More than 40 minutes of Wednesday’s University Senate meeting were spent discussing a revision to Syracuse University’s faculty policies, leaving little time to address a report covering free speech on campus.

The faculty policies would streamline how the university classifies professors of practice across its various schools and colleges — a resolution that Ian MacInnes, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, said stemmed from a “complex issue” and has taken years to discuss.

Mary Lovely, a professor of economics, presented the committee’s report, describing how there’s currently no university-wide classification for non-tenure track, full-time professors. Throughout SU’s faculty manual, they’re referred to as professors of practice, research faculty, faculty fellow or post-doc, or a visiting professor or scholar. Through the resolution, each college would set constraints on who and who isn’t considered a non-tenured faculty member.

Though each definition could be different for each school and college, Lovely said the goal is to ultimately adopt “one faculty, one set of rules.” Another goal is to create an annual census of faculty, noting how many fall under each classification — such as tenured, non-tenured, etcetera.

“It would be a big change. Such faculty censuses have not existed in the past and it would be a large step forward, in my view, in transparency and faculty oversight,” Lovely said.

After Lovely finished the report, the senate decided to table any motions for the next senate meeting.

Though senators were told that the meeting might last beyond one hour, many left before Lovely finished her proposal. By the time Tina Nabatchi began to talk about the Academic Affairs report on free speech, some senators began putting their jackets on and slipping quietly out the door.

The Academic Affairs Committee was charged with reviewing the report published by the Working Group on Free Speech in September 2015. The working group, led by former S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Dean David Rubin, was formed in response to complaints made by students organizations claiming that the university’s free speech guidelines were vague, overly broad and subjective.

The committee report supported the majority of the working group’s recommendations, but also highlighted a few areas that could be improved upon. These included things like the legal status of SU and how the word “citizens” might disregard international students, the ambiguity of the reasonable person standard and when restricting free speech is acceptable.

The report also called for further clarification of what is a private or public space on campus, more elaboration on when occupying a campus building is or isn’t free speech and the use of banners and signs in public or private spaces — especially flags, among others.

Senators were given a copy of a letter sent by Chancellor Kent Syverud to Student Association President Aysha Seedat, Graduate Student Organization President Can Aslan and other leaders. In it, Syverud requests that each organization review the working group’s recommendations and report back to him with their thoughts by April 15.

As the meeting crept toward the hour-and-a-half mark, the senate decided to continue discussion on the free speech report next week.

Published on March 23, 2016 at 11:18 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu