May 19, 1998

Chair Cooper called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in the Harold Proshansky Auditorium of the Graduate School and University Center. Present were Senators from the following campuses: Baruch: Hill, McCall, Otte, and Pollard. BMCC: Friedman, Jaffe, Price, Reid, Vozick, and Young. Bronx CC: Belilgne, Cummins, and Fuld. Brooklyn: Bell, Hager, Haggerty, Jacobson, London, and Shapiro. CCNY: Chenzira, Connorton, Crain, Grossman, and Sohmer. Staten Island: Cooper S., Levine, Petratos, and Svenningsen. Hostos CC: Cardona. Hunter: Hampton, Kurzman, Matthews, Sherrill, Steinberg, Wonsek, and Alternate Baxter. Law School: James. Graduate School: Baumrin, Dauben, and Rothman. LaGuardia CC: Beaky, Gallagher, Mettler, and Reitano. Lehman: Feinerman, and Mineka. John Jay: Bohigian, Clark, Davenport J., Kaplowitz, Rodriguez, and Alternate Davenport E. Kingsborough CC: Bellu, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, Richter, and Alternates Hesse, and Laurenty. Medgar Evers: Bennett, Donohue, Harris-Hastick, and Umolu. Mt. Sinai: Levitan. NYC Technical: Cermele, Derany, Donoghue, Norton, Walter and Alternates Hounion, and Richardson. Queens: Brady, Diamond, Franco, Frisz, Kulkarni, Savage, and Alternate Seley. Queensborough CC: Barbanel, Dahbany-Miraglia, Gellman, Greenbaum, Mullin, Piltch, and Alternates Allaire and Specht. York: Doss, Odenyo and Alternate Kumar. Professors Berkowitz and Cooper A. were excused. Governance Leaders present: Feinerman (Lehman), Fuld (BCC), Hampton (Hunter), Kaplowitz (JJ), Kurzman (Hunter), Levine (Staten Island), Mandelbaum (Queens), Mettler (LaGuardia CC), O’Malley (KCC), Specht (QCC) Interim Chancellor Kimmich attended with Dr. Pulliam. Professors Cammett (JJ, emeritus), Eggers (BMCC), and Weil (CCNY) attended the session. The Parliamentarian was Professor Staum (KCC). Executive Director Phipps and Adminstrative Assistant Pasela were present.

 I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was approved.

II. Approval of the Minutes of 252nd Plenary Session (April 28, 1998): The minutes were amended to include Professor Frisz in the Members-at-Large nominations made in April. The minutes were approved.

III. Reports: [Recorded in Reports & Deliberations]

a. Chair.

b. The Interim Chancellor.

c. Annual Report of the Faculty Advisory Council to the Research Foundation. Appended

d. Faculty Members of Board of Trustees Committees. Written reports were accepted.

Nomination and Election of Officers and Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee: Professor Maria Rodriguez, Chair of the Elections Committee, conducted this portion of the meeting.

Professor Bernard Sohmer (Mathematics, CCNY) was elected Chair. The Secretary, with unanimous approval of the body, cast a single ballot.

Professor Cecelia McCall (English, Baruch) was elected Vice Chair by a single ballot cast by the Secretary after unanimous approval of the plenary.

Professor Susan O’Malley (English, Kingsborough CC) was elected Secretary by 47 ballots. Professor Donoghue received 33.

Professor Karen Kaplowitz (English, John Jay) was elected Treasurer by 55 ballots. Professor Greenbaum received 25.

Members-at-Large elected are:

Professor Martha Bell (Education Services, Brooklyn) – 58

Professor Anne Friedman (Developmental Skills, BMCC) – 58

Professor Fred Greenbaum (History, QCC) – 38

Professor Kenneth Sherrill (Political Science, Hunter) – 53

There was a run-off ballot to resolve a tie (of 34 ballots) for the fifth seat on the Executive Committee. Professor Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) was elected by 32 ballots. Professor Frisz received 27.

Additionally the first ballot conducted for members-at-large included the following candidates:

Professor Cermele received 27 ballots.

Professor Umolu received 27 ballots.

Professor Vozick received 19 ballots.

There being no new business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps

Executive Director

a. Chair: I want to start by thanking Richard Staum, who is sitting up here, and who should have been thanked last month. Richard’s term as a representative from Kingsborough has ended, but he has kindly agreed to stay on as Parliamentarian for the rest of this semester. He has served in exemplary fashion and has been available more than is usually required in this position. Thank you very much, Richard, and I wish everyone would join me in applauding.

I was not able to make copies of the impact data for everyone; I have only 20. I would like to make sure that there is one given to everybody from each college so that you will go home and xerox it tomorrow and pass it around.

The data are devastating. The ethnic groups that are worst hit over the next five years are Asian and Hispanic. The range in hit goes from 34% at Baruch to 64% in the baccalaureate programs at John Jay. For an average of 46% of the entering class that would have come in in 1997. The first four colleges included Baruch, Brooklyn, Hunter, and Queens. Brooklyn would be hit 46% -- I’m not reading one ethnic group, I’m reading the average -- Baruch, 34%, Hunter, 38%, and Queens, 43%. That’s with the Badillo/Calandra project in place and intensive summer programs for students. As the Chancellor said, in the second and third year, it is harder to tell. The second year includes City, the Bachelors at John Jay, Tech, Staten Island, and Lehman. City would lose 57% of last September’s entering class; John Jay, 64%, Lehman, 56%, Tech, 55%, Staten Island, 46%. Three of those have two-year degree programs that students might fall into. The third phase-in for the year 2001 is Medgar Evers and York. Medgar Evers would lose 39% and York 53%. The average across the senior college programs is 46%.

I also brought a few copies along of the names and addresses of the Senators I mentioned from New York City who are Republicans, who are the only ones who can have an impact on this. They are the only ones who can get into the Governor’s Office. I have a few copies of the names and addresses of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, which is the group that would ratify the appointment of the new Staten Island Trustee, whose vote obviously would be the decisive factor. I really urge you to start deluging those Republican senators. I know lots of you think electoral politics are a waste of time, and maybe they are in lots of cases. I don’t think this is one of them.

Five campuses would experience a decline of over 50% in the entering class, had this been in effect in 1997 in September. These are absolutely unacceptable figures. I don’t know whether these guesstimates will be persuasive to those who are determined to push the screw. Badillo will say that these is a worst case scenario, and this will not be the way it works out. I don’t know how many of our students are going to be able to go to summer immersion, to give up working in the summer, to find day care for their kids, and to pass these exams, all three of them. And how many of our students let us say, who may have arrived from Asia three years ago, and spent two years in a New York City high school, will be able to pass that writing test. The potential impact on Asian students is overwhelming here, because we have this large number who are not just arrivals with high school degrees, but who came a few years ago. The minute they spend one year in a New York City High School, they are liable to this resolution. So that even though they may be an ESL student, it won’t exclude them from this system. If these are the worst case scenarios, these figures, then I don’t know how much better they could get. Some campuses, Baruch I believe, perhaps Queens, have a little experience. The Hunter president mentioned this in passing once -- calculating how many students can get through the summer immersion and then get through the tests. And if I recall correctly, the best number that the Hunter President gave me still left out about 15-20% of the students who otherwise would have been admitted under the one semester remedial policy in place at Hunter.

At this point we have, in some of the senior colleges, introduced new remedial packages to conform with the 1995 Resolution that capped remediation at two semesters or one semester at the senior colleges. We have practically only one year of experience with this. There is some data. The Chair of the English Department at Hunter last night, for example, testified rather eloquently about its success. But they need the summer and the one semester. The summer was not enough. We didn’t hear anything yesterday about math, so I don’t have any equivalent reports to give you. We are still not to the point where the enrolled class would reflect what it does with one semester’s remediation.

b. Interim Chancellor Kimmich: Good evening, everybody. It’s always a pleasure to be here, I must tell you frankly, but I have a feeling that we are in the same groove lately. Thinking about what I was going to tell you today as I was driving over at about minus 2mph across 42nd Street, I realized that what really was on my mind had been on my mind the last time we met. If you’ll forgive me, can we just catch up on a couple of things and update you on two matters I think have transpired since I was here last. One is the Executive Budget from the City. We have some more details on that and we know a lot more about it than we did then. Of course, there is the additional wrinkle of the attendance policy. Secondly, to come back to a familiar topic, and that’s the status of the Remedial Resolution, which is on the agenda of the Board.

The 1998-1999 City Executive Budget, recommends a total of $332.2 million for funding for the six community colleges. It sounds good. This breaks down as follows: $78 million in City support, 23.5% of the total, that’s the same as last year. $114.5 million from the State, about 34.5% of the total, and $139.7 million in tuition support or 42% of the operating budget. So 42% of the operating budget is defrayed by the students, 34.5% by the State, and 23.5% by the City. In addition to the $78 million in support for the community colleges, the City provides, in accordance with the State Adopted Budget, $32.3 million in support of the City’s share of university management and of the associate degree programs at John Jay, Medgar Evers, New York City Tech, and College of Staten Island. Total funding of CUNY operations is $110.3 million. It does not, and here you’ll hear echoes of what I said the last time, this budget does not respond to the University’s request for dealing with inflationary increases. It does not provide any funding for hiring new faculty, for dealing with collaborative programs within the New York City Board of Education, for library expansion and for other critical programmatic needs. Nor does it provide, and this is potentially serious, adequate funding to meet prospective collective bargaining costs. In the absence of that support, the University might be forced to make massive reductions in other areas to cover those costs. Areas that can ill afford, of course, to lose already limited funds.

That’s the operating Budget. On the capital side, the City provides us with $20.7 million for two major projects. One is the acquisition of Center three and four buildings for LaGuardia Community College. This is one of our high priority items to allow that institution to add much needed academic space and to get rid of costly leases. And the building of what’s called the Academic Village at Kingsborough Community College. It will provide Kingsborough with classroom and laboratory space for various academic departments, as well as offices for community-related, and for collaborative programs such as the famous College Now. That money is matched, 50% by the State, for a total capital budget of $41.4 million from City and State. Let me get back to the operating budget. All together CUNY receives $110.3 million in support from the City, which is less than 9% of our total budget. In his budget message last month, all of you remember and we touched on it very briefly when I was here last time, the Mayor indicated that the University would not be able to expand the City’s contribution unless it met certain conditions. These conditions apply to class attendance.

The budget message indicated that CUNY would be required to establish an attendance policy. It would have faculty take attendance, it would keep attendance records, and it would make these records available for public inspection. Not least, the budget message suggests that an 80% attendance requirement would be necessary for students to remain enrolled. So that if you cut class more than 20%, your continued enrollment is in jeopardy. You should know, and most of you do know, that the University Policy today requires that we capture student attendance over the first five weeks. I think that’s standard for everybody, we’ve all done it, I’ve done it, you do it. One-third of the semester is already taken care of. For the community colleges it goes even further. Generally speaking, they take attendance throughout the semester. We have so informed the Mayor. We have also informed the Mayor that faculty taking attendance do so manually.

Each day, there are some 6,000 class sessions. Together these classes generate approximately 200,000 attendance notations. These are not punched into a computer, they are not captured on a data base, they are not scanned, they are not put on smart cards. They are kept by hand in roll books, the kind you and I remember probably from school days. These roll books are then turned in at the end of the semester to the registrar or to some college official where they are kept in storage. We have also in the process made inquires and found that most non-CUNY colleges in the metropolitan area do not take attendance. If they do, they don’t do it uniformly. We know that the City funds associate degree programs at both CUNY and SUNY, here in the City. But unlike CUNY, SUNY’s budget is not being tied to these new attendance proposals. We’ve made that clear to the Mayor and to the City Council.

I think that we can take some comfort in the fact that we are not in any violation of State, Federal, or other regulations. We do our job, and the faculty in fact is mindful of having students in their classes attend and be counted. Having said that, I should also tell you that we’re having difficulties actually ascertaining what happens on a day-to-day practice. I would ask a community college president, what is the policy at X College? The answer would be, we expect students to attend class and our policy is for faculty to take attendance. Do they actually take attendance? Well, they are expected to take attendance. If I say to the Mayor, at X College everybody takes attendance, can you give me assurances that I am not misspeaking. What happens in the class of 300? So it’s not always easy to pin this down, the only point I want to make. I do not think this thing is going to go away for awhile. It continues to be part of the discussions that we are having about the budget. We do not believe, and I want to stress that, that he has the legal authority to link the allocation of the City budget to conditions. I think that the State legislation on this, the maintenance of effort, makes it very clear that the City has to provide us money without conditions. Whether we ultimately have to test that in the courts remains to be seen. We are quite firm in our belief that this is an unwarranted and unenforceable kind of condition. But for a moment I think we have to understand that it will be with us for some time, and we’ll have to cope with it.

The other subject is the status of our Remedial Resolutions. I heard Sandi talk a bit about that already. The hearings of course were yesterday, which went on until 10:30 p.m., again very committed, passionate statements by a good number of faculty and outsiders. I was very pleased to see many of you there. That issue is the two resolutions, one proposed by Trustees Badillo and Calandra. The other one worked out in negotiations between me and Trustee Morning. They couldn’t be more different. They are as far apart I think as you could probably imagine. At the Long Range Planning Committee on the 6th of May, I was requested to devise some impact statements on these two resolutions. The Morning Resolution is relatively simple because it doesn’t change very much. So we don’t have to do a great deal of work on that. We have, however, done a lot of work on the other. I’ll just tell you about this for a moment. One of the things that I was very much concerned about when I saw it was that it used a test that was really designed for placement, as an admissions test. In all testing lore, it is very clear that tests are designed, validated, and normed for specific purposes.

What we’ve got over the twenty years that we’ve used it, since 1978, was validated and normed for placement. It was for putting people who did not have a level of writing skills to get them into English 101, into a remedial course so that they could get to the point where they got into English 101. It didn’t say anything else about their preparation for college work. It just talked about that one issue, whether it’s reading, math, or writing. That being so, yesterday I informed the Trustees, with copies to the Presidents, that I have considerable concerns about this transformation, this use of what were placement tests for admissions purposes. I indicated that while we would certainly look into it further, they should be aware that I felt that I would be remiss in my responsibilities, if I didn’t tell them before they went to vote, that they were walking on very thin ice.

Number two, we’ve done an extensive in-house study, which we completed tonight, and which we’ve transmitted to the Trustees tonight. It is on the impact on the ethnic diversity of the applicant pool, of a resolution which would eliminate remediation at all the senior colleges. Again, these are not easy statements or easy impact studies to make. The resolution is phased in, as all of you know, over three years. So the first year is relatively easy, you can say, this will be the impact on colleges A, B, C, and D. We know who therefore wouldn’t be admitted, and we can get a fairly clear sense of how this would break down ethnically. What about year two? When the colleges D, F, H, and I come? Will some of the students who didn’t get into the colleges the first year, move to the second tier? Will various interventionist strategies that we could devise, and we probably could devise some of them, have an effect on this? What happens in the third year when the last two colleges come on line? Will students who have been bounced from the second tier and move to the third tier be affected by this? So it becomes a very complicated way of trying to forecast the future. One of the things that we always run into when we prepare data like that, is of course the immediate rejoinder, well you know, you’ve just presented us with the worst possible case, and we cannot accept that. I’ve tried to explain to the Trustees in my cover note, that with the material that went out tonight on the ethnic studies, there clearly are questions about the future, about the predictability, about the certainty of the data. But we’ve done the best we could in trying to establish what would be the impact, and it is a significant impact on the diversity of the applicant pool in those three years.

We will be distributing the impact on enrollment in general and on the budget that goes with it. All of you know that the revenue of the senior colleges is generated by tuition, and in the absence of student tuition, that revenue is affected. So tomorrow we will be sending to the Trustees another document giving our projections on the budget. Again, that’s a rather complicated study. There is no way anyone can tell right now what the exact impact will be two or three years down the road. We can guess, we can make educated guesses, we can develop a range. We can say it probably is not the best, and it might not be the very worst, but it is somewhere in between, probably closer to the grimmer prediction than the lighter prediction. We’re laying out, both on enrollment and on budget, the range of possibilities as to how the senior colleges would be affected in their enrollment and in their subsequent revenues. You should know of course that it should not, immediately at least, affect the State allocation, which is not based on enrollment. But who knows how it might be effected in the future.

One of the things that I intend to put in my letter to the Trustees is that there are a number of assumptions we are making. We are making the assumption that the State Budget will not change, for example. We are making the assumption that certain students will return, they may and they may not. The whole exercise of doing impact studies is based on a series of assumptions, and I’m sure that some of you can even explain that better than I can, assumptions that may or may not affect the figures significantly. We’re doing the best we can, it is not an easy task to forecast the future that way. We do not want to leave the Trustees in doubt of the potential outcomes of a resolution that eliminates remediation at all the colleges. The two resolutions, or at least the Morning Resolution, is on the calendar of the Board Meeting next Tuesday. The other one clearly is in the wings. We can expect to see the next stage of this next Tuesday. Although, as you know, understand, and probably are participating in, there is a lot of work to be done behind the scenes between now and then. Let me stop here. I will answer questions and listen to comments.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) - "I just wanted to point out that contract money has always been funded by a special appropriation after the contract has been signed, and after they have calculated the cost of the contract. So it should not come out of the budget." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - That’s State law. / Professor Greenbaum - "That’s been practiced, but I’m not sure." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - It is State law but it is not necessarily City practice or City law.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "Even as placement exams, as you know, the skills tests more often than not underestimate a student’s ability to perform well in college. They are easily overridden by innovative programs. That’s another big deficit. The question is, I hope that on Tuesday you will officially make a recommendation in favor of the plan that will help save the University." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I will certainly speak to the issues.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I think it is important to look at CPI. What’s happening now is that many of the high schools do not provide CPI credit. As this is phased in, what this will mean is that many students will not be able to attend the senior colleges. A student came to me at Kingsborough, and suddenly she wasn’t being allowed to graduate. I pulled up her record, and then we pulled up Lafayette High School, where she had gone to high school. No English courses in Lafayette High School counted as CPI units. I’m not talking about ESL. Something is wrong. We have College Now at Lafayette; it’s a fine high school, but something went wrong. I think we better look at this before this affects admissions. I hope you will call for some kind of a review." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - In all of this I think a number of questions have surfaced about various practices of ours. The tests are one thing. I think that every meeting I’ve been in, someone has said why do we have these tests and what about all the problems that they carry with it? Well, these were not imposed on us, folks. These are our tests. So we can work on them, we can do something about them, we can take another look at them. CPI certainly is something that also came up. I’ve been trying to get an update from the office on this, where we stand, what our progress was. I did not know about this particular case, but that is very helpful, thank you.

Professor Levine (Applied Sciences, College of Staten Island) - "We all appreciate the difficulty of forecasting the future. What were the range of estimates of enrollment decline? What are the estimates on the tuition revenue shortfall?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I hesitate to answer that because when I left, both the budget office and the Deputy Chancellor were still trying to get the exact ranges. They were depending on how we count the students and how we count the dollars. One of the difficulties here of course is trying to estimate, on the basis of past performance, how many students we take in the Fall (full-year tuition), how many in the Spring (half-year tuition). How does this affect a case where students transfer in the middle of the year? Now I don’t want to get into too much detail, but it’s not something where you just take the number 100 and multiply by $3,400 and you have your answer. We will probably know by tomorrow. I’m sorry I cannot be more helpful than that.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "My question refers to the infamous Badillo-Calandra Proposal, or Proposal A. I was very heartened to hear that you pointed out once again to the Trustees that the FSAT’s were designed for a different purpose than it will be used if this passes. I have a question about another part of this. How can the senior college presidents and you over the summer, prepare an implementation plan by September 1998 when governance bodies aren’t meeting. And what about the community college presidents? If all these students are not coming into the senior colleges, this is absurd. I was hoping that perhaps you might have also been communicating the problems with that part of the proposal to the trustees." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - As of yesterday, none of the suggested changes that we had proposed had been made. The Resolution that you have there was the one that was talked about last night at the hearing, and is the one that stands as of this moment. One of the issues that we tried to raise, and that you are all familiar with, is to get an actual mention of SEEK in this particular resolution. No movement so far, lots of talk, lots of discussion, but nothing in writing. Nor has there been any flexibility on the timetable. I was trying to move for a later timetable so there would be the possibility for adequate discussion and faculty consultation on this.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) - "You alluded to the fact, but I’d like to make a point to follow up, about the enrollment impact and the possible budget impact. Right now the senior colleges are not funded according to enrollment, but that could change. My understanding is, especially from Vice Chancellor Rothbard’s briefings over the years, that there was a time, during the time when CUNY’s enrollment was declining, that indeed the budget allocation from the State was based on enrollment, because that harmed us. When our enrollment started going up, the State changed its allocation process so that we did not have more funds based on enrollment. History is very likely to be repeated. I think that is something that the trustees, if that haven’t heard already, might want to be given information about." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Thank you, I appreciate that. We are in an odd situation. For the senior colleges, there is no relation to enrollment in the State allocation, though there is clearly some relation to enrollment in the college allocation. Whereas in the community colleges everything is driven by enrollment.

Professor Richter (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I have a brief comment and a question. As far as the comment is concerned, you had said that after all the CUNY tests are of our own making, and therefore we could do something about it. The problem seems to me, the Board of Trustees has now mandated the giving of them, and has rather written them in stone. I know that there are attempts to change it, but I really hope that they will be successful. The Board of Trustees really seems to be intent on making academic policy on every possible level. The question concerns what is happening now behind the scenes about the community colleges. Other than a very glancing comment about the community colleges continuing to offer remediation, there is nothing in either proposal about the community colleges. It seems to me that the original CAP documents contained a great deal. Where is all this now, is it going to resurface? What is happening?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - That’s a very good question. Clearly the decision by pretty much every Trustee I talked to, was to focus on the senior colleges. The original plan, as you rightly point out, was trying to be more comprehensive in linking both so we see a coherent picture of what the impact would be and how the two systems would be related to each other. The present focus on CUNY senior colleges, I think is somewhat worrisome. Because it leaves the community colleges in limbo. What that brings to my mind, and probably to yours as well, is the fact that the Mayor has created this task force on -- depending on which document you read -- community colleges, or CUNY, or remediation. We are trying to make contact with the Task Force to see exactly where they are going, if they haven’t gotten there already, and to establish some sort of working relationship with them. It’s not something that we can very well refuse, because they will rely upon us for all sorts of assistance one way or the other. I will try in the process to find out whether there is anything that can be gleaned about the intentions or plans about the community colleges. The word that we heard when we talked about these matters with the Governor’s Office, is that they were not interested in doing anything about the community colleges, at this time. That’s a flexible term, but clearly there is no push to do anything right now. That may be just as worrisome as anything else. It is very much in our minds to seek assurance, and we’re trying to find out if there is anything. I will let you know.

Professor Galvin (Library, Kingsborough Community College) - "Just a clarification, you said something about library money. For those of you who don’t know, this past year community college libraries got $500,000. It was allocated to us by FTE. As an acquisitions librarian, it nearly tippled my usual amount that I could spend, it was great. I was told by The Office of Library Services, that would be a yearly request, is that dead this year?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - The budget allocation from the Mayor is exactly the same as we had last year. So whatever was in last year’s budget is probably available this year. We had asked for additional monies to deal with library acquisitions, to deal with computer workstations, to deal with wiring in the community colleges, and that did not come across. So that extra money that we had asked for is not available. / Professor Galvin - "But the book money is still there." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - If it was in year’s budget, it will be in this year’s budget.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) - "I don’t have a question, I have two related comments on the attendance policy. I understand your frustration trying to feed data to the Mayor who has rightly been described as sounding others as data proof. Let me just give you a few comments and you’ll obviously have to be more polite if you pass them on to the Mayor. Number one, it was absolutely infuriating for me, and I’m sure all my other colleagues at community colleges as well as four year branches, to have the Mayor tell this bold face lie about us not taking attendance. I have spent literally several thousand hours taking attendance over the last twenty years. We have these very detailed sheets we hand in. We hand them in after four weeks, we hand in a revised version of them at the end of the term. They not only have attendance, they have every single grade given in the course. Secondly, I think if the Mayor gets away with this, and let us hope he doesn’t. But if he does, we won’t need you, we won’t need any administrators, he will simply be able to set policy around the University by saying, I will withhold the money if you don’t do it this way, if you don’t do it that way." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I’m very much aware of your second comment. If I could ask a general question while you’re there, Professor Gallagher. I don’t know how large classes are in community colleges. What do you do with large classes in terms of attendance taking? / Professor Gallagher - "As large as mine, I’ve always taken attendance, 35-40." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Any classes in the hundreds? Are there assigned seats? [discussion off microphone, inaudible]

Professor London (Political Science, Brooklyn College) - "I want to go back to the impact statements for second. If you can’t tell us tonight what the ranges are, perhaps you can tell us at least what the assumptions that the study is operating on. The impact on ethnic diversity. What is the assumption as far as SEEK is concerned with respect to the two resolutions?" / Interim Chancellor - For the moment the work that we did on the ethnic impact, we included SEEK. In as much as SEEK is not explicitly excluded from that resolution. We do not separate it out, we include it. On the budget’s enrollment figures, we are going to do two sets, one with and one without. / Professor London - "Wouldn’t it be advisable to also do both sets with and without for the ethnic impact since it is not explicitly included in the resolution?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I don’t know whether it’s politically wise or whether it’s substantively wise, or whether it’s timely. For the moment I’m holding it. When the time comes I’m prepared to release it. But at this point I think it should go simply as a response to what I’m given and say this is what you’ve indicated will be in the resolution, this is what the impact would be.

Professor Sherrill (Political Science, Hunter College) - "I wanted to ask a data question as usual. This January something over 200 students, about 250 were euphemistically separated from Hunter because they did not complete remediation within this blocked time limit. I gather a larger number left Baruch, I don’t know what happened at Queens. Is anybody following these students? Do we know how many of them actually enrolled in a community college, how many dropped out? Are there plans to follow them over time so that we can determine whether or not they rebound from being sent to the minors or whatever euphemism people want to use. What are their grades like and so on. I think that you agree that we know something about the track records of students who are being currently sent out of the senior, you might be able to make some inferences about what will happen to future generations." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - That’s a very good point. At the end we have been tracking students who were separated for not meeting the requirements of the senior colleges ever since the policy went into effect in 1996. So we do have records over time. How detailed those records are other than where they went or whether they left or whether they returned, I do not know. I cannot for example tell you at this point whether we actually have success rates, graduation rates, grade reports, credit accumulation, or anything of that sort. But I would have to check it for you. / Professor Sherrill - "I would hope that Institutional Research would be encouraged to collect and complete a data set as soon as possible." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I think in general, one of the things that you should know that I have been saying to the Institutional Research people is that we should do as much as we can on longitudinal studies. It’s the only way to help us do some better predicting.

Professor Katz Rothman (Sociology, The Graduate Center) - "On this attendance issue, the tone of the conversation seems to have slipped into, oh but we do it sir. And how can we do it, what are the mechanisms. What is very distressing to me is the notion that there should be some Professorial authority about what we consider important to any given class and any given student in terms of attendance, and setting our own standards for passing our classes. For me in fact attendance has not been a crucial issue. If a student is doing passing work without attending the classes is satisfied with a C or B that they could earn that way, I believe that’s between me and the student. As opposed to kindergarten where its partially child care and you have to account for their little bodies. At college, what we showing is the content of the courses. So I’m really distressed by the way this conversation kind of flopped over into documenting our attendance taking policies."

Professor Donoghue (Social Sciences, New York City Tech) - "Just a comment. The Mayor is rather generous with the 20% attendance policy. Our attendance policy is to notify the student that they have excessive absences at 10%. I think at three classes, I think he should be notified at that." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - You walk a thin line here. You can either say to the Mayor, this is none of your business. We can do that and then we can wait for the next missile to hit. Or we can say, you’re wrong. This is very much in place, it’s faculty business. In fact we are doing it better than you’ve claimed. There are two strategies here. I’ve tended to prefer the one that costs us less.

Chair Cooper - I would like to thank Chris Kimmich for his refreshing honesty.

c. Annual Report of the Faculty Advisory Council to the Research Foundation: Appended.