Senate Minutes 
May 4, 2001 Meeting 
3:30 p.m. Columbia Room 

1.0 Call to Order 

2.0 Call of the Roll 
The following senators were absent: Joel Alexander, Maureen Dolan, David Janoviak, David Olson, and Darryl Thomas. 

3.0 Corrections to Minutes/Agenda Adjustments 
Previous Senate Minutes were approved. Today's agenda was adjusted to move Andy High (4.3) immediately after John (4.1). 

4.0 Reports of the Presidents 

4.1 Senate President: 
John reported that the Executive Committee approved the Art History proposal left in the air at the last meeting. He did stress that further discussions about scheduling, space, and FTE were needed if similar proposals were in the works across campus. 

4.3 (moved) Student Body President: 
Andy High reported on his recent re-election and briefly discussed upcoming Abby House functions and the pending status of the increased student fee situation. 

4.2 President of WOU: 
President Youngblood mentioned the upcoming Forum meeting (agenda pending budget update) and the upcoming Savicki lecture. 

5.0 Selection of Nominating Committee 
The Nominating Committee will consist of Joel Alexander, Janeanne Rockwell-Kincanon, Kevin Helppie, and David Foster. They are charged with assembling nominees for the new Senate Executive Committee including President, Vice President, Secretary, and two at-large Senators and it is expected the Senate will have this information at the next meeting (May 22). 

6.0 Consideration of Old Business 

6.1 Writing Intensive Oversight Committee: 
Please review the handout provided by Carol Harding regarding this proposal. Carol briefly introduced this proposal and fielded many questions. Going down the list of proposed committee charges: 
Items 1, 2, 4, and 6: There was general agreement and support. 
Item 3: There were many perceived concerns about this, both in terms of the time and energy this would consume and in terms of perceptions about academic freedom and over-policing of already- approved classes. In the end, this item was modified to simply say that the committee would maintain a resource bank of class assignments provided voluntarily. 
Item 5: There were concerns about this because of ongoing problems with many transfer students who come in with a year of 100 or 200 level writing courses that do not translate into any upper division WI credit here. It was stated that this committee would continue this policy because of the way we have defined the writing curriculum on this campus. Based on these discussions, Item 5 was modified to clarify that the committee would only evaluate upper division (300 and 400) level courses in the major discipline for transfer. The mechanism for this evaluation would be advisory in the sense that the committee would examine coursework and provide suggestions and feedback for the department chair to make final decisions. 
After these discussions and modifications, the proposal was unanimously passed. 

6.2 Upper Division WR courses for WI credit. 
The major point of concern regarding this proposal was that it could discourage development of discipline-specific WI courses. There were also questions about whether existing courses could handle possible increases in students. To ameliorate these concerns, this proposal was modified to include a "stopgap" clause that will require a review of this policy after three years. Consequently, the proposal was unanimously passed. 

6.3 WRC Membership 
This issue was discussed right up to 5:00 when the meeting was adjourned without a vote. Peter Callero fielded most of the questions. Points of discussion included: 
(1) Source of $1000 funds: Peter replied that he would personally write a check if it came to that; 
(2) Student Input: unclear, although the Senate motion only serves to pass the motion on to administration and, possibly, students for consideration. It was pointed out that students at the U of O clearly became involved in this issue last year; 
(3) Whether it would be more efficacious and less risky to develop our own code of conduct; 
(4) Whether WRC effectivly monitered industries; 
(5) Whether WRC had an anti-corporation political agenda that went beyond simply protecting human rights. At five, following the decision not to extend the meeting, John briefly stated that there would be a vote on this matter next time and mentioned that he had received opposing requests for a secret ballot and a full roll call vote. It was suggested - albeit hastily and informally - that John consult the by-laws on this matter and this voting protocol be made next time. 

The meeting was adjourned.