Minutes of the October 6, 1998 Meeting

Lyons Dental Building Student Lounge 

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1. The meeting was called to order by President Terry Oggel at 4:00 pm. He welcomed Vice Provost for Information Technology John Dayhoff to the meeting. The minutes of the September meeting were approved, as previously posted on the Senate website.
2. Announcements from the President
1. Margot Garcia, HAS, is the chair of the Alumni & Community Relations Committee
2. Robert Downs, SOM, is the chair of the Academic Programs and Research Committee
3. Heidi Moffatt of the Commonwealth Times was introduced. She will tape sections of the meeting for reporting purposes
4. The membership of the Provost Search Committee was distributed to the Senate. Faculty members on the committee include Bob Holsworth, Bryant Mangum, Njeri Jackson, Linda Costanzo and Wally Smith.
5. The ULS Executive Director Search Committee is still being formed, and should be announced within a few days
6. Publication of the revised Faculty Handbook has been delayed until the end of October because of questions raised at the Board of Visitors meeting
7. Phyllis Myers (BUS) has been named by Oggel to the Human Resources Task Force that is reviewing tax deferred annuity options
8. Links to editorials and op-ed columns on the Governor's commissions on higher education and technology have been added to the Faculty Senate WhatsNew web page. Additional links to articles on higher education will be added; send suggestions to the Secretary
3. Committee Reports
1. The Legislative Committee (John Guthmiller) will be contacting senators this month to remind them to write to their legislative representatives, and will hold a workshop in November. A member of the General Assembly will join us at the December Senate meeting. Legislative priorities for the upcoming session include funding for indigent care at MCVH; decoupling faculty salary increases from tuition increases; and increases in FTE faculty.
2. Lucy Harvie, for the Credentials Committee, moved an amendment to Section IV of the Standing Rules that would make the State Legislative and Statewide Relations Committee a standing committee of the Faculty Senate. The motion passed without dissent.
3. Mike Spinelli reported that the FTIP would go to the Board of Visitors in November and is expected to be in place by the end of 1998.
4. Maria Michaels, representative from the Academic Campus Student Government Association, presented three initiatives that the SGA would be addressing this year. These include creation of a December graduation ceremony of some sort for December and August graduates; provision of study space that could be kept open 24 hours; and improving the variety of on-campus food services.
1. The Senate by voice vote endorsed the concept of an additional graduation ceremony.
2. The Senate referred to the Student Affairs Committee the issue of late night study space.
3. The Senate by voice vote endorsed the principle of increased variety in the Commons and referred the issue to the Student Affairs Committee for further study.
5. Dennis O'Toole presented the Athletic Self Study (to be sent to the NCAA as part of the certification process)  to the Senate. He emphasized that his committee had responded to many of the issues raised by the Senate's ad hoc review committee. Judith Steel, co-chair of the AA/EEO committee, submitted a committee report that endorsed the self-study but criticized the inclusion of a plan to achieve gender equity by limiting male participation in certain sports. The report is included below. Gender equity under federal Title IX was said to require the percentage of female participants in varsity athletics (currently 41%) to approximate the percentage of females among full-time undergraduate students (currently 59%). After extended discussion the motion submitted by the committee passed by voice vote.
6. Vice Provost Dayhoff was introduced by Dan Ream, chair of the committee on Academic Support Services. His remarks and responses to questions ranged over a wide variety of issues that concern the faculty.
1. Dayhoff reviewed what the OIT had accomplished in the past twelve months. He began with the University Computing and Communications (UCCS) division. Telecommunications, which is part of UCCS, is developing a business plan. Last year this division moved from a deficit condition to full cost recovery status this academic year.
2. He reported on the growth of the electronic aspect of University Library Services, expressing his concern for the slippage in the libraries' faculty salary and acquisition budgets relative to inflation and our peer institutions.  He acknowledged the support for ULS provided by the faculty in the past and encouraged the Senate to keep pressure on the administration based on the importance of the libraries to our teaching and research missions.  Phyllis Self will serve as Acting Director of ULS while the search for the critically important position of Director is carried out.
3. A group has been meeting since August to develop a Strategic Plan for OIT. Deans were asked to name a faculty member to the task force but  attendance has been sparse. The minutes of these meetings are publicly accessible   on the OIT website and Senators and other faculty are welcome at all meetings (see schedule).  This important activity is required by Vice President Timmreck's goal of linking the University's planning process with the budgeting process.
4. A $5.9 million proposal was submitted to NSF by the Information Resources and Media division to support digital library and distance learning efforts at VCU. Dayhoff expects a decision on funding in December. The proposal was described in  the September issue of OIT News.
5. Student computer labs have been expanding, and future planning must take into account the fact that a higher percentage of freshmen are arriving with their own computers (possibly as high as 3/4 this year). Deans have been asked to advise the Provost by the end of October on how the new technology fee should be spent, and have been asked to document the involvement of students in the planning process.
6. In response to questions about the lack of  access to the network and other advanced technology in so many of our classrooms, Dayhoff acknowledged that this was a serious problem. He said that when he began to develop a plan for funding such improvements he had been told that individual Deans, rather than a central authority, were responsible for classrooms. Yet departmental and school budgets usually did not include funds for upgrading old classrooms, and his budget certainly did not. Senators noted that since classes in several different schools use classrooms in the same building, centralized planning should have been enabled long ago. This is an issue that Senate committees will follow closely this year.
7. Dayhoff explained that the move of the OIT offices to the fourth floor of Cabell Library was one in a sequence of moves approved by the President that will include relocating the Dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences to Storer Hall. Construction work has been scheduled between semesters in order to minimize disruption. Eight study tables will be affected, and they will be relocated to other space in Cabell Library.
7. After thanking Vice Provost Dayhoff and inviting him to return in the spring, if not before, President Oggel adjourned the meeting  at 6:10 pm.  The November meeting will begin with the long-postponed  presentation by Camden Whitehead on the University's Master Site Plan!

Title IX provides a legal basis for mandating gender equality in the funding of college athletics.  In order for this to happen, the earlier draft of the VCU Self-Study report proposed to provide:

a. more active recruitment to teams partly through more role models (i.e. Female coaches)
b. more scholarship grants to women
c. more opportunities for non-scholarship athletes (walk-ons)

“The guiding principle for this process [maintain and enhance gender equity] will be to provide female undergraduates at VCU the same opportunity to compete in intercollegiate athletics that is afforded to their male counterparts while striving to limit the impact on male opportunities so that more rather than fewer students may benefit from participation in intercollegiate athletics.” (p. 106 lines 6-10)

• The Faculty Senate is in concordance with the spirit of the NCAA gender-equity stricture and believes that the VCU Athletic Department also strongly supports this mandate by virtue of its intention to address the gender equity issue in its Self-Study plan.
• The Faculty Senate believes that the VCU Athletic Department intends to bring about gender equity compliance  (within 5%) by the year 1999-2000.
• The Faculty Senate is opposed, however, to the premature imposition of the method of reconciling the numerical differential (cutting male participation in order to achieve equality—which becomes a reverse discrimination of sorts and opposed to the guiding principle quoted above.
• The Faculty Senate recommends that the university use instead a standard of opportunity, not participation: i.e., if there are as many opportunities for "walk-ons" for women as for men, then VCU has met its legal and moral responsibility to provide gender equity.  This rationale would provide the foundation for a strong case for compliance in the NCAA report by also showing the narrowing of the numerical gap of 18% differential in VCU enrollment (currently 59% female) within the next 2-3 years to 55%-45% (which would mean, in effect, counting the 5% allowance, that there would actually be only a 5% differential.  We think this would be a minimal non-compliance and not egregious, and would therefore not be targeted by NCAA as a serious problem and further that no lawsuit would be brought against the university on this account.

Neil W. Henry, Secretary
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Updated December 1, 1998