Faculty Senate welcomed Ohio University interim President David Descutner at Monday night’s meeting and passed a resolution commending the Board of Trustees for the transparency of the recent presidential search.
Descutner began the meeting by discussing possible plans to clarify the processes of dealing with planned and unplanned demonstrations on campus with regards to the student arrests in Baker Center in February.
“Spontaneous protests, by their very nature, often require rapid response,” Descutner said. “Early intervention has often avoided major conflicts and prevented spontaneous protests from getting out of control.”
Managing protests is an effort to protect all participating members’ First Amendment rights, Descutner said.
Current policies are under review to examine where protests are acceptable on campus, and the administration is discussing Student Affairs involvement. The OU Police Department and Center for Student Legal Services are drafting collaborative guidelines for demonstrations.
“These guidelines will soon, once Student Legal Services has a chance to review and we come to an agreement on them, they will go up on websites and we will also create a brochure of this,” Descutner said.
Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit presented an update on Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal, which focused on the textbook provision.The proposal will put a $300 cap on annual course materials for Ohio college students.
“We will foot the bill for textbooks, and that the bill can only be $300 per year,” Benoit said. “Our estimate of how much students spend per year, based on surveys of our undergraduates, they spend an average of $1,034 per year.”
The impact to OU’s budget will be $14.5 million per year. That does not include infrastructure costs needed to establish a system that will allow the university to purchase, deliver and receive textbooks, Benoit said.
Benoit also detailed enrollment numbers for the upcoming academic year. She reported that ACT scores, GPAs and application numbers have increased since last year.
Greg Fialko, senior human resources director, gave updates on OU faculty’s health care budget and prescription plan for the 2018 fiscal year.
Fialko said the Benefits Advisory Council expects to be over budget this year.
“This is an ongoing problem and struggle that we have, how (to) stay true to minimizing the impact on our staff,” Fialko said.
Charles Buchanan, chair of the Educational Policy and Student Affairs Committee, presented the first reading of a resolution about changes to terminology on transcripts regarding withdrawal and failing grades.
Valerie Miller, director of student financial aid, said she wants to preserve federal student aid opportunities by auditing the rate of withdrawals and failures. The resolution’s goal is to make sure there is a policy that does that but does not make attendance records mandatory for professors.
Annual dean’s evaluations are taking place this week, and Faculty Senate elections are approaching as well.
