent discount off the commensurate donation to the
Longhorn Foundation that’s somebody who came in and wanted those tickets would have to pay to get the right to that seat. [1:43:19.4]
So, there are faculty then currently under those two systems, and the way that things will go forward in the plan, depends upon which
plan you’re in. So, the proposed plan is for those faculty and staff that are currently under the Longhorn All Sports Plan, the LASP, the
discount will go from an 80% discount to a 20% discount, but with no required Foundation contribution. So, the upshot is for two tickets
in the prime area of the football stadium, that bill goes from probably about $350 for a pair to something like a $1000 for a pair for the
season. But the market value, if you include the Foundation contribution is on the order of $5 to $6 thousand. So, it’s up, it meets the tax
issue, so it checks the box for a taxable event, but it is not all the way to what they were thinking in terms of the Foundation contribution
that would be commensurate with those tickets. For those faculty who are in the 20/20 rule, they would still have the 20/20 rule, there
would be no changes there. They would be able to buy the tickets at 80% of face plus 80% of the Foundation contribution. It’s worth
noting that that Foundation piece depends a lot on where you sit. So, for faculty who are okay, let’s say in the upper deck of the
basketball stadium or the end zone equivalent of the football stadium, there’s no Foundation contribution required. So, there are lower
priced options for faculty who still want to reserve seats. The thing that would be new that they are proposing is—they don’t have a
brand name for it—so, I’ve been calling it on-demand ticket. For $200 each, and you have the right to buy two, you would have a ticket
for the entire year that would give you the right to get the best remaining seat a day or two before the game, whatever event it is. So, if…
they mentioned even for the Kansas basketball game this last weekend, there were tickets on Friday. So, you could show your ticket,
your on-demand ticket and get the best remaining seats in the house for no additional charge as part of that $200 per seat. That part, we
were optimistic about, at least as an option for faculty and staff to get to attend events, especially faculty and staff that are lower paid
and not in that same capacity to pay the season ticket prices. So, for as little as $400 the year, you could now get two seats to
essentially every event, probably absent the Notre Dame football game when they come and perhaps the Kansas basketball game. So,
that’s the new piece.
And the last piece that is outstanding that we’re still working through, but I learned this morning the phrase that I was allowed to use is
very optimistic, so, they are very optimistic that they will continue to extend benefits to emeritus faculty. They didn’t really realize that
that category existed in the way that we think of it. And so, but they’ve done some homework on that. There’s a little piece to iron out
with HR, but they think that that benefit will be protected, which thought was important. So, that’s about where we left it, I think Bill. And,
I’ll take any questions people have. But, thanks to Michael, Martha, Angeline, and to Louis, who couldn’t be stay. But, I really appreciate
all your help. Questions? [ Angeline Close: inaudible… ] As long as it’s not a hard question I can’t answer.
Angeline Close Scheinbaum (associate professor, advertising)
No, no, no, no. Hi, I’m Angeline from the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations, and I have a question {inaudible}.
One of the things I wanted to point out was, I guess, what I call is consumer behavior—devious consumer behavior of scalping. And, we
kind of get into the issue of ethics versus the law on this, and I had no idea until kind of reading and really learning a lot through the
holidays, this is a very big deal; this is a very broad spread deal that I had no idea so many people were doing and in so many volumes.
So, not only does this have financial implications, but we have to think about the social implications. So, just to give you a quick
example. If you were at the TCU game, sorry how it ended, but anyway, they did an audit, it was the ticket agency, right? They did an
informal audit where they walked around and they went to where we sit, us as faculty, and you all, they were purple. It was just a sea of
purple in our seats. I mean, thank you Hillary for shaking your head! Because that fires me up, I bleed orange, right!? So, I mean, that’s
just from a public relations issue, professionally speaking—sorry my back is to you—this is a very big deal just for our own morale, right?
If you want to bring your friends and your family—I’m from Georgia and I like to bring family—I want them to see burnt orange, I do not
want them to go to the faculty area and be standing next to people in purple! So, just keep that in mind. We’re going to get stricter on
this idea of scalping and really go after people who do it. So, it’s not just a perk to your salary. So those people who are pure capitalist
are thinking—I’m going to ahead and buy all of this, and I’m going to add it up, and I’m going to divide this out…yes, you can make a ton
of money doing that. But, think about how you are robbing us as the University and the morale. I’m sorry, I’m all fired up on this. But. I
think it’s very important.
Hartzell
Thank you. And one caveat, the audit was done in the fourth quarter. So, there’s a pack dependence to the remaining color in the
stadium. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. So, our plan is to go back and express broad comfort support, if you will, for their proposed
plan. And we’ll continue to work on the emeritus issue. And, I think that the thought is, next year, we’ll take a step back and see,
especially how this on-demand ticket worked and see if further adjustments are needed. Thank you Bill. [1:48:56.2]
Beckner
Thanks very much Jay, Angeline, all on this committee. I think they did well for us, and they may come back for further issues.
At this time, I’m sorry it’s so late, but we have a presentation by Noel Busch-Armendariz. She is professor and associate dean of
research in the School of Social Work and director of the Institute for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. And, almost every other
day in the New York Times you see an article about sexual assault on campus. There is an interesting film coming out about this in the
near future.
Noel Busch-Armendariz (professor and associate dean of research, social work, and director, Institute for Domestic Violence
and Sexual Assault)
Thank you. And, I think my colleagues are going to join me. We’re going to do some quick introductions. It’s going to be a family affair.
So, Dr. Jennifer Hammat is going to do the introductions. If you didn’t get a handout, I’ve got a handout, I’ve got a handout and I’m going
to go over it word-for-word, so wake up. I’m going to give a handout, but I’m not going to…[inaudible]
Jennifer Hammat (institutional Title IX coordinator and assistant vice president for student affairs, University Compliance
Services)
Good afternoon, thank you very much. Good news is that we’re not all speaking today. So, I just want to let you know that we do have
resources here, if you have additional questions. I’m going to run down who all we have here. You saw Dr. Noel Busch-Armendariz and
her research assistant, Kate [inaudible] has also been working with us. Dean Soncia Reagins-Lilly [inaudible], Dr. Latoya Hill for student
emergency services and student judicial services, Captain Verett for UTPD, Brett Lohoefener from OIE. Jessica Sentz could not be
here today. She represents legal affairs and has been working with that again polling them with the chief compliance office.
Busch-Armendariz
Okay, so, we’re glad to be here and to have been asked to do a short presentation. I did give you a handout because of the lateness of
the day. And, because we teach 14-week classes on these topics, so we’re not going to talk about everything there is to know. But, we
appreciate that this was brought to Faculty Council. I’m going to tell you about who IDVSA is in case you don’t know. We’re the the
Institute for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault is one of nine research institutes at the School of Social Work, housed there. And,
we are a collaboration between the Schools of Social Work, Nursing and Law, and the Bureau for Business Research. So, we’re a
research arm that looks at interpersonal violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, specifically.
So, why now? Why are we talking about campus sexual assault now? There are a lot of reasons, a lot of energy around this topic. If
you’re reading the Chronicle of Higher Education, In every issue, it comes out in the New York Times, there’s been a renewed action at
the federal level, at the state level, and there’s been a renewed action or a call to action among the voices of students. So, that’s what
we’re seeing sort of an upsurge. I will say though that we’ve been doing this work for thirty years, so, it’s not a new topic. And, certainly,
this group of us are not new to it. I’ve been working on the issue my entire career--so, about 20 years. So, it’s not new to us. And, we’re
certainly glad that other people are interested in it. So, we’re also glad to be on the side of it to be able to respond to it in the most
positive ways and that Texas often, The University of Texas at Austin, at Austin is called, for example, for interviews from the Rolling
Stones after their big expose, we actually were called by them for models that are working. So, I will say that we’re on the other end of
what’s going on in terms of positive models.
So, what do we know about the topic? So, I do, my research is in the area, so I’m giving the 36 thousand foot view, and then I’m going to
turn it over to Dr. Hammat to talk about our compliance issues. There’s a lot of controversy about what we know about the topic, and
whose right about what we know. It depends on how you measure, how you ask the questions, and how you measure. And so, I’ve
outlined a very, very, broad brush of that, in your handout. And, President Powers mentioned the climate study that will roll out this
spring, which we’ll be a part of with the AAU, and then we’ll decide next year how the University will proceed in following years. So, it will
be good to have that base level knowledge about what’s going on. So, for the first time, these climate studies will look at not just
prevalence, but also response, safety, sort of those broad brushes. But, your handout gives you more of that information.
I should also mention that the state of Texas has prevalent studies—unlike most states—that we conduct, my institute conducts. And,
we’re in… that is underway now. So, we conducted one in 2000, 1200 people in the state of Texas participated. That is underway at the
moment. We’ll engage another 1200 people. So, we actually know a lot in the state of Texas about what is going on over lifetime. So,
that’s useful information for us to know about.
So, here are the complexities about the issue, and then I’ll talk about some of the complexities, very, very briefly about campus sexual
assault. Reporting is low. Trauma responses are high. What happens to people after they’ve been sexually assaulted is they forget.
They give conflicting stories about what’s happened. They’ve delayed reporting. They under report. It’s one of the most under reported
crimes. What also competes is the relationship between the offender and the victim is a very close relationship, which complicates the
idea of reporting. We think that there’s a resistance, there’s violence, and there’s weapons involved. What are prevalence data shows
most often is that none of those things are involved. What the research shows consistently over the last 20 or 30 years is the alcohol is
involved a lot. I want to be really, really clear thought is that we know that alcohol doesn’t cause sexual violence, but it intersects with
sexual violence. So, we need to pay attention to that.
So, here’s what we know about what complicates it for campuses, is that unlike in the civilian world where I do a lot of my research, here
we have what we call dual reporting or maybe multiple reporting now. And, I’m going to let Dr. Hammat talk little about that, because
that’s her domain. But, we also have issues where students are worried about autonomy, their newly gained autonomy sometimes, as
adults and confidentiality—What’s going to happen? We also have underage alcohol consumption that we deal with. The accountability
or the perception of accountability, or lack of accountability of offenders and what that means. A shared community space, which is not
what happens, and what we have to worry about in the civilian world, and then this hook up culture. So, I was talking with leadership,
police leadership, and we were talking about as a social scientist, I could tell you that X percent of the variance of sexual assault is
explained by hook up culture. Then we could develop programs and services that would help measure reducing violence. If we could get
to understanding those pieces, then our law enforcement would have better tools and services perhaps. And, we actually don’t know
that. We really can’t measure hook up culture, but we do know that hook up culture is part of the life on the college campus, that we
should tell ourselves about this to some degree. I’ll say this about alcohol, it is one of the highest risks for college campuses, particularly
for when an on college campuses when it comes to sexual assault. We know that pretty consistently with… when we look at the
evidence. So, it’s one of the things that we should be courageous about when we take on the issue.
So, as Jennifer talked about, theses are the players. We have had this group very collaboratively working together. Faculty may not
know that about this team of people working together to address, not just compliance, but safety, issues of liberty that are being
addressed publicly in the media, issues of due process that happen the criminal justice system, not in the dean of students disciplinary
issue. But we definitely want to pay attention to that when they get to the criminal justice system, which is different than the disciplinary
issue. And so, we have come together to—at Texas to solve these issues, to deal with sort of that whole continuum.
And, this is the campaign that also rolled out across the nation. One of the things, the reason IDVSA is involved, if you know the
campaign that the White House put out, the report, Not Alone, The University of Texas at Austin was one of the four campuses in the
nation named in that report to help solve the problem of sexual assault on campus. And, we were named specifically to look at the
issues of law enforcement. So, we’ve been at the issue for a very long time in the most positive sense though, in company with John
Hopkins and a couple of other campuses, Rutgers, to look at the issues. So, again, I think that we’ve gotten great support from the
administration. Those of us working on the issue have been looking at the issues, sitting down, struggling with how we can make our
campus safe, how we can work from a trauma informed perspective. How we can put systems in place; how we can use evidence to
inform those system what’s not going right, what resources we need to make those happen. How we can hold people accountable.
So, I’m going to stop there, turn it over to Dr. Hammat and let you read at your leisure. [I’m not going to touch… inaudible…]
Hammat
Alright, I have three handouts for you that we’ll put to the back of the room because I want you to be able to take them. I can also
provide them to you electronically. They are also available on the compliance website. The first thing to feedback on what Noel said, I
want to give you a sense of what we saw this past fall in terms of student reporting. From the student emergency services area, we had
15 students come in for relationship violence, 13 for stalking and harassment, 14 for sexual harassment, 11 for sexual misconduct, and
24 sexual assaults. Of those, we extrapolate out. Not all of them make it to Student Judicial Services (SJS) if they don’t know their
assailant, or if they simply don’t have enough information about who assault them. We may not have that as well. So, this is not included
BCAL calls, this is just straight judicial services referrals over 10 relationship violence, 7 sexual or stalking harassment, 10 sexual
harassment, 19 sexual misconduct, 10 sexual assaults, and 4 harassments.
So, we looked at about an 80% increase, fall over fall. I think if you talk to any of the staff in those areas, they would tell you it was about
a 400% increase. There are very few, a small number of us that are very excited that students, by word of mouth, are learning that they
can come in and express, Hey, something’s happened to me. So, part of what we wanted to say to you is, we want to make sure that
you all are aware of the resources available and to know that should a student disclose something to you, I think we’ve all had that
experience where someone says, I had to go a funeral, I lost my aunt or my Aunt… so sorry to hear that; gosh are you doing alright?
Same kind of thing we’re looking for, compassionate, empathetic response, and then we want to get that out of your hands and get it to
the folks who can make sure that we provide them with the things that we need to. There are several federal requirements of pieces of
paper that we have to put in their hands. In term so letting them know all of the opportunities and resources that are available so that
they can make some informed decisions about what’s available to them.
One of the handouts, I have nothing but definitions for you. It is just content dense. So, I’m not going to go into all of that. What I will tell
you is the difference between our employee side of the shop versus our student side of the shop. And, I like to use 97% and 3% for our
students, what you’re seeing is relationship violence, stalking, in the day and age of social media, it’s very easy to know exactly where
your ex is or exactly where your potential interest is. It makes it really easy to conveniently show up where they are going to be. And,
certainly as Noel mentioned, we have alcohol involved in a lot of those cases. So, again, [inaudible-2:03:19.9] consensual activity up to
a point, and then consent can be with be withdrawn, or was never given. And, that’s where we find ourselves with some of these
relationship violence issues. Our employees come in 97% traditionally in your, I don’t want to call them water cooler harassment, there’s
something on someone’s computer screen that is sexually offensive—jokes, comments. There may be hiring practices; there may be a
culture or a climate that is dismissive of men or women. So, what you would traditionally think of as sexual harassment, we see more of
that in the employment side of the shop and a much smaller percentage of actual relationship violence. Same is true for students, not as
much harassment by itself. It’s usually coupled in some kind of interest in the other person. In terms of our prevention efforts, going
forward in the fall, you will see new and improved training for all new students, all new employees. We have to provide ongoing
programming and training initiatives for returning faculty and employees, for returning students. We will have different modules available
for undergraduate students than graduate students. Also, our professional students, a lot of folks called and said, Why do I have this
information when this is for younger students. I’m 27, and I don’t live here, and I commute. We’re required, so, we’re going to provide all
kinds of different training. We’ll also provide some additional training for our student athletes, for our international students, any other
populations we identify that might need some additional help, we’ll do that as well. Our prevention efforts get a trainer, get everybody on
the same page. We didn’t have a definition of consent in our policies three years ago. We now have that, so again, helping our students
understand that common language of, “Well do we talk about that?” and it’s fairly difficult. One of my colleagues likes to say, you know,
pull out a piece of paper and write down every detail about your last intimate experience, now be prepared to read that aloud. And, of
course everyone in the room says, yeah, I’m not going to do that. And, when students come forward to tell us that something bad has
happened, in essence, they are telling you about a very intimate thing that happened to them, that is impacting them academically. It is
impacting their ability to sleep, to eat, to function, to matriculate. And, so we want to make sure that we get to them and get them what
they need.
The student who comes in to report has a lot of control in this process, and that’s really important that you hear as well. Sometimes, we
want to fix it right away, let me call the police right away. Sometimes, they’re just telling you because they’re going to be late with a
paper and that’s all they can do. That’s exactly their limit. So, part of what we want to do is if someone shares and confides in you,
please let us know so that we can provide them with the outreach packet and let them know, sure, we can call the police, if you don’t
want to go to the police station, you want them to come here, we can do that. If you want to look at the rules that we have and just, again
as Noel mentioned, if they know the person, If I report to the police, I might end up sending them to jail and ruining their life. You might.
Well, maybe if they just weren’t here, I could be okay. So, if that’s the case, they might often just elect to go with the University policy
violation. Same thing is true often times students will experience something in the classroom setting that as faculty you just haven’t
seen. You don’t know it’s happening, because it’s happening electronically. They’re being harassed by another classmate; they’re being
stalked by someone else. Someone has seemingly found out where this particularly group is meeting over and over and over again, and
they may bring that to you as an academic concern. But again, if it sounds like something that makes you go, Wow, if that was
happening to my child, I would certainly want someone to explain all of the options that were available. So part of that again is making
sure, I think you heard the BCAL, the Behavior Concerns Advice Line, you can call them. That will get to us. Certainly, you can call
Student Emergency Services, that will get to us. You can contact me directly, I’d be happy to take that call. If you don’t want to be
involved besides a phone call, you can also do an anonymous call through the Compliance Office. That’s fine. Part of it is just getting it
so that it’s off of your plate so that we can get all of the resources to them that we need.
So, again, this is a two-step, what we’re asking you to do. When someone shares something with you, react compassionately. “Gosh,
that’s terrible, thank you so much for trusting me. There are people who can really help you with this, and I want to make sure I get that
to…get you to the right person. Let me pick up the phone right now and call someone, so I can get you to point B, wherever point B
happens to be.” And, then again, if you don’t do this work everyday, kudos to you. But, they may share so much in that initial burst of
energy, many of you are the single most important person to them, and if they tell you, you may have some processing of your own. So,
this is where we also tell you to make sure that if it is overwhelming to you, make sure that you take care of yourself as well.
There is a subsection here. I have a separate handout on this. So, I do want to mention briefly about pregnancy and Title IX. On
occasion, students get pregnant here. And, our graduate population seems to have a better grip on that than our undergraduate
population. So, there’s a handout to address this. We can’t discriminate based on the fact that they’re pregnant. So, even if our course
loads are demanding and if they are going to miss a lot because, whatever, they’re gene pool of they’re family, they tend to have difficult
pregnancies, and they might be out for two, or three, or four weeks. If they have a medical note, then we would treat that the same way
we would with a disability. So, if you’re not sure about what accommodation is necessary, we facilitate those conversations in our office
as well. It’s kind of a swing off of the timeline piece, but it does come up pretty regularly with our faculty in terms of, “you know this is a
really demanding class.” And, if they have the baby on Monday, they should be able to be back in class the following Monday.
Sometimes they can, sometimes they cannot. So, if pregnancy matters come up that are unclear, you can call us for that as well.
Again, there is nothing here, hopefully, that is new. A word really quickly about confidential reporting options. If a student has come to
you, you are not a confidential reporting option. If they say, can I tell you something in confidence, they can tell it to you, but, it’s a
private conversation. Do don’t have confidential guarantee in your capacity. Now, again I say that knowing that there might be some
licensed mental health practitioners who are certainly not rollover lawyers, etc. But, if someone doesn’t share enough information with
you, and they say, I just really need to talk to someone confidentially, Counseling and Mental Health Center, the Crisis Line is 24/7. They
can go to Health Services if they need any medical treatment. Sometimes what with relationship violence pieces, one of the first things
you want to ask them is if they are safe; if they are currently in danger; if they need an alternative place to go. We will facilitate all of that,
but you’ll know if this is someone you’ve worked with over a number of semesters, and they come in and it’s completely presented in a
different way, just pick up the phone and let us know what we can do to help you. Because we… They value the relationship with you so
much, they’re bringing it to you, so we want to make sure that we honor that relationship and get them as much help as they need, so
we can keep them here doing the great things that they’re doing.
That was real quick. But, we do have folks here. We would love to take any questions you might have in terms of the issues that we’re
looking at here on campus. Added benefit to going late in the session. [inaudible audience question] Sure.
Gore
I don’t think this is odd. Thank you very much for your presentation and for everything that you’re doing. One question that people have
asked me, and I don’t know the answer to is when students or faculty or staff are working late on campus, what are the opportunities. I
have a lab, and there are students who are doing an experiment and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning, and they’re in all little corners of the
campus.
Hammat
Sure, I’m going to look at my colleagues here for some assistance, so I get the names right. I think we have Safe Walk, Sure Walk—
sure, it’s safe walk. Safe Sure Walk, no Sure Walk. So you can call and get an escort to take you, to go with you from point A to point B.
[ directed to Captain Verett] You guys will help with that as well? [Response inaudible] And, if they’ve got their phone with them and
they’re playing a game, you can also call the police, and they’ll come out. If there’s a crisis situation, obviously the blue lights are on
campus. If your students start to leave from lab to go back to the residence hall or to off campus, and they notice someone behind them
that is starting—again, not a whole lot of those stranger incidences, but you can always call and say there’s a surly person behind me
and I’m not really sure what’s happening there. Sometimes, just the presence near that will be enough to deter folks. [Inaudible speaker]
Busch Armendariz
So, my suggestion would be to help them think through that before, so, if it happens, use those resources, then do some preparing to
have a discussion with them so that they’re not feeling unsafe at that moment on this campus and in time, when they can help it. So, still
having the discussion would be my suggestion with them. Late in the day, happy topic.
Beckner
Oh, leave one please.
Thanks so much Noel and Jennifer. I’m sorry this gone so late, but we’ve had a lot to do. We have one more item. Martha, will you come
forward and present this proposal on splitting committee B3, I believe?
Martha Hilley (professor, music, and chair, Student Life and Activities Committee) [2:13”58.1]
Good afternoon. This shouldn’t take long at all. First of all, I want Chandra to come up… no? Are you sure? Okay, if you know Chandra
Mueller, do you all know Chandra? Chandra, hold up your hand. Chandra’s the one that started this legislation. She was chair of the
committee the year before I became chair of the committee, so I want to give her credit for a lot of the real work that was done. This
came about, this separation of the Student Life and Activities Committee into two committees, came about as an effort to be sure that
students on our campus, regardless of their affiliation as non-athletes, they’re academic students and student athletes who are also
students but very heavily connected with the athletics department. Both sets of students would have opportunities to have
communication with faculty, would be able to get issues brought before the Faculty Council, and would be assured of that avenue to do
that. So, that’s why we came up with these two different committees, because we felt it would really emphasize the separate issues that
would come up. Right now, on Student Life and Activities Committee, we have three students, one of those students is representative of
Student Government, another one is a representative of the Senate of College Councils, and another one is a representative of the
Graduate [Student] Assembly. And, I mean, they are really covered as far as student government goes. So, what we’re proposing is that
the second committee would have representatives from a revenue generating sports area of athletics, a student that represents
women’s athletics, and a student that represents men’s athletics. Along with that, we would have elected faculty on that committee. We
would also have a member representing men’s athletics council and a faculty member representing women’s athletics council. So, this
gives us a very broad base of representation but also gives the students faculty that they can talk with. We see the academic student life
committee as being one that could act as a sounding board for the students. If they have legislation that they’re anticipating that they
want to bring before the Faculty Council, they would be able to use this committee on student life to vet their proposals before they even
take it to the specific committee that it might be under. So, that’s really the whole justification for the whole thing. And, I don’t want to
take a lot of time, and so that’s what we’re bring to you. Questions? Yes, ma’am.
Hillary Hart (distinguished senior lecturer, civil, architectural, and environmental engineering)
So, Martha, I’ve certainly known about this and been in favor of it, but Janet Staiger posted a question via email. Maybe you saw that.
Because last time the committee was reorganized and put together, they didn’t want to have a separate student athletics committee,
because they were afraid that it would get axed at some point. Because there’s already athletics committees, you know, in athletics,
there’s already the, the… Have you thought about that at all?
Hilley
But, I did think about that, and when I saw Janet’s message, I thought, Okay, what we can do then is keep it as one committee, and we
can take these three student athletes that we have proposed and put them on the Student Life and Activities Committee. And, then we
have advisors who are, one of them is a member or past member of the men’s athletics council, and the other one is FAR for the
University, that would be that constituency. We would have student athletes who are elected by their peers, which I think is very
important, because that’s one of the things that Student Government does, is they elect their representatives. And, I think the student
athletes deserve the right to have the same kind of representation. I mean we could put the whole thing together as far as that goes. It’s
just, we felt that to separate allows them to deal with the issues that are specific to what they do.
Hart
Okay. Can we see the function for the second one? Isn’t there another slide Debbie?
Hilley
Function of the second one.
Hart
So, one would be Student Life,
Hilley
Okay, that’s Student Life, that’s the composition. That’s the function of, yeah, Student Athletes and Activities
I’m not going to read to you. You can read that. Yes sir?
Beckner
Bill Beckner, mathematics. [Hilley: Hi.] I would like to speak strongly in favor in having the two committees. I think it’s very important that
the General Faculty and the Faculty Council have a committee that deals with athletics. And, I think in addition to the representation for
student athletes, that this committee provides that opportunity. Just as we saw with having an ad hoc committee this year, if you go back
a do a web search, every so often there has been an ad hoc committee from the Faculty Council on athletics [Hilley: right.] And, I think
it’s important to have committee on Fauclty Council that does address athletic issues as saw from the brief comments, regardless of
what you say, that if you thought of athletics program as commercial business since the turn of the previous century, it is still a fact that
vast amounts of money are coming in to programs, campuses, campuses are being delineated by whether they can work in this
environment or not. And, I think it’s very important that faculty have oversight. So, I saw this as a very positive thing. I think the
comments made about the previous committee was they just didn’t work for giving the faculty and Faculty Council real input, real
opportunity, advisory roll. And, I think under current administration, since we’ve discussed this briefly with them in the FCEC+ meetings,
they’re very supportive of this. They don’t see this as something to be opposed to because there are athletic councils. So, I speak
strongly in favor of this motion.
Hilley
Okay, Michael Clement is the FAR, which is Faculty Athletics Representative for The University of Texas. You have something you want
to say Michael?
Michael Clement (professor, accounting and FAR)
Yes, I’m actually an ex officio member of the B3 committee, as you know and on the athletics council. I generally think this is a good
idea to split these two committees in half, but I know athletics has some concerns that there’s some overlap between what happens
when the B3 committee and athletics council. I would suggest that we get some input from them before we ask to move forward.
Hilley
We have both of the chairs, we have the chair of men’s athletics council and the chair of the women’s athletics council. May we have
privilege of the floor for them? Oh, where are you? There you are. Sorry. David, Mary? Do you wish to speak?
Clement
What I was proposing is that these executive committee of Faculty Council have a meeting before we ask to pass this proposal, where
you as the chair of B3 committee, chairmen of the athletics councils would meet to iron out any differences and make sure we’re all on
the same page. I think the committee would work best if everybody’s on the same page, and we show that we want to work with athletic
department as opposed to not work with them.
Hilley
Okay. So, would that mean, Bill, that we would just table this for today? [Beckner: inaudible] I know, I’m not Patti, so I don’t know. I didn’t
memorize rules.
Hart
Could I ask a question? Hillary Hart, civil engineering. So, Michael, do you think you could get this meeting together relatively quickly?
Because I think none of us want to just leave this hanging for another few months… David and Mary?
Clement
I’ll ask my colleagues here. So, when you say relatively quickly, just what kind of timeframe are you thinking? monthl
Hart
Months, I’m open on Friday.
Clement
You said a month?
Hart
Well, within the next month so that we can consider it again. We’re tabling it just to table it for one Faculty Council meeting.
Clement
Sure, I think we could do it within a month.
[inaudible discussion]
Hillary
We do vote. I mean, you do vote. [inaudible discussion] Well, we’ll just get it done as quickly as we can. [Beckner: inaudible discussion]
Beckner
I’m sorry this didn’t come up before. I would have hope that you might have brought this up with Jay.
Clement
I just found out about athletics’ concerns this weekend actually. I apologize for that.
Beckner
So, alright. We will defer, but it does mean that it won’t come up for two months, because of the structure of our meetings. So. This is
what you would like to do.
Clement
This is what I would like to do.
Beckner
Alright, alright. So, I guess we can have just action by the chair that we will defer action on this item until we take into account
conversation with representatives of the athletic councils. And, but, I think we do want to bring this up as expeditiously as possible.
Clement
I’ll make sure we get it done quickly.
Beckner
And, with that, I ask for a motion to adjourn. Wait a minute, let me ask Dean, is this acceptable? [inaudible discussion] Alright. So, Can I
ask for a motion to adjourn? Oh, Debbie? [inaudible] So moved, all in favor… We are adjourned.
Meeting adjourned at 4:43.