Proposal offers profound change
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■ d*e a gooa, close look at what is attached to
your copy of the Oct. 11 Assembly meeting minutes.
You'll find a deceptively slim package of pro
posals that would, if adopted, make profound
changes in faculty governance at the University. Nov.
9 is when the University Assembly will consider these
proposals.
comments
james lemert
Our task force, which was appointed by the
Faculty Advisory Council last fall, has been working
on this set of proposals for almost exactly a year now.
Many, many hours of information gathering, con
sultation and subcommittee work are behind these
documents.
In brief, these proposals would:
•Delegate legislative authority on most matters
from the Assembly to the Senate, subject to rights of
appeal back to the entire Assembly.
•Reduce the voting membership of the entire
Senate from its current 54 to 40 voting members.
•Cut the proportion of student voting members
from a third to a fifth of the new Senate.
•Provide some release time from other respon
sibilities for the Senate President during his/her term
in office.
•Finally put on paper, in one document, many
current governance practices which, until now, have
been strewn through a maze of documents or have
somehow survived, as tradition, in the collective con
sciousness of the University.
•Automatically "sunset" all the new provisions
unless the Assembly once again approves them three
years later.
Why give legislative powers to the Senate? And
why reduce the student presence in that Senate?
Let's take the second question first. Even the 20 per
cent proportion of students that we recommend for
k the "new" legislative body is, after all, a significant
p leap upwards in effective voting power. The real
legislature presently is the Assembly, where even the
present maximum of 18 students becomes less than
20 percent any time more than 72 faculty show up.
Nationally, to have students with any representation
in their University's legislature is a rarity. There will
be faculty members at the Nov. 9 Assembly meeting
who feel that even the eight voting students we are
proposing are far too many. The task force does not
believe the Assembly will support a newly
empowered Senate without a reduction in its present
proportion of students. If we are wrong in that
prediction, it will be easy enough to demonstrate our
error when the Assembly votes.
Why give legislative power to the Senate? The
University in the last major American university to
depend on a town meeting style legislature. Ten
years ago, the only remaining other major institution
— the University of Wisconsin — junked its town
meetings for good after it had given its new Senate
system a three-year trial run. The same three-year
trial is proposed here. Wisconsin found its town
meetings couldn't effectively do business in crisis
situations. Ironically, in view of a major criticism of
our Assembly, Wisconsin couldn't get its business
done when too many faculty showed up. Normally,
we have the opposite problem: sparse attendance.
Sparse attendance means potentially less represen
tative decisions and, as an AAUP report said in 1969,
Assembly decisions susceptible to "the concerted in
fluence of special interest groups."
If too many show up, it clogs the town meeting's
gears; if too few show up, the legitimacy of Assembly
decisions is jeoparized. Perhaps then, the problem is
not with how many it takes to gum up the works, but
with "the works" themselves — the town meeting.
The town meeting always will be an excellent
forum for a State of the University speech, where
those attending listen and can ask questions. But in
times of crisis, a town meeting can be almost totally
unprepared either to initiate or to examine alter
natives other than those offered us. For example, do
you remember that mass meeting of faculty and staff
in the EMU Ballroom concerning the University's
financial crisis?
It is significant that the University has sought
more flexible ways to discuss retrenchment with
faculty, such as small group discussions combined
with group reports at plenary sessions. The success
of these other ways of discussing matters of crucial
academic importance should tell us much about the
inherent limitations of the Assembly.
From 1949 to 1972, three different faculty commit
tees each recommended that the Senate replace the
Assembly as the principal legislative body.
Perhaps they were trying to tell us something.
lames Lemert is the chair of governance task
force and professor of journalism at the University.
letters
Travesty
The Rev. Stuart Shaw's twisted,
"biblical" defense of abortion
("No Message," Oct. 11) is a
travesty of the principle of faithful
reasoning from scripture.
First, and most important, Shaw
completely ignores the biblical
evidence pointing to the humani
ty of the unborn child — the cen
tral issue of abortion.
Second, although the Bible does
not explicitly say "Thou shalt not
commit abortion," Shaw fails to
see that abortion is implicitly pro
hibited by the sixth command
ment — "Thou shalt not commit
mnrHpr "
Reverend.
In a free and open debate
before the students of this Univer
sity I challenge Rev. Shaw to prove
that the Bible has nothing to say
against abortion and can, in fact,
be construed to condone it.
I, on the other hand, will prove
the following:
1) That the Bible contains ample,
undeniable evidence that testifies
to the true humanity of the un
born child in the eyes of Cod.
2) That based on the above
evidence and a faithful adherence
to the spirit and letter of the Bible,
Scripture implicitly and explicitly
condemns abortion.
3) That "Christians" who persist
in condoning abortion after fully
hearing and understanding the
biblical and medical evidence
against it are guilty of willful
rebellion against God, and should
refrain from naming the name of
Christ until they repent.
So, Reverend, grab your Bible,
get your ducks in a row, and let's
go. You may name the time and
place, although I would prefer to
be on campus. I await your reply.
Tom Visoky
graduate, journalism
Third, Shaw also ignores the
severe judgments pronounced by
the prophets on those who con
sent to the shedding of innocent
blood. The unborn child has a
blood supply completely separate
from its mother's.
But I do not have the space to
list the scriptural evidence to pro
ve my point. Instead, I would like
to issue a challenge to the good
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