Subject to Senate Approval

MARCH 19, 2002

The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9206/9207 of the Graduate School and University Center. Attendance (64) was as follows:

Baruch: Present – Hill and McCall; Absent – Freedman, Majete, Onochie, Pollard, Sethi, and Wiley.

BMCC: Present – Aymer, Friedman, Herz, Neis, Price, and Vozick; Absent – none.

Bronx CC: Present – Gonsher; Absent – Read, Skinner, and Tanaka-Kuwashima; Vacancies – 1.

Brooklyn: Present - Bell, Jacobson, London, Shapiro, Tobey, and Uctum; Absent – Antoniello and Sheridan; Vacancies – 2.

CCNY: Present – Connorton, Crain, Manassah, and Sohmer; Absent – Pearson, Sank, Vacancies – 4.

CSI: Present – Cooper, Foleno, Klibaner, L’Amoreaux, Yousef, and Alternate Petratos; Absent – Levine.

CUNY Law School: Present - none; Absent – Andrews, Goode, and McArdle.

Graduate School: Present – Baumrin and Nair; Absent – Hayes, King, Kulkarni, and Ofuatey-Kodjoe.

Hostos CC: Present – Canate, Italia, and Alternate Vasillov; Absent – Rivera. Vacancies – 1.

Hunter: Present - Doss, Krishnamachari, and Steinberg; Absent – Fasoli, Hampton, Kurzman, Neville, Sherrill, Tomkins, and Wallach.

John Jay: Present – Bohigian, Davenport, Kaplowitz, and Richardson; Absent –Lanzone and Rodriquez.

Kingsborough CC: Present - Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Alternate Barnhart; Absent – none.

LaGuardia CC: Present - Beaky, Gallagher, Mettler, Reitano, and alternate Davidson; Absent – Lerman.

Lehman: Present - Avani, Mineka, Philipp, Tananbaum, and Heching; Absent – Jervis.

Medgar Evers: Present – Donohue, Harris-Hastick and Alternate Leocal; Absent – Bennett and Umolu.

NYC Technical: Present - Cermele, Dreyer, Hounion, Richardson, and Walter; Absent –Horelick.

Queens: Present – Frisz, Moore, and Speidel; Absent – Savage; Vacancies – 6.

Queensborough CC: Present - Barbanel and Tully; Absent –Specht and Weiss. Vacancies – 1.

York: Present – Coleman, Cooper, Frank, and Lewis; Absent – none.

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Cooley (York), Friedheim (BMCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Manassah (CCNY), Mettler (LaG), O’Malley (KCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer, Vice Chancellor Schaffer, and Director of Development Vercesi attended. Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

I. Approval of the agenda: Added under V. New Business as item b was Resolution from Student Affairs on Undocumented Students, and as item c, Resolution on Personnel Material Included in the Chancellor/University Reports. Added under III. Reports was item d, Sr. Vice Chancellor Allan Dobrin. The agenda was then adopted as amended.

II. Approval of the Minutes: The minutes of January 29, 2002, were adopted as proposed (the February meeting had been cancelled).

III. Reports:

                    a. Report of the Chair – waived due to the hour.

b. Representatives to Board Committees (written)

c. Update on 2^nd draft of proposed IP policy (recorded in Reports and Deliberations)

d. Sr. Vice Chancellor Allan Dobrin (recorded in Reports and Deliberations)

IV. Guest Speaker: Mr. Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Policy (cancelled)

V. New Business

a. Resolution on the Posting of College Budget Information on College Home Pages —The resolution was passed unanimously as amended.

UFS Resolution on the Posting of College Budget Information on College Home Pages

Whereas, information about both tax levy and non-tax levy revenues and expenditures of each public institution of higher education is a matter of public information and public record, subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and

Whereas, a college’s revenue and expenditure decisions constitute crucial information for informed faculty participation in collegial governance; and

Whereas, such information is available on the Baruch and City College home pages*; and

Whereas, the faculty at the majority of the CUNY campuses has voiced continued frustration over its inability to obtain such information; and

Whereas, the University Faculty Senate’s Budget Advisory Committee unanimously endorses the proposal that campus administrations post detailed information on their college home pages, including both tax levy and non-tax levy revenues and expenditures, therefore,

Be It Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate calls on each College President and Administration, and the Executive Director of the CUNY Research Foundation, to utilize home pages in order to make publicly available detailed all-funds budget information, including their institutions’ tax levy and non-tax levy revenues and expenditures, in a regular, timely, and informative way, and

Be It Further Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate urges each campus administration to consult and work with the faculty governance leaders and faculty budget committee leaders so as to develop the best format and most useful information for the College’s home page, and

Be It Finally Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate requests that the Chancellor support and encourage such sharing of important public information through the use of the University’s technological infrastructure which is available for such purposes.

* The webpage materials provided by Baruch College and City College, which are cited as examples and not as paradigms, as noted in the Resolution, can be found in the agenda packet. Please review.

b. Student Affairs Resolution on Undocumented Students - A resolution in support of state legislation regarding in-state tuition for undocumented students was presented by Martha Bell of Brooklyn College and was passed with one opposed.

RESOLUTION

Whereas, the UFS on December 11, 2001 adopted a resolution in support of in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, and

Whereas, there are two bills in the New York State Assembly supporting in-state tuition for all undocumented students who are New York State high school graduates,

Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the UFS supports the Rivera and Espaillat bills (A09556 and A09612, respectively) in the State Legislature, and

Be It Further Resolved, that this resolution be forwarded to all NY State legislators.

Proponent: Committee on Student Affairs

c. Resolution on Personnel Matters Included in the Chancellor/University Reports — The resolution was referred to the Executive Committee.

Resolution on Personnel Matters Included in the Chancellor and the University’s Reports

Whereas, both the Central administration and the Board of Trustees assume that the personnel-related material submitted by the different Colleges for inclusion in the Chancellor and the University’s reports summarize only personnel actions which were properly reviewed by the competent P&B’s of the College before being submitted to the President for review and action; and

Whereas, the CUNY Bylaws and each CUNY College governance documents specify the competent P&B committees at which a specific personnel action needs to be reviewed before that it is submitted to the College President; and

Whereas, the P&B committees’ review of each personnel action is the mechanism through which the University ensures the principles of due process and of shared governance; and

Whereas, certain Colleges have been routinely including in their reports personnel actions that were not vetted by their authorized P&B Committees,

Be it resolved that the University Faculty Senate calls on:

- All CUNY College Presidents to not include in their submissions to the Chancellor and the University reports any personnel actions that have not been vetted by all authorized College committees;

- The Chancellor to verify that all received material from the Colleges have been properly vetted by all the authorized College committees; and

- The trustees to not approve any personnel actions that have not been processed according to the accepted vetting process in effect at the respective campus.

Proponent: Prof. Jamal Manassah, CCNY

The meeting was adjourned at 7:50 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps, Executive Director

THE TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-FIFTH PLENARY SESSION

March 19, 2002

a. Professor Karen Kaplowitz (John Jay): I’m presenting this resolution on behalf of the Executive Committee. It was originally recommended by the UFS Budget Advisory Committee. This was initiated as the result of several experiences. One is at the Faculty Governance Leaders’ meetings, we have witnessed over and over faculty governance leaders expressing a wish for more transparency in the budget process and more information about budgets at their campuses. Also, at the UFS conference that we had recently on "The Academy After September 11th," we had Budget Director Ernesto Malave as our guest, and many people in response to his very good comments and very good presentation spoke about the need for more information and more understanding about the budget process. So, with that in mind, and since we have the dean for technology here, Michael Ribaudo, who has provided us with the technology that would make this resolution possible, and since we have two campuses that have their budget information in different formats on their college home pages, Baruch and City College-these are examples, not paradigms-our resolution is a series of whereas clauses and then there are three Resolved clauses.

Chair: I point out to you that the Baruch College budget on the Web is there because the Chancellor did it before he left as President, and so this is probably an overwhelming argument for why few presidents will resist your request. I don’t think they will do it voluntarily, but I think certainly it should be requested.

Professor Kaplowitz: And if I might mention it, when Budget Director Malave spoke at our UFS conference, he cited City College and Baruch College as setting an example, a model, by having this information on their college home pages, and he praised those colleges for doing that.

Professor Manassah, City: I would like to support the resolution, but please don’t take the City College as being a good model of presentation. Professor Kaplowitz: Jamal, I said as example, not as paradigm--that’s why we have the Resolved clause that calls for consultation with faculty governance leaders and faculty budget leaders to be involved in developing the best information and the best format.

Professor Coleman, York: I can’t tell you how appropriate this is for us. We’re having such a tough time getting information. Every bit of information we’ve gotten has been through the FOIL Act, so I can’t tell you how important the passage of this resolution is, because it shows that at least other colleges are willing to give information, and we won’t have to spend all our time trying to get it. The only other thing I was going to add was, does it say anything here about the President’s discretionary funds? Professor Kaplowitz: Yes, in the non-tax-levy funds. Professor Coleman: Well, that’s what you won’t see them post. Professor Kaplowitz: Well, it’s in the City College data, in terms of the amounts of money available. Professor Coleman: I wish there was something stronger there. I don’t know if we have an amendment, but that’s where the hanky-panky is going on, and we need to address it.

Professor Manassah, City: Is it possible to change it to an all-sources, or an all-funds budget? Professor Kaplowitz: We could change it to "in other words, an all-funds budget."

Professor Baumrin, Graduate Center: The last sentence of the third Resolved probably should read "is available for such purposes" rather than "exists for such purposes." Professor Kaplowitz: On behalf of the Executive Committee, I accept that. It’s an improvement.

Professor Cooper, York: I’d like to elaborate further on Dave Speidel’s point. The second resolution involves that old-fashioned word "consult." We have been, over the years, back and forth over what it means to consult. We have had the experience of having a president or a provost tell us five minutes before the September deadline for getting in budget suggestions what has been going on, asked if there are any questions-no questions, we’ve consulted, goodbye. So I think that we have to concern ourselves with the meaning of "consult," and I think maybe Dave is right that "consult" in that second resolution is a weakener rather than a strengthener. Some of us have budget committees; some of us have P & B-Personnel and Budget Committees-I’ve served for 20 years on the P & B, and we do too much peeing and too little being. We need a very specific charge to faculty in order to consult. Professor Kaplowitz: The reason for that second resolution was the very point that Jamal Manassah made, that here at City College, with information on its college home page, it’s not what the faculty governance leaders or the Faculty Senate would like it to be, and this was put up without consultation, so it could have been improved, and it could be improved with consultation.

Professor Petratos, CSI: There has to be clarity, transparency of the budgets. The whole budget has to be published and made available. I see the difference between tax-levy and non-tax-levy money, which means grants office, foundations office, auxiliary services enterprises, the whole thing. Most public corporations publish their budget down to the last dollar. These are public institutions. Why should any citizen be denied-forget about the Senate; forget about P& Bs; forget about all that-why should any taxpayer be denied the budget of a public institution? There’s no reason in the world. Take the word "consult" out. Simply say, "We demand the publication of all the budgets of all the institutions on the campuses, all the enterprises everywhere, so we know what the hell is going on." Professor Kaplowitz: I thought that was what we were doing with this resolution.

Professor Baumrin, Graduate Center: We have three questions at the same time. The first is the resolution, whether or not to drop the second Resolved, whether or not to drop the third Resolved, and the question of whether or not-I think you’ve adopted the "all-funds budget" as a modification to the first Resolved. I can’t quite make up the wording so that you can actually end up with it in the end. Professor Kaplowitz: I thought it was, Stefan, "detailed information about both their institution’s tax-levy and non-tax-levy revenues and expenditures, in other words, an all-funds budget report." Professor Baumrin: Petratos’s last point is that there are a number of funds which aren’t clearly roped in by this distinction, whereas an all-funds budget would do it. And then I can’t quite figure out where you put those words. Professor Kaplowitz: May I respond? How about "detailed all-funds budget information, including the institution’s tax-levy and non-tax-levy revenues and expenditures." That way it incorporates more, but it makes clear that it has to include those two.

Professor Baumrin: I think that you want the "all-funds" to precede "revenues and expenditures," and then the "tax-levy and non-tax-levy" to come after. Professor Kaplowitz: Yes, okay. Professor Baumrin: Okay, then assuming that that amendment has been made, the Speidel point is not solved by dropping the word "consult." I suspect that in your attempt to get the colleges to work with the faculty to make the posting transparent that it will take a year or maybe more to work it out. I’d rather have lousy information and be criticized than no information at all, so I’m going to move that the second Resolved be deleted. I can’t see anything wrong with the third Resolved-it’s apple pie and motherhood, so I think it can stay.

Chair: Is there a second to this motion for the deletion of the second Resolved? (It was seconded from the floor.) Is there any discussion on the deletion?

A motion to call all previous questions was presented by Professor O’Malley of Kingsborough and approved by the two-thirds necessary to end discussion. Deletion of the second resolution was defeated. The resolution, amended in the first Resolved to address all-funds budgets, was approved.

III. Reports

d. Senior Vice-Chancellor Allan Dobrin: I must admit it has been very rare in my life where I’ve got up to do a speech where I haven’t even thought for a second about what I could say. I didn’t know I was speaking tonight. But let me try it. Let me talk a little bit about the major things I’m trying to do. Well, maybe I should probably take a second to talk about me because the truth is when I have an audience of this size, I like to talk about me.

I’m a Queens College graduate. I did my graduate work at the Graduate Center. I’ve taught for four or five years in the executive master’s program at Baruch. Periodically I’ve taught at Hunter. In between, I got to do about 20 other jobs. This is my tenth job in the last seven years, which means I’m virtually unemployable. Right before this, I was the city’s Commissioner of Information Technology and Telecommunications, and was the CIO for the city. Before that I was First Deputy Director of Operations; I was Executive Director of the Mayor’s Task Force on Special Education; I worked at the Board of Education for 10 years; I ran special education for the city; I was Director of Management for the Board of Ed; I was Chief Operating Officer of Bellevue Hospital-so I’ve done a few jobs. That’s in the last 10 years. So for me, when this job came up, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. When this came up the last time, I almost gave up my commissionership to come here because this is my alma mater, and I believe passionately in the mission. I come from two immigrant parents, and for me it wasn’t, "Do you go to CUNY or do you go somewhere else?"; it was "do you go to CUNY or do you go to work?" So this terrific career that I’m having would never have happened without CUNY, and I never forget that. So this opportunity to come back is just a godsend for me. So that’s a little about who I am and why I’m here. Let me talk a little about what I’m going to try to do while I’m here.

The first thing-not that I want it to be this way, but from what I know, from people I’ve talked to in the city and state whom I’ve known for a lifetime-there is not going to be a lot of new money from the city and state in the next two years. That is not what I want. I will join you to do anything we can about that, but that is real, and it is certainly real for next year. We have a Master Plan that talks primarily about hiring new faculty, about technology, about support services, a lot of things. So I want to be sure that the university does not just languish for the next two years. My general view of large organizations is that if they’re not moving forwards, they’re moving backwards, and we certainly don’t want to do that collectively. Then one of the things I believe we need to do is that we spend a fair amount of money on administration in this university, and there are ways through using technology, maybe through managing a little smarter, that we can make those things be a little cheaper and at the same time have at least the same quality. If we can do that, that allows us to take some of that money, or all of that money, and use that money to do the thing that we believe this university needs the most, which is to hire more full-time faculty. So the major thing that I’m doing is spending my time-my staff, people on the campuses-we’re coming up with lists of things to do, also to raise revenue.

Just to give you an idea of some of the things we’re thinking about, so you can get a flavor for it-one of the things I did at my last job. When I was in my last job, there’s a whole industry of people that go out and audit telephone bills. It turns out that Verizon has a business model where every time you go out and take a look, you’ve been overcharged, and old phone lines that you used to have 10 years ago, you’re still being billed for them. So I was able to go out in my last job, instead of taking PEG cuts. We did an audit periodically, and I would save between $3 and $5 million every time we did it, just doing that. CUNY hasn’t done this, as far as I know, on most of the campuses, like forever. So I’m going to do that.

We’re going to take a look at the energy program. One of the things we don’t do is when fuel gets dropped off-nobody measures that we get the right amount of fuel. This is an industry described to me by the industry as a bunch of "skells." I’m not sure what skells are, but I don’t think it’s good. So I think you want to spend some time taking a look at how it’s done. In my house, I’m the angry middle-aged man, which means I walk around my house saying things to my kids like, "Doesn’t anybody turn off the lights? Doesn’t anybody turn off the television?" And the reason I do that is because in my basement I have a little wheel that is turning, and the more it turns, the more I pay. In this university, the energy bills are paid centrally, which means if I’m on a campus, I don’t care-I’m not paying for it. Just like if somebody else paid my electrical bill at home, I wouldn’t walk around being the angry middle-aged man. I’d be much kinder to my family. So we’re going to take a look at that. There are proposals we have where companies have come in and said very simple things, because we have the ability to go to gas and also oil. They tell you when to switch depending on the market, so if you switch back and forth, there are probably savings of several million dollars.

We want to do joint buying. You take a look at licensure for computers that we do in this university. A little college buys seats; they get one price. You take a look at a larger college; they get a different price. Let’s buy those seats together. We’ll get a better price than any of them get. Let’s do what’s called reverse auctions to buy PCs, where you pre-qualify all the vendors. They go on-line and they bid against each other. You give ’em a two-hour period and you get very close to the bottom of the market when you do that. And then what happens at the end of the bidding period is if any bid comes in, the bidding stays open for three more minutes. When the state did this, the state opened for almost five hours, because everybody tried to get just a little bit lower once they had those sunk costs already. So there’s a whole group of things we can do that over time will save a lot of money.

The big structural thing that we want to do is take advantage of the fact that we’re not like SUNY, spread out all the way from Buffalo to Stonybrook. We’re all fairly close. So we’re going to do a pilot project in the Bronx. We’ll take the three Bronx campuses and look at the purely administrative services, things like personnel-backroom personnel, not the person who gives you advice, but the person who sits there and enters the information-and say, "Okay, Lehman will take the lead on that, and Hostos will take the lead on something else." Over time, through attrition, it’ll allow us through economies of scale you get when you do that and take care of some of the seasonality-it allows you to trade out some people. You take those attrited lines and you can place them elsewhere. In time, we hope to do this for the whole city. And now we used to have 90 people doing it, and we’ll get another bite at it and say only 60 people need to do it because of all those economies of scale and using technology, and then you have 30 more lines, and you do that over every administrative service and keep returning it back to the academic programs. So that’s a big piece of it. Having been the Commissioner for Technology, obviously that interests me.

We’re going to build our administrative systems, and we’re also going to build the best portal of any university in the United States. One of things I did in my last job was that I had a technology fund, which has just provided CUNY with a $5 million grant to build a portal. I asked consultants-CTGI, who built the White House Web site-to take a look across the country at all the universities of about our size and see what they’re doing as a Web presence. Who are the leaders, and where do we fit compared to them? We fit in the middle-we’re about at the fiftieth percentile. But I said to them, what would it take-less than $5 million-that would have CUNY be the unqualified leader as a Web presence, that if anybody asked the question, "Who’s the leader in the United States on the Web?" the answer would be "Everybody knows that-the City University of New York." We can do that for a reasonable price. To try to do that in brick and mortars is tough. So we’ll build the best portal that there is, and they gave us a plan to do that. We just picked a vendor to work with us on that. A lot of the business can then get done over the Web, things for faculty. You file expense forms-all this stuff can happen over the Web. It’s also your presence for students. I don’t think anybody wants the following student, the student who gets up in the morning and says, "You know, I think I want to consider Hunter College. Why don’t I go to my typewriter and write a letter to Hunter College, and then I’ll wait patiently while Hunter College sends me a catalog, and then I’ll look at it." Students don’t do that any more. If you’re interested in Hunter College, on your campus, your home, your high school, wherever you are, you go on the Web and you look at Hunter College, and what you see is Hunter College. And if it looks like it’s not progressive, if it looks like you’re not getting good information, you’ll say, "It looks like a backwater." But if you see something that knocks your socks off, you’ll say, "You know what? That’s a place that I might want to participate in." So we’re going to do that, and it’ll make it much cheaper to do our business, and we’ll all do it in a much nicer way. Those are the big technology things we want to do.

You may have heard we’ve done some negotiations with the PSC. We have attempted a settlement which I think is going to be really a good settlement for the university, given the dollars we have to work with. That’ll all be announced as soon as it gets costed out. So that’s another big piece. And the other big piece-one of the things I’m going to do for as long as I’m here, and this is already the third longest I’ve ever had a job (I’ve been here for six months), is every week I visit another campus, so I’m going out to York at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and that’ll be my nineteenth. And I’m going to keep doing that for as long as I’m here. I am struck by the differences in terms of physical plant of the campuses across CUNY. I have a little bit of a Robin Hood complex, so I need to figure out how to do something about that. That’s another major issue for me. At some point, in a better budget period, we need to take a look at how particularly the senior colleges are funded. As best I can tell, the community colleges look like it has some relationship between that and the number of students. The senior colleges seem to have relationship to something that happened in 1923, and then it’s pluses or minuses since then, but nobody remembers why it happened in 1923. When we have a little more money, we need to take a very serious look at that and try to fix it. I can’t fix it without money, because, much as I say I have a Robin Hood complex, it means taking money away from campuses, and this is a really underfunded university. If you take a look at analysis in dollars adjusted for inflation, we’ve done really badly. I went up to Albany last week and tortured every legislator I could find, because they did the wrong thing. Now there’s no money, and that’s life, and that’s okay; no one can change that. But there was a lot of money around for the last 10 years, and CUNY didn’t get its share. So in a better period we’ve got to find a way to fix the things that happened in 1911. So that’s who I am. Those are the things we’re working on. That’s what I care about, and for me it’s a real honor to be part of this university. For me, it’s a dream. Thank you.

Professor Philipp, Lehman: Is your office intending to be helpful to the Chancellor after his announcement of fund-raising campaigns on the campus? V-C Dobrin: I will be helpful to the Chancellor any way he wants, but that’s not the piece that I’m going to take the lead on. Professor Philipp: As a faculty member at Lehman, on the one side it’s nice to hear that the back-office operations will be concentrated at Lehman, but we have a certain amount of trepidation about this kind of thing because the back-office operations are so creaky in CUNY that you need to interact personally with the people in the back offices, and if they’re all at Queens and we’re at Lehman, we may have a real problem with that. And if they’re all at Lehman and you happen to be at Hostos, well, people at Hostos may have a problem with that. V-C Dobrin: Well, we’re not going to do everything. What we’re doing is we’re sitting with sensible people, I believe, and we’re going to do the ones that make sense, and do them in a way that makes sense. If, at the end of the day, we save very little and we just made them all better, that’ll be fine, too, but we’re not doing it out of any kind of ideology, like "We’re doing them all and they’re happening no matter what"-we’re really not doing it that way. We’ll try to do it sensibly. One of the things that really drives my staff nuts is I really have an open-door policy. If anybody thinks we’re doing it wrong, come and talk to me. God knows we’ll make some mistakes. One of the things I try to do is a lot of change in my life. The best line I’ve ever heard is, "Nobody likes change except wet babies." It’s not related to CUNY-in every culture, everyone kind of complains about where they are. I am the world’s expert on comparative organizational cultures in that I’ve worked in more of them than anybody. CUNY’s a damned good culture. It’s got good values; it’s got a good mission; people generally work hard and are trying to be smart about things. They can get better, but any change you make, everyone’s upset. But that’s okay, because after you make the change, if you try to undo it, they get upset, too.

Professor Vozick, BMCC/York: I compliment you on your heads-up sensibility of what you’re doing. It sounds very nice. I’ve tried to get attention to this in previous discussions with the Chancellor and so on-is there anybody in the shop who is thinking seriously about adjuncts? A serious part of our faculty have been adjuncts for several decades. According to your analysis, according to everyone else’s analysis, it’s going to continue on that way for decades more, or at least into the foreseeable future, and I wonder if anybody is thinking about how that’s managed, whether the concerns of the people actually doing the work are factored into the equation of how the system is designed, and a host of related questions. V-C Dobrin: Number one, I am an adjunct, so I identify with adjuncts, but more importantly, I’m working with Brenda Malone, who is our Vice-Chancellor of Human Resources. I believe there is the following group of people-it may not be P.C. to say, but this is what I believe, and I could be wrong. When I went to graduate school, there were lots of us, hundreds and hundreds of us working on Ph. D.s, and we believed there would be excellent jobs in academia, that we would have tenure-track positions and have this great career. That’s because we’re the baby-boom generation. It looked like it was going that way when we were in school. I believe that that isn’t what happened, and I believe that there are some large number of people in this university who are cobbling together a living based on teaching four or five courses somewhere; they’re not making the amount of money that they should be making for the amount of education they have and what they’re doing, and they’re probably a little angry about that, because they kind of bought into a system that didn’t deliver what it looked like it would deliver when they started. We need to spend some time thinking about first how large that group is, and then how to make that group be more a part of the university. I think probably you’ll see we did some of that with the new contract, but we need to do a lot more of it, and that’s a real question that I’m going to spend a lot of time on.

Professor Hastick, Medgar Evers: Did I hear you say that York College will be your nineteenth college that you’ll be visiting? V-C Dobrin: I’ll be there at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Professor Hastick: Then it’s safe to assume that you’ve already been to Medgar Evers College on Bedford Avenue between Crown and Montgomery? V-C Dobrin: I have. That was probably about fifth. Professor Hastick: And you have already made your assessment of the needs of Medgar Evers College, I’m assuming? V-C Dobrin: You remember when I said the whole Robin Hood thing? Everyplace needs to get better, so I’m not crossing anyone out, but in the same week, I visited Medgar and Kingsborough. Professor Hastick: Medgar is the one with the view. V-C Dobrin: One of the things you’re blessed with is I love Edison Jackson. But as wonderful as it is, it’s not so wonderful that the second building I visited should stay the way it is, you know, the one with the rain coming through the roof. I saw two buildings when I visited. One was where the administrative building was, and I thought that was okay, and then I visited the other one, where a lot of students are being educated, and it looked like a scene out of South Pacific, with the temporary Quonset huts. It’s a despicable situation. It’s my number one priority among all the campuses. Now the only issue is, "Who cares if it’s my number one priority?" Hopefully it’ll be the governor’s number one priority, too. When I talk about the differences between campuses, Medgar is one of the three that I think about the most. This’ll probably make half the room nuts-the ones I saw, Medgar, Bronx Community, and New York City Technical College were the three probably that were the most problematic in terms of physical plant. Professor Hastick: In that order. And it’s good to know that you have an open door policy. We’ll be visiting.

Professor Kaplowitz: Actually I was going to ask you something else, but I certainly have to say as a representative of John Jay that I hope John Jay is up there because we’re the most space-encumbered- V-C Dobrin: Yes, you’re the most overcrowded campus in the university. Professor Kaplowitz: Yes, dangerously so. My question has to do with another aspect of your responsibilities. Could you tell us something about the contract with Crowell Associates, who were supposed to do a security assessment and evacuation plan assessment? V-C Dobrin: There’s two. We have Crowell and Bratton, and they’re doing two things. One is they’re putting together a template for us for use in emergencies. When I was Chief Operating Officer of Bellevue, we used to have lots of emergencies; it just happened all the time. And we had a plan in place. Everyone knew what to do. We all went to a room. There were flashlights; there were walkie-talkies; there were arm bands; there were all the things you need. Everybody knew what was happening, and regularly we would have drills. They weren’t just table-top-they were drills. In the whole hospital we would ring the fire bells, and we’d have people run into the emergency room with mock blood and mock bandages, and we would have observers-trained, paid observers-who would look and see how we handled the emergency and they would make recommendations. So we’re going to try to put a program like that together. It probably won’t be exactly the same, with people coming in ambulances to the colleges, but other than that, it’ll be similar. The second thing we did was we asked the Bratton Group to go out and take a look at the campuses, make recommendations about whether we’re doing the right things university-wide in terms of security, and make some preliminary recommendations on what they saw on the campuses--not in depth. If any of the campuses after that want to do in-depth evaluations, we can look at that. It’ll cost a little more money-that’s the American way. Professor Kaplowitz: Can those reports be shared with us? V-C Dobrin: Oh, sure. The only caveat I would have is if any of them have something that looks like something that we wouldn’t want out in the general public, we would leave that out, but I don’t think we will.

Professor Manassah, City: You came just at the end of the time when the previous resolution was discussed. The gist of it was effectively that of publishing both the expenditures and the budgets of the different colleges. I know you may not have at this moment all the information broken down; however, it would be rather easy to create some sub-categories, and rather than each college trying to make its own reporting, would it be possible at all for the reports to start being presented by CUNY? I know that at this moment there are some reports that get published from CUNY about the budget. They’re not exactly what would satisfy you. So I just would please ask you to assess this situation and try to see whether from your office you can actually help achieve what the previous resolution sought. V-C Dobrin: I didn’t have a chance to read the resolution, but Henry Stern, who was the Parks Commissioner for two mayors-he gives everyone these cute park nicknames. Mine’s "Survivor," because I’m the only one who worked with all three mayors. So given I don’t really know the issue, and I assume the Chancellor has some view of it and the college presidents, I will take what you said seriously under advisement.

Professor Crain, City: In terms of money, I just want to say that in the Pataki executive budget, there are $13.4 billion in tax cuts. I’m not saying we can get the money, but there is the money. V-C. Dobrin: I know, and to be honest, he’s not asking me. I wish he was, but he’s not. I really would rather see one of those 13 with CUNY. If we had one of those 13, we could really do a lot of good. But he’s not asking me. I have no expectation he’s going to. So the problem for me is we have 197-198,000 students out there that we have to do the best for that we can, given some of the values of society, not the values that I would choose, but no one’s asking me.

Professor Cooley, York: I want to take this opportunity to invite you to a tour of the campus by the faculty tomorrow once you have been entertained by our administration. V-C Dobrin: I probably can’t take you up on it. I know I have a 10 o’clock meeting tomorrow; I know I have this at 8:30. I don’t even know what I have at 10, but I know it would be more fun walking through the campus with you. I don’t know how to do it without undermining the president, also, which I don’t want to do. Professor Cooley: Why would it be undermining the president to meet with faculty? V-C Dobrin: Well, I’m here with faculty tonight. It doesn’t, but I assume the President wants to take me for a tour. If I said to him, "Okay, I just had a cup of coffee with you; now I’m going to walk around, even though you were planning to talk with me, with someone else," it would be hard to do. But I just don’t have the time tomorrow. Let me think about coming back and doing that. Professor Cooley: Would you consider coming back another time to meet with us? V-C Dobrin: Well, I’m going to come back to all of them again. It’s doable. 19 or 20 is doable. I remember when Ray Cortinez came to New York and he visited his first school. He said to the press, "I’m going to be a hands-on Chancellor. I’m going to visit every school. I’m coming back regularly. They’re going to know of my presence." And one of the reporters said to him, "Mr. Chancellor, you’ve got 1100 schools. If you do one every day, you won’t back here for seven years." And he said, "Oh." But I can do ours and come fairly regularly. Professor Cooley: So we’ll send you an invitation. V-C Dobrin: I’d like that.

Professor O’Malley, Kingsborough: I do hope you keep your job longer than usual. Kingsborough may be the most beautiful campus, but we do have the worst registration. We have just been in session for slightly over two weeks. I could tell you horror stories. And it’s because we don’t have phone registration; we don’t have Web-based registration; we have chaos. Do you have anything to do with that? Not the mess, not the cause, but straightening it out? V-C Dobrin: Yes, I have a lot to do with that. And we’re going to do that. Professor O’Malley: What are you going to do? V-C Dobrin: One of the things we’re going to do is-it’s great to be a university with lots of different colleges, colleges in different communities, and they should have different educational needs and different kinds of students, and that’s great. But we don’t need to have different computer systems, generally speaking. We’re doing something-Mike Ribaudo can talk more about it-called E-SIMS. I think Kingsborough is going to be one of the ones we do. If we all do it together-and we’ve already done it at eight campuses, and the people I’ve talked to at Hunter and other campuses who have it seem to like it-and we’re going to do it at your campus, also. And we’ll be able to centrally support it. Mike? Mike Ribaudo: Your president has just agreed to migrate off the mainframe you’re running your system on to 57th Street, and has agreed to work with us to implement the voice registration and the E-SIMS registration, such that you probably, hopefully, will be there by the Summer registration.

Professor Bohigian, John Jay: I pass this message on to you because you have a better likelihood of getting it to the mayor than I would, but I noticed in his budget address, which was quite expert-he really showed a real grasp of the budget-he made a key point of saying that he’d like to spread out the pain equally, make his best attempt. He spoke about the police department, and he spoke about its membership being around 39,000. It had been down a little bit, and in the next class, he wanted it back up to around 39,000. In that same period of time that he’s referring to, the CUNY full-time faculty has dropped from 12,500 to 5,000 or below, so talking about equity and redistribution, I think if we’re talking about a Robin Hood principle, there really have to be some fundamental questions. In that same period of time, the police department had about 23,000, so they’ve grown by leaps and bounds, as just an example. So if equity is involved here, some real attention has to be paid, and not just lip-service, to getting CUNY full-time faculty back up to where it belongs. V-C Dobrin: I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve had this conversation now with all the deputy mayors; I haven’t had it with the mayor, but I know the Chancellor and I will have that conversation with the mayor. We’ve shared with the city, with the state, with everybody, those numbers, and every single thing that I work on is going to be devoted to rectifying that. Professor Bohigian: A small parenthetical attachment-in the Sunday Times, there was an article about the poor English department at Columbia University-Columbia College, my alma mater. They were having trouble filling some of their 76 tenured English lines. We’re talking about a student body there of probably less than John Jay has. Currently, we have something like 23, 20 or something-they’re getting Bundy Aid because they need Bundy Aid from the state, when we’re hard up? We don’t have anything like that in terms of faculty, and our student loads are two or three times theirs? All of these facts have to be brought to the attention of the politicians, and some action has to be taken. V-C Dobrin: I can promise you half of that. I can promise you we’ll bring it to the attention of the politicians in a very forceful way. I can’t promise you how they’ll react. Professor Bohigian: I appreciate that because I know you’re sincere about it, but it’s just an opportunity to get it to their attention. V-C Dobrin: Probably even more relevant to me than the police department is the Board of Ed. Probably in the last three years, we’ve put another $3 billion into the Board of Ed. If we had 10 percent of that, and it’s not because I’m here now-I would’ve said the same thing working for the Board-we can do a lot more with $300 million than they can; $300 million, they don’t even notice it. If we had another $300 million, we could do a tremendous amount of good.

Professor Beaky, LaGuardia: Have you been to LaGuardia? V-C Dobrin: Sure. When I go to York tomorrow, other than our medical school, which I’m going to visit next week, I’ll have been everywhere. Professor Beaky: I’ve just finished Middle States, so I know some of the problems that we’ve been having. Okay. I just wanted to know.

Professor Petratos, CSI: Every time an administrator is hired, you raise a question, "Is that person needed?" The answer is typically this: "Do you know that the other colleges have more than we have?" So keep that in mind in your efforts. My favorite example is where do you toss the buck, here and there. We’ve come to the point where we’re putting down sprinkler systems where there’s no water in the world, and where grass doesn’t die, and there are tremendous expenditures when it comes to those areas. But as we’re talking about frugality, have you also looked at the Central Office? Would you recommend frugality changes there? I would say that you would be a very brave man if you come close to recommending abolition. V-C Dobrin: But I’d have to get another job then. Professor Petratos: We’ll hire you in my department. Apparently we’re doing okay in that area. I think the Senate organized the colloquium that we had on the budget, and the Budget Director was there. The two bars that shot up in the sky are Student Services and Academic Support. What do we do? I went to City College, also. I remember the President and the Provost had a staff of eight people and a Dean of Students who used to march us any time there was any trouble to the cafeteria. And at that point, City College was a stellar institution in the system, if not in the world. What are all these other people doing, for these two bars to be going up and the faculty bar to be going down? V-C Dobrin: First of all, I worked at 110 Livingston Street. When I worked there, there were 5800 administrators at 110 Livingston Street. I worked a lot with the police department. The police department’s a place where you meet with a full captain, and you agree on what information he’s going to give you. A lieutenant does the work, and a sergeant carries it over. You ask the sergeant a question, and he’ll say, "My job is just to carry it over." It’s a very, very rich place. CUNY Central is not a rich place, compared to other places, believe it or not. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t shrink it, which I’m going to do. When I talk about reorganizing CUNY, it’s got to be included. When I say that I want to meet with my management analysis people, they say "We don’t have any management analysis people." It’s not a rich place, but we’re going to shrink it. I think there’s real opportunity in that we have a fair amount of redundancy. I think we have redundancy on the IT side in that we’re running two data centers, so there’s a lot of things that we can do, and we will do it. There’s not millions of dollars there, though. In terms of the salaries, do we have any English professors here? I’m not sure if this is an analogy or a metaphor, but the one I’m using all the time is major league baseball. We’re becoming major league baseball at this university-so you bring in a V. P. at a certain salary, and all the other ones say, "I want that salary, too," and the one who’s got that salary was told, "Because you’re at the Such and Such College or Center, we agreed to make you the highest." He says, "Wait a minute-the guy at the community college is making what I’m making. I don’t want to make 150; now I want to make 160." Then everyone goes, "Gee, he’s making 160, so we’ve all got to go up." That’s not healthy. So I want to try to break the back of that. We need to do something about that. But it’s actually not happening at Central-a lot of the Vice-Presidents make more than the Vice-Chancellors, so it’s not happening in the same way at Central.

Professor Cooley, York: Since we brought up the subject of administration, seven years ago at York College, we had seven on the executive compensation plan. Currently we have 14; that’s because two had left. So in the last seven years, they have doubled. So perhaps that’s one area you can look at tomorrow while you peruse our campus. V-C Dobrin: One of the things that I do is that we do have a pretty good book that I’m looking at with all the expenditures per college. It shows all the different kinds of staff and how they got that, and they actually gave it to me over a five-year period. Somebody said before that numbers have no meaning if you look at them and they’re not at least compared to something else, or to a different moment in time. They’re just numbers. So I am looking at that, and what I’m going to spend most of my time doing is shrinking that number and then moving that to the academic side of the house. It took me about three weeks to figure this out-there are no students at 80th Street. That means if I come to this university to better the lives of the students, I’ve got to do it out on the campuses. I’ve got to try to get as many resources as I can out to you.

III. Reports

c. Update on Intellectual Property by Manfred Philipp, Lehman - I will make this brief because I think most of you have heard this issue. You know that the Chancellery has moved to create a new intellectual property policy for the university unifying the two separate, fragmentary policies for copyrights and patents. There was a primarily administrative committee that met to create a new policy that was published practically a year ago now. Since then, it has come open for comment. We had a hearing that was sponsored by the UFS on this policy. It was very well attended. Numerous people testified. It was in fact much too large for the room. Many people emailed that they would have liked to have come but could not because of teaching commitments. The PSC, under the leadership of Steve London, who is here, created an IP Committee that drafted an alternative document. I served on that committee also, and that document is on the PSC Web site. We made sure that the last university draft and the PSC draft were handed out this evening. Right now, after the hearing, there are still major open questions about how future policy will be structured in CUNY. Some of the major open questions are, for instance, what happens to people’s instructional intellectual property that’s used in teaching, including perhaps books and other things; there are issues on how patents will be handled inside the university; there are many open issues. Right now we’re waiting for a new draft to be issued by Vice-Chancellor Schaffer, who said that he would address the issues that were brought up at the hearing, at which many of you were present. We hope that this new draft will come out soon. He’d like the policy to be passed by the Board of Trustees sometime in the fall. That itself is controversial, because many people, including myself, feel that such a policy should not be passed only by the Board of Trustees, but has to be subject to collective bargaining negotiations-that’s my position-which puts it back with the PSC, which I think is also their position. So these are open issues. Some open issues may be solved; some, maybe not. Right now, you can see the various drafts, and you have the right to comment on them. You can send comments to, on the one side, the PSC Web site. On the other side, you can send them to an email address that’s maintained by the UFS. It’s <IPZPolicy@hotmail.com>, and you can send your suggestions on how we should respond to the next draft that Vice-Chancellor Schaffer may issue.

IV. Chair: Thank you. We have a whole bunch of other things to pick up on. Unfortunately, Mr. Walcott has been sequestered at City Hall someplace and just called and indicated that he probably will not make it, but he may send a surrogate, but we may not be here by the time the surrogate arrives. We have some resolutions that we would like to bring before you. One of them is from our Student Affairs Committee.

V. New Business

a. See above.

b. Resolution on Undocumented Students’ Tuition (see Reports & Deliberations)

c. A resolution that college presidents not include personnel actions in their reports to CUNY Central if those actions were not reviewed by the P & B committees of colleges was presented by Professor Manassah, City College. In keeping with past precedent, the resolution was referred to the Executive Committee for review before final presentation to the body. A brief discussion followed the referral to the Executive Committee:

Professor Cooper, CSI: This is kind of an informal question. Issues like this have come up in the past, and most, if not all of the times, they have been resolved by private conversation between the Chair of the Senate and what used to be the Deputy Chancellor or the Chancellor. I know that post isn’t around any more and neither is the individual who resolved them, but the way that this was frequently dissolved as an issue was by that kind of procedure. Is that something that has evaporated, or doesn’t it work anymore? When the faculty have had serious concerns either about appointments or about curriculum changes that have not gone through the usual campus procedures, generally they have been pulled from the agenda and investigated in the past by a sort of quiet diplomacy. Are you suggesting that the era of quiet diplomacy is over? Chair: Curriculum matters have been pulled and reconsidered. Most personnel matters have been quietly handled. The last batch of personnel matters where this arose, an attempt was made to quietly handle it, and it was not successful. Professor Cooper: How about a second attempt? One might put consistent pressures on. It seems to me that it takes a while to educate new presidents. Some of them are slower learners than others. Chair: Certainly, rather than something public at the next Board meeting, I would prefer private stuff, and maybe the threat of publicity will permit the private to work. It didn’t last time.

Finally, Professor Catherine Richardson (Nursing, NYCTC) reminded the body that the University Committee on Research Awards needs faculty reviewers, so requests to serve should be disseminated on the campuses.