THE TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

September 24, 2002

The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. in the Skylight Conference Room (9100) of the Graduate School and University Center. Seventy-five voting members were present:

Baruch: Present – Majete; Absent – Freedman, Giannikos, Hill, Melnik, Onochie, Pollard, and Wiley. BMCC: Present – Friedman, Price, Vozick, and White; Absent – Aymer, and Neis. Bronx CC: Present – Gonsher, Lopez-Marron, and Skinner. Absent -- Tanaka-Kuwashima. Vacancies – 1. Brooklyn: Present – Antoniello, Bell, Jacobson, London, Shapiro, Sheridan, Tobey, and Alternates Bloomfield and Sardy; Absent – Moriber, and Romer. Vacancies – 1. CCNY: Present – Benenson, Connorton, Crain, Manassah, Sank, and Sohmer; Absent – Broderick, and Buffenstein; Vacancies – 2. CSI: Present – Foleno, Klibaner, Levine, Petratos, and Alternate Chen; Absent – Cooper, and Yousef. CUNY Law School: Present – McArdle; Absent – Andrews (on leave). Graduate School: Present – Baumrin and Alternates Olan, and Weinstein; Absent – Katz-Rothman (on leave), Khuri, Kulkarni (on leave), Nair and Ofuatey-Kodjoe. Hostos CC: Present – Italia, and Alternate Vasillov; Absent – Canate (on leave) and Rivera.; Vacancies – 1. Hunter: Present -, Krishnamachari, Matthews, and Wallach; Absent – Friedman, Hampton, Kurzman, Sherrill, and Wimberly; Vacancies – 2. John Jay: Present – Bohigian, Holder, Kaplowitz, Wylie-Marques and Alternate Cochran; Absent – Mandery, and Richardson. Kingsborough CC: Present – Barnhart, Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Alternate Fridman. LaGuardia CC: Present – Beaky, Gallagher, Lerman, Mettler, Reitano and Alternate Davidson. Lehman: Present – Hosay, Philipp, and Tananbaum; Absent – Heching, and Mineka. Medgar Evers: Present – Barker, Harris-Hastick, and Alternates Hickerson, Leocal, and Patwary; Absent Bennett and Donohue. NYCCT: Present – Cermele, Dreyer, Hounion, Richardson, Walter, and Alternate Courdileone; Absent – Horelick. Queens: Present – Moore; Absent – Erickson, Savage, Speidel, and Sukhu; Vacancies – 5. Queensborough CC: Present – Barbanel, Dahbany-Miraglia, Weiss, and Alternate Tully; Absent – Pecorino. Vacancies – 1. York: Present – Cooper, Lewis, and Moss; Absent – Frank.

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Fridman (KCC), Friedheim (BMCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaG), Rodriguez (Hunter), Sohmer (CCNY), and Tobey (Brooklyn). PSC Liaison McCall attended. Faculty guests were Dahbany-Miraglia and Richter. Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minutes: The minutes of May 14, 2002, were adopted with the following correction: "Professor Diane Sank (Anthropology, CCNY) complained that no election of UFS delegates at CCNY had yet been held, and asked the UFS to investigate."

III. Reports:

A. Chair (recorded in Reports & Deliberations)   

B. The Chancellor (recorded in Reports & Deliberations)   

C. Representatives to Board Committees (written)

D. Campus Liaisons (written)

IV. Approval of the UFS Standing Committee Slate:

The following changes were made to the Slate.

Additions:

Elections Committee, Margie White (Nursing, BMCC).

Information Technologies and Literacy, Melvin Heching

(Math/Comp. Sci., Lehman

Media Committee, Laurence Holder (SEEK, John Jay), and Adrianne Wortzell

(Advertising Design & Graphics Arts, NYCCT)

Research Committee, Clayton Majete (Sociology & Anthropology, Baruch) and

Dina Dahbany-Miraglia (Speech Communication & Theatre Arts, QCC).

Deletions:

Academic Freedom, Joanne Reitano (Soc. Sci., LaGuardia).

Note: This year’s Chair of InfoTech/Literacy Committee is to be chosen.

V. New Business:

A. Professor Baumrin requested a complete list on enrollment changes and faculty increases and decreases as soon as possible because people are in disagreement about the numbers. Chair O’Malley indicated that she has requested from David Crook (Institutional Research) the numbers for the last ten years – faculty, substitutes, CCEs, librarians, and counselors on faculty lines. Professor Baumrin wished to compute the faculty/student ratio.

B. Professor Crain proposed the resolution that follows. It was seconded, discussed, and adopted unanimously:

Resolution on Master Plan Amendment

Whereas, The NY State Board of Regents is reviewing the CUNY Master Plan Amendment, which bars students with any remedial needs from admission to the university’s bachelor’s degree programs; and

Whereas, The Regents will decide by the end of this year (December, 2002) whether to continue this admissions policy; and

Whereas, The National Center for Educational Statistics reports that 85% of the nation’s public senior colleges offer remedial courses, and SUNY’s senior colleges offer remediation as well; and

Whereas, These colleges, nationwide and at SUNY, primarily serve white middle class students. It therefore strikes us as unfair to deny CUNY students, who are generally much poorer and predominantly students of color, the same remedial opportunities; and

Whereas, CUNY has not shown that the tests it uses to bar students from the bachelor’s degree programs predict success in CUNY courses and thereby meet the customary standards of test validity; now therefore be it

Resolved, That the University Faculty Senate urges the New York State Board of Regents to end the CUNY admissions policy that excludes students with any remedial needs from the bachelor’s degree programs, and be it

Further Resolved, That CUNY should develop an admissions policy that is more flexible and valid, and be it

Finally Resolved, That the University Faculty Senate urges the Regents to direct CUNY to develop an admissions policy that is more flexible, valid, and responsive to the needs of our students.

C. Professor Fridman raised the issue of Professor David Lavin’s ability to access official CUNY data, which reportedly has been restricted. The issue was referred to the Executive Committee.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:40 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps

Executive Director

September 24, 2002

III. Reports:

A. Chair: Welcome back, everybody, to a new year. Do pick up the materials in the back. There are enrollment figures; if you haven’t given in your enrollment figures yet, please do. There is a State Education draft report on the recertification of remediation. There is also a list of all of the things I have done since starting this job on the 16^th of May, and the roster of committee assignments. One change: Committee Night is next Tuesday, and you’ll also notice we have a plenary at the end of October. If you haven’t RSVP’d yet, we need to know if you’re coming. The response to committees has been good this year.

Some of you have heard about the proposed Berlusconi honorary degree. The Chancellor wanted to give such a degree to the Italian prime minister, and I want to say it didn’t go through the Board of Trustees yesterday, so there will not be given an honorary degree by this University in October (applause). I am hopeful no degree will be given in November or December. I want to thank all the people who were involved, the office staff, Humberto Canate, Bill Coleman—I got wonderful emails giving me all kinds of information. Anyway, chapter closed, I hope. We can move on.

There’s a newsletter. I hope you all got it. Lenore Beaky is right there, the editor of the newsletter. She already has a deadline for the second one. Make sure when you have elections that all your positions are filled. We still have some vacancies, although I see that City College has filled its holes, and I’m pleased.

Next plenary Trustees Morales and Beal will come. I’m hoping to get all the trustees to come so we can address them. Jeff Lovell, Pataki’s education person, says he’s coming. Larry Hanley, editor of Academe from City College, is coming to talk in November.

On October 2, a Wednesday, there will be a second hearing on the University’s proposed intellectual property in room 4102 of the Graduate School. Those of you interested in intellectual property, please show up. The policy has improved a good bit since the first hearing, but it has a way to go. If you go to the UFS website you can see the whole transcript of the first hearing, and at the University website you can see the drafts. I can’t recommend enough the latest issue of Academe entitled Who Owns Your Ideas? It is superb: we need to know about intellectual property.

We also have a conference planned for November 1 at CCNY. It’s called "Pleasures of the Mind" — New Faculty at CUNY. If you know any new faculty who can talk about the cutting edge questions in their disciplines and maybe about their own research, please recommend them to us. All the spots are not filled yet.

You know there is going to be the recertification of the end of remediation in the senior colleges at the end of December by the Regents. All of your colleges have been visited by the State Ed Department. The Executive Committee has met with them, as well as outside evaluators and presidents who are doing the report. Martha Bell has done a draft report making recommendations for the State Ed Department. For those who are interested in remediation, admissions, and testing, please look at this because we have to put forth a good document. Bill Crain has also put forth a document that he will speak to later. The Math and English Discipline Councils are involved in making recommendations, too. So far there are no hearings, but the State Ed Department told me today that perhaps there could be if we request them—I think it would be a good idea. The vote will take place in Albany in December.

Any questions on my report? Please note the rules for asking questions, which were included in your packet. No speeches, etc.

Mike Vozick - This is meant as a friendly question. I wonder what your main learnings have been over the summer in your new role? Chair O’Malley – Check the Newsletter. I wrote a whole column about the realities of the University, and how the reality of this University from 80^th Street is so different from the faculty perspective. I always knew that, but never saw it so clearly. At times, the disdain for faculty is amazing. Also, education is not mentioned much anymore—a lot of things seem to be public relations.

[Complaints about the acoustics]

So far I’ve visited the College of Staten Island, and had a good meeting with the delegation there. I’m going to LaGuardia next week, and Hunter pretty soon. If you want me to come to your campus, I’d love to meet with you there. Sometimes I get to chat or even dine with the president.

Unidentified Speaker: Do you have a list of the Regents? Chair O’Malley – Yes, we will get that to you.

We have plans to put all of you on a listserv of the Faculty Senate and the Governance Leaders. Unless I hear great objection, it will be a closed list but will be very useful so I can tell you what is going on in Board of Trustees meetings, and so on.

C. The Chancellor: Chair O’Malley: The Chancellor is ill, and Louise Mirrer is in England, as her father-in-law died. Allan Dobrin, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice Chancellor, will address issues of budget, security, and Governors Island, and answer questions. With him is the Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs, Rick Schaffer, if you have any questions for him. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Senior Vice Chancellor Allan Dobrin.

VC Dobrin – Chancellor Goldstein asked me to send his apologies. He was sick since Thursday but came in for a little while today. I wanted to come in November anyway to talk a little about security, but I thought I’d talk about it for a few minutes today and come back in November. I also want to talk about the new enrollment numbers, which are a tremendous sign of where the University going. I don’t want to talk about the budget, because I want to try to scare everybody a little bit, because it is scary, and it’s better to know it now than later. Then maybe a sentence about Governors Island.

In terms of security, there are really three efforts that are going on. One, which I think post 9/11 is the most important, is that the had we the Kroll Group, the leading security experts in the country, make recommendations about what we can do in terms of emergency planning. They came back with a report, which we completely rewrote and sent out to the colleges, asking them to show building by building where the hazardous materials are, how evacuations are to be done, and it goes on for about 50 pages—what would be done in every single building. We then told them that we expected them to do drills, so that people will know what to do in emergencies, and that we would send people from Central to actually watch the drills. We would then critique the drills and get corrective action plans to make sure all this makes sense. Had I been here a little over a year ago talking about this, everybody, including me, would have thought that I was nuts. But now this is all very real, having lived through 9/11.

The second piece is the Bratton group to go out and see how we do security. They visited every single campus, and have come back with some draft recommendations that we’re just reviewing now. We’ll have a final draft that we will share with all of you, the presidents, the Board, and I’d like to come back and do that in late November. Then I need everyone’s feedback about what makes sense for all of you, who along with our students are the ones we’re concerned about in putting a security plan.

In terms of enrollment, I think it’s a wonderful story. I realize, living on a campus, there are downsides to enrollment—somebody has to work with all these students and the buildings are overcrowded. One of the things I got to do in my career, for three mayors, is to worry about performance measurement. So I spent a lot of time thinking about these things. I know when you look at the police department, there are lots of things you can measure, but the bottom line is crime going up and down. I thought if we had to have one bottom line measurement at CUNY, what would it be? My sense is it probably would be enrollment. Do people want to come here? It’s a bad thing if people don’t want to, and probably a good thing if people do want to. So the preliminary numbers, which are fairly solid now, say there’s going to be a 5.4% increase in enrollment, from September to September. That would be the largest increase in a quarter of a century, since 1978. That would bring us to 208,047 degree-seeking students, which is highest we’ve been since 1994. New freshmen are up 5.6% at the senior colleges, 5.9% at the community colleges, and transfer admissions grew by 7.9%. Total freshmen enrolled reached 26,844 this fall, the largest freshman class since 1996. For the students admitted to the baccalaureate program, the SAT scores were 1095 this year. That compares to an average SAT score across the United States of 1020 for entering freshmen. So it’s not just that we have more students, it’s generally students who have done better at least on standardized tests. The entering transfer class of 16,508 is an all-time high. The graduate enrollment is going to be 29,203, which is also the highest since 1974. Just to give you a sense in terms of first-time enrollment increases—just a sample—Brooklyn is up 16.9%, City and John Jay are both up 29.6%, Lehman is up 11.9%, Medgar Evers is up 9.4%, Staten Island up 14.9%, York up 24.1%, Hostos 20.8%, Bronx Community College 11%. Of all the numbers, the most surprising and gratifying to me is that one year ago I was sitting with FEMA, trying to convince them that they had to give us money for lost enrollment at BMCC. If you think about how many students come from the area right by the World Trade Center, any logical person would have though that enrollment would be down considerably. FEMA agreed it probably would (but didn’t agree to give us any money). But the enrollment at BMCC looks to be about 18,000 student, a 10% increase from last year. This is all a remarkable achievement, but given what happened at BMCC including the loss of Fiterman, having to use trailers, and having escalators with problems, it almost seems like a miracle to me, just on the strength of the faculty and the quality of their care of the students, that students make a decision they would stay there with all those difficulties.

We have been working hard over the summer with the Department of Education. The Chancellor has already met with Chancellor Klein several times, and we have meetings scheduled for senior staffs. The first new thing we did was open up three new high schools this fall: the Queens High School for Science at York College, the High School for American Studies at Lehman College, and the High School for Math, Science, and Engineering at City College. The idea behind these high schools is not just that we’re being nice because we’re good New Yorkers: these are students who took the exam for Stuyvesant High School and just missed the cutoff—they are probably one question away from being as good as Stuyvesant students. The hope is that by getting them on our campuses they will see the quality education they can receive and hopefully stay around for another four years after high school.

We’ve had a number of important bills signed by the Governor over the summer. The most important, I think, is immigrant student legislation. Rick Schaffer had the privilege—I won’t say of creating the problem—but identifying the problem and then he actually he got involved in finding a solution and got it implemented in a way that is consistent with Federal law and did not end up hurting our students. Rick deserves a debt of gratitude.

The Governor signed a pay bill for collective bargaining—I’m sure there’s some interest in this room on that issue—of about $160 million. So we’re actually able to pay our collective bargaining without having to cannibalize the University. That was a good thing for everyone concerned.

And the Governor signed a bill on the World Trade Center scholarships.

Now, on the budget. Someone said economics is a dismal science: budgeting in New York City and State is going to be the dismal science. The metaphor I use to think about the budget now is it’s almost A Perfect Storm. You have a bad City budget with a deficit of about $5 million – that’s probably a real number. The State says its deficit is about $6 billion, and that’s much less likely to be a real number; my guess would be $12 billion. Sometime in the middle of November we’re going to have lots more discussion about the budget and the size of the deficit. The amount of $5 billion is real money for the City. You have the State being troubled. The federal government is not doing wonderful at the moment, Wall Street is doing terrible, the national economy is not good, so there’s nowhere to go to get relief. If you go back to previous fiscal crises in 1976 and the early 90’s, you either had a healthy state or federal government: people who could help. The other thing is the City and State have done a fair amount of borrowing. Particularly on the State side they are really at their debt limit now.

As you know, there are only three ways out of such crises. You either tax your way out, but if you do too much everyone leaves, or you can cut your way out and if you do that services get so bad that everybody leaves, or you borrow your way out and if you do that future generations pay a price. There are no other ways of doing it.

In order to try to be responsible, we set up in the senior colleges a 2% accrual. One percent would be against ERI savings that we anticipate, and the other 1% is a contingency against three things: the chance there will be a midterm State reduction sometime after the election, the chance that we will have a colder winter this year with attendant fuel costs, and the fact that cost of medical benefits that the University pays will be going up somewhat dramatically this year. So between all of that, we think 2% will have a reasonable chance of getting us through it.

On the City side, there has been a budget exercise across all of the agencies. In my 25 years of looking at these things, I’ve never seen that done before where everybody was treated the same: police, parks, us. Everybody got a 7.5% cut. So for CUNY that comes out to $11.5 million. I used the wrong word: it’s not a cut. A forced reserve was set up. The money was taken and there were discussions about how much will eventually be cut. We asked the community colleges what the impact of that would be, and it’s significant. We’ve shared that information with the City, and we’ll have a lot of interesting conversations with them. Maintenance of Effort will run through all of those conversations (I wish we had Maintenance of Effort on the State side, too).

Next year is going to be that much worse. It is not an election year for anybody, and everyone’s going to get hit really hard in terms of the budget. Now we’ll use this as an opportunity to try to change some of the conversations, and talk to everybody involved about higher education funding and try to think a way through this that gets the University out in a good way. Because the bad news for me, now that I’ve been here a year and really looked at the numbers, is unfortunately during the very good years, when the City and State had more money than they knew what to do with in truth, they didn’t spend it on higher education. You could make the case that some we didn’t get when it was good, so we shouldn’t have to contribute there, but I’m not sure that is necessarily going to hold the day.

As to Governors Island, we kind of paid in advance our piece by opening up the three high schools. The City and State had a bill that would create a Governors Island Development Corporation, which would have them be the governing body for the entity. In their proposal to the Federal government to get the Island, they talked about CUNY being the anchor tenant. So I think that’s exactly perfect. The last thing we want to do is be part of the governance. In my previous job, I had to worry a lot about fire walls in terms of computer protection. I don’t want to have to have conversations about sea walls.

The Chancellor has put together a group of academics to make suggestions to him for what the program should look like on Governors Island, and I’m very optimistic that that will be a good program. The other trick, as we do our new capital plan, is that Governors Island is something we submit. If we do Governors Island, it’s handled offline and doesn’t in any way come out of any of our colleges. If we can do that, Governors Island will be very exciting for all of us.

Manfred Philipp – In terms of the new high schools, they will require capital budgets eventually. Are those capital budgets to be merged with CUNY’s capital budgets? The reason I ask is that it was recently announced at Lehman College that the high school would take over the administration building of the college, so they seem to be merged in some way. VC Dobrin – Each one of the high schools has its own story. Generally, if it’s a building that we will have use of again, then we use some of our own money. Otherwise, we can use the Board of Ed’s money.

Anne Friedman – My question relates to enrollment and budget. It’s wonderful to hear that we’re bringing in all of these students, but of course once we get them in we have to do something with them. Those of us on campuses appreciate this very much especially schools like mine with great enrollments. With such dire predictions about budget, and we’re bringing in all of these students, how are we going to ensure that we have the full-time faculty? In my school now, in our mega-departments, we have 25% of the course taught by full-timers, 75% by part-timers. We hardly have any counselors, we are low on librarians, budgets are being cut from B & G on up. It’s one thing to get the student in; what’s the plan from 80^th Street to help us ensure that these students remain until the spring, and that they graduate and get the kind of education that we are capable of giving to them? It seems to me a major conundrum. VC Dobrin – Last year was a bad budget year also, and we ended up getting through, with some problems. On the senior college side, we didn’t get any additional money in terms of inflation. On the community college side, we actually did pretty well. We actually have more money than we had the year before. One of the things you see in the numbers¾ it’s not just new entering freshmen or transfer students¾ if you take a look at the whole number it’s also retention. The students, despite all of this, actually stayed and stayed longer. I think students understand the City. They come for a number of reasons. Sometimes people say it’s the economy, but I don’t believe hardly any of it is the economy, in truth. In the wake of 9/11 they said everyone is going to leave New York because of more terrorism. Now, the students are coming to CUNY and they say it’s because everyone is keeping their kids close to home. I honestly don’t think there’s much of that. I think it’s a combination of two things: people recognizing that this degree has more validity (and a lot of that is perceptual: it probably always had a lot of validity), and we’ve done a lot things to let the world know about CUNY—we’ve gotten wonderful press, CUNY is a bargain, we have great faculty. I’m wrestling now with where to send my own kids¾ send them off to Harvard and you’ll have a 23-year-old TA teaching them, not the kind of quality faculty we have, and I think people are recognizing that more and more. Our job for the next year, in terms of strategy, is see what we can do to not have these budget cuts affect the classroom. In terms of full-time faculty, I’m spending about 75% of my time trying to find every imaginable way on this earth of saving money to bring in additional resources to this University, to be more productive on the non-instructional side, and every penny of that can be transferred over to instruction for more full-time faculty.

Bill Crain – I want to congratulate the administration for helping to bring about the legislation allowing many undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition. It was magnificent. But this fall at the middle level of the administration, many students found that they were told they can’t pay in-state and we never heard about this. We made as many phone calls as we could and helped maybe a dozen students, but there may have been hundreds who needed help. I know Mr. Schaffer and the Chancellor tried to help, but what they need is some message that this is serious and we’re behind this and these students must be treated as our students again. There is a law. Could the administration make every effort to inform all levels of the administration? Also, some students who are due refunds are not getting them. VC Dobrin – I appreciate the compliment, but all credit should go to Rick. VC Rick Schaffer (Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs) – One of the advantages and problems of having the federal structure that we have at this University is that it isn’t always possible to press a button at 80^th Street and simultaneously have things occur perfectly at all the campuses. Bill, you and others have brought occasional problems to our attention in the implementation of the new law. I’ve sent out three or four memos to every colleges president, vice president, registrar, and foreign student advisor. Certainly the flow of calls and emails I’m getting—and I’ve always been open to this—has slowed to a trickle, and we’ve solved the problems as they were brought to our attention. We did not have time to do a full-blown training program before registration this year, but I think next month we have a program for all of the registrars in which we’re going to go over line-by-line and step-by-step how to implement the new law, and hopefully next semester we will have fewer problems.

Bill Friedheim – I want to ask a question about enrollment increases, and elevators and escalators. Like you, I’m gratified that students are coming back to BMCC. I’m also horrified by it—we have close to 18,000 students in a building that was originally intended for 8,000 students. As you know, we also lost Fiterman. You also know that at least over the past month our elevators and escalators have not been functioning. For students with disabilities, pregnant students, asthmatic students, they can’t climb seven flights of stairs. I know that you have both a long-term and short-term plan to deal with this, but we need an emergency infusion of money until there is a permanent solution. From experience, we know once they are fixed there will be problems a couple of weeks later. We need maintenance people on campus who do nothing but deal with elevators and escalators. The enrollment question is: BMCC should really have a plan to decrease students by 2,000 students unless we can rent additional space by next September. We cannot handle that number of students in the building we have. VC Dobrin – I spent my entire weekend on this. Without going into all the past problems, the original maintenance contract for the escalators was like a warranty—it didn’t work. They were losing money because parts were no longer being made and they had to be fabricated from scratch and the company who was doing it walked away. Yesterday we had five companies come in that we would pay on a different basis: we will pay them for parts, materials, a profit, and they will do that. We also asked that they assign two people permanently for the elevators and escalators who will be there all the time. We will also take the motherboards out of the elevators so they can be run manually, which should shorten downtime. I declared an emergency so we don’t have to worry about procurement. I told them we will submit the bills to DASNY and will do whatever we have to do. Nothing can humanly be done beyond what we’ve done this weekend. I will stay on this virtually every 48 hours, but we will have to struggle for a while until we can do all the repairs and replacements.

Haig Bohegian - A relatively small problem. We appreciate the fact that the State came through with a paybill and the retro money came through. Could you please request from the State the formula by which they calculate the retro? I’ve calculated it, and it’s always short. The biweekly figures are always short. Could you provide to Chair O’Malley some sample figures of how they make their calculation because I’m pretty sure I’m doing the right thing but it never comes out right. It’s a relatively small amount, but when multiplied across the University it amounts to millions of dollars. VC Dobrin – Sure. Please send an email to Prof. O’Malley with some of the details and she can share it with me.

John Wallach – I have a question about the Honors College. I wrote a letter to Chancellor, and I’ll give you a copy. The Honors College seems to be expanding, and it’s not clear how or to what end. First, we need to know exactly what the plans are at 80^th Street for the Honors College. How much money is going to it now, and how much in the future? Second, in terms of transparency, we need to know to what extent colleges have any freedom to return the money to use for other related programs, to the same end but using different means. Third, we need to know whether there are explicit criteria for how funds that come from 80^th Street for the Honors College are used?

Another factor is the equal opportunity factor, or lack of it, for the program, because the way I understand it is that a relatively small number of students will participate in the Honors College and quite a bit of resources and number of faculty will be devoted to teaching them, and that means many students who are qualified for them will not be able to take them and in that case a lot of distinctions are going to made between students, and between faculty who can teach in this program, which could lead to a lot of problems. I’m concerned about this because Chancellor Goldstein spoke to the New York Times effusively about the Honors College, and it’s news to me how much he’s invested in this, and it’s unclear to me how it’s operating particularly at my college where it seems to be operating in a rather chaotic way.

Another factor is equity. Is this really the most efficient way to achieve the end the Chancellor wants to achieve, which I wholeheartedly agree with, making sure that CUNY provides education to students at senior colleges who are very able and who want to work hard. Is it possible to achieve these ends without means that aren’t as exclusive and don’t concentrate the resources on these students? VC Dobrin – I’d be glad to share the letter with him. In truth, my counterpart Louise Mirrer does the Honors College. I would just be speaking off the top of my head if I tried to answer.

Mike Vozick – I teach at BMCC, and by my life experience and professional role, I have to take a different point of view on some of the very same things we’ve just heard discussed, but it’s coming from a perspective of great respect for what you’ve done to try to keep BMCC whole and try to understand its problems and try to meet them. BMCC has one quarter of its faculty full-time, and three-quarters adjunct. It’s been that way for a decade. So when BMCC achieves great victories, as lately, credit certainly should go to the people who did most of teaching to the students and created the context in which this occurred. It seems obvious, but it needs to be said in this body. Adjuncts work under a wide variety of handicaps. It’s a complex story. We want more full-time lines and hope to get them. That’s not an issue. But of course we’re also dealing with reality. The hardest work you’ve been able to do has produced how many full-time lines? It’s miniscule. So it’s wishful thinking at the moment. That leads to the basic question: what is the direction of thinking in the Chancellor’s office about the future of adjuncts, and how is it addressing the problems and deeper issues where we seem to be going into an era when a lot of adjunct teaching is going to be crucial to the success of City University. It’s an essential question to the future of our University. VC Dobrin – One of the Chancellor’s highest priorities is more full-time lines. Everything we’re doing is moving that direction, including some things you might all not agree with, like ending last semester free. Every time we talk to the State, we talk about more full-time faculty. If you compare us to SUNY, we don’t have an adequate amount of full-time faculty, but it’s not going to change overnight. Clearly, we are going to have a lot of adjuncts for a long time, and adjuncts in many cases do a very good job also. Over time, as we’ve done this year through collective bargaining, the more that adjuncts can provide things that full-time faculty provide, the better, and the Union was very helpful with this. For instance, this semester for the first time we’re doing office for adjuncts. One of the hundreds of reasons we want full-time faculty is that they are available to students more. Now, adjuncts will be available more. The more things we do like that will be good during this period when we won’t be able to have enough full-time faculty that we want.

Stefan Baumrin – How many full-time lines were you responsible for appointing or retaining since you joined us? VC Dobrin – I have absolutely no idea. The interesting thing about CUNY is that it runs simultaneously with two management philosophies, both in contradiction. On the one hand, we talk about the integrated university (and I’ve convinced a lot of people that it’s a good idea to buy PCs as a University because you save $300 for each), but at the same time we say that colleges should make their own decisions and we rate the presidents and ECP staff on how they do on their campuses. Those are a little bit contradictory. So, we respect presidents and let them run their own campuses, and the other side is that you’re part of an integrated university. My understanding of that, and how to balance it out¾ I have conversations about saving money with the one idea and then using it to pay for more full-time faculty. You probably don’t want me involved in those types of decisions. But at the end of the year they have to show what they do with that to support the instructional mission instead of the support mission. Since I know and you know that the number of full-time line that have been added are not countable because they are too small. I just tried to count them and they come to a wash. Since we are facing a catastrophic budget scenario – whether or not it materializes – let me underscore this last question in a slightly different way. In 1976 it was all junior lines and the adjuncts, and in 1991 it was almost entirely adjuncts. We just took in an 5 or 5.4% of students, let’s say it is only 10,000 extra students. (VC Dobrin says that is about right.) You can’t make this money up by firing adjuncts because we can’t afford it anymore. It used to be the case that you could take a bunch of full-time faculty members and say take an extra course, take an extra two courses. There are no extra faculty members. There are no extra adjuncts. It is not that we are very lean, it is that we are already engaged—I know the Chancellor doesn’t like this¾ in a shell game. We have everybody fooled into thinking that we are giving a decent education and at a 40 to 1 FTE it is… VC Dobrin – I don’t agree. I think we need more full-time faculty. There is no question that we have a bad City and State budget. How that plays out for higher education we don’t know yet. In terms of not giving a quality education compared to other institutions in this country who use adjuncts and T.A.s who are 24 years old to teach classes of 150, I don’t agree that our education is inferior to that.

Michael Barnhart (Philosophy, Kingsborough) – I am a member of the Community College Caucus and sit on the Academic Policy Committee. One of the things we talk about a great deal is articulation. I am not sure if your are the right person to ask, but you seem to deal with nuts and bolts and computers. I understand that CUNY is revamping its computer system. Has there been any planning or discussion about common course numbering? VC Dobrin – I am not sitting in the meetings so I don’t want to pretend that I know more than I do about this. There are people at CUNY who are meeting on that and common course numbering is certainly under that discussion. My view is that an integrated university means that if I am a political science major at York College¾ I just took a terrific course on Aristotle, Plato and Greek Philosophy¾ I can go on line and type in Plato and see that there is a course given at Queens College just on Plato. I can easily register on line and not go through a lot of hoops, show up to take the course, and go back to York the next term. When we can do that we are integrated university. That is what the committee is looking at: getting us closer and closer to that. Common course numbering is obviously an issue we have to look at.

Jamal Manassah (Electrical Engineering, City College) – My question is—we both like to make graphs about how things double up with respect to time. The last I have done with respect to the academic staff, the teaching faculty, I see that in 10-15 years it has gone down by a number of 2, from about 10,000 to about 5,000. While I look with respect to the administrative staff it has been increasing. Honestly, one of the great things I thought was that you were joining City University with your great reputation for efficiency – I said it in many circles. Last year when I did the calculations with respect to City College in terms of expenditure that is going to academic administration versus the KPMG model for funding, I see that there has been an overspending of about 80% in that category. It bothers me very much. First, having so many generals for so few soldiers. Second, this year when we are going through the process of increasing enrollment. At the freshman level we have had to increase enrollment by 30 or 40% because this was our only option. My question is are you going to come in from central administration and read the Riot Act to the colleges about the senior college funding model and to stop talking about how to reduce the faculty, but start looking at how to reduce your cadre? VC Dobrin – The answer is basically yes. As you know with the ECP (Executive Compensation Plan) we have a performance measurement model that determines raises and continuance. The same goes for everyone in the ECP. There are three indicators added this year. One, we are going to look at the percentage of budget spent on instruction versus other things. We expect that to go up. Second, their percentage of the $10M target in productivity savings and we are going to measure that. Just so they don’t cut administration in a bad way we are also going to conduct satisfaction surveys for support services. Third, is the ERI (Early Retirement Incentive) program. When faculty take ERI we will replace 100%. On the administrative side, they are going have to come back and have a conversation with myself and a small committee and make a case as to why that line is absolutely critical. Otherwise that line is not going to get filled. Manassah – That is wonderful. Thank you.

Alfred Levine (Mechanical Engineering, CSI) – I know from personal experience that you are doing an excellent job identifying productivity savings. I know that you and the Chancellor are dedicated to making sure that money is getting put in our core business of instruction. There is a mechanism for doing this called the faculty maintenance of effort numbers. You should not get into telling the campuses whether they should hire a professor of Mathematics or a professor of English. That of course should be a local decision. By simply jacking up the faculty maintenance of effort numbers you guarantee that you accomplish your goal. VC Dobrin – Thank you. That is an excellent suggestion I will have that conversation with the Vice Chancellor.

Gary Benenson (Mechanical Engineering, City College) – Tonight at this meeting I received a document that is a set of recommendations drafted by the UFS Executive Committee and adopted by the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders related to the Board of Regents hearings on the remediation plan. These recommendations appear to me to be very sensible. In the context of any other university, they would be considered obvious. Students who have failed one test should be allowed to register provisionally at a senior college for one year. Students should not be exempted from basic skills tests on the basis of scores on the English Regent’s exams. ESL students should continue to be allowed ESL courses. SEEK students who may enter the senior colleges even if they have not passed the assessment test should be allowed developmental or compensatory courses in the SEEK departments or programs. Since a SEEK student by definition is a remedial student where are the remedial courses for them at the senior college? The answer you get is we are working on that. Students who are not accepted to a senior college should be tracked to see where they enroll for their freshman year of college. According to the New York Times they all go to community colleges, but when we’ve asked where is the data that demonstrates that—as an engineering teacher I teach respect for data—there is no data to support that claim as far as anybody knows. Regents should continue to monitor the end of remediation for three more years. My question is will the administration at 80^th Street support this reasonable set of proposals? VC Dobrin – I will be glad to take it and share it with the Chancellor and Louise Mirrer, who I am sure will take it very seriously. These are not easy issues.

Glen Lewis (English, York College) – One thing that we made a big deal about the last two years, and I haven’t heard about since, is the effort that the University and individual campuses were to make for fund raising, to create corporate partnerships, to get endowments the way other private college do. Reports came out how the largest number of CEOs in the United States come out of City University and the idea of the success rate of so many past alumni. Where is the effort? How much can we depend on an effort like that to help with some of the shortfall in the future? VC Dobrin – The Chancellor is making a significant effort. He has brought in one of the biggest consulting firms in this regard. They have spent time at every campus, developed a model that we will present to the Board at the October or November meeting for what kind of staffing should be there. We are working with them at developing computer systems which will work in a very proactive way – Matt Goldstein (at Baruch) more than any president in the history of CUNY raised money. Community college presidents can go out and get grants, but to raise money if you look at the national numbers, to raise money from your alumni is tough. For senior college presidents he is holding them accountable in this area, very serious and providing assistance to them. The Board is also under Benno Schmidt’s leadership going to do a fundraising effort. The Chancellor after the October or November Board meeting will go very public on this on what we found, the numbers per campus and how we are going to this. $20, 30, 50M will go a long way, but these are going to be difficult times and I can’t tell you that is going to make up for the problems we are going to have. It is a piece of it.

Glen Lewis – Some of the colleges with shorter history than, say, City College don’t have alumni with that kind of money. We hope that in the future the money that goes directly to the University, not the campuses, will be distributed equally among the colleges in the University so that schools with not as good an apparatus for collection won’t be penalized. VC Dobrin – Fair request.

Allan Cooper (English, York College) Three words that those of who have been around a long time always shudder at – I haven’t heard those words tonight, but I think I have heard them in the subtext¾ fiscal exigency and retrenchment. Now the question is since we are all anticipating some crash after election day, is the central office now considering a retrenchment? VC Dobrin – The Chancellor believes that retrenchment is the worse way to deal with fiscal problems. I wasn’t, but he was around during the last one and there is a real institutional memory in this organization that understands how bad that is. Nobody is having serious conversation at this point. It is not to say that we are unaware that it is a possibility. It is not to say that we are not taking a look at the guidelines to see if we had to do it – that is not where we plan on heading. Doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, but it is not where we are heading at this moment.

Chair O’Malley – Please help me thank Vice Chancellor Dobrin. We’ve kept him longer than promised and he has been very patient answering our questions. VC Dobrin – If it is helpful I’ll come back in late November and bring our Security Directory Bill Barry.

Request from the floor to address questions to Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Rick Schaffer.

Jamal Manassah (Engineering, City College) – We have had many discussion, but this one I would like to go in the Minutes. Last June when I was Chair of the Senate at City College, I had asked for a meeting with one of the senior attorneys. That particular individual said he would not meet with me without the provost attending. I understand that this is the policy, but the question that continued to bother me is that you wear two hats. One is being the Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs which puts you in the position of being the attorney for the administration, both centrally and over the colleges. Two is the hat of the General Counsel. I am an Engineer so I don’t know the distinction always between these things. I would like that we find a way that when we want a legal opinion we could have one or two attorneys in your office where the relationship is not antagonistic. There are legitimate differences of opinion between the faculty and administration. I think that it is a burden on the faculty that if every time they need a legal opinion they have to go outside and pay for it while there is a large number of lawyers on staff at the University. Would you consider designating one or two attorneys in your office so governance leaders, senate members, etc. could talk to them as impartial and that these individuals would not have to feel that they have to be the attorneys of the administration. I have the highest regard for you as a person. I am not trying to impugn in any way your integrity. VC Schaffer – There is no policy in my office not to meet separately with members of the faculty or faculty governance leaders. I don’t know the specifics of the incident that you mention. Some time when an issue has been joined it is better to have both sides in the room at the same time, but that is not an across-the-board policy. My office represents the administration and the other hat means we are General Counsel to the Board of Trustees. That is who are clients are. On the other hand, my door is always open and my phone is always open when faculty members or governance leaders have a question. I have discussed legal issues with Susan, with Bernie before. We don’t always agree. You don’t always like the conclusion that I reach, but I am certainly happy to discuss and to give you my best opinion which I like to think is impartial, but probably isn’t. You are free to call. I have met with you on occasion with you too, Jamal. There is no obstacle as far I am concerned, but bear in mind that I don’t represent you as individual faculty members and I don’t represent you collectively as the faculty, I represent the University.

Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy, Lehman/Graduate School) – Jamal is raising a question which is 41 years old. With all due respect to my colleague, he is not trained in the law. What he was asking for is not a very big thing. What he was asking for is that someone in your office take the faculty’s point of view initially. For example, if they found how interesting they have a point of view that they could then come and talk with you and there could be a dialogue within your office. The idea of having ordinary faculty members convince you to look to see whether or not there might be a legal case has put us – it is not you, Rick. I think you are the very best person who has been in that office for four decades, but the fact is we have had no representation of faculty interests for four decades. We don’t have the money. Faculty members who have law degrees and are members of the Bar are prohibited from litigating against the University or litigating for individual faculty members against the University¾ de-fanged and de-frocked. The question he asks is can we have an advocate inside your office? VC Schaffer – Then the answer is no. My office cannot—it would be inconsistent with our obligations. We don’t represent the faculty; we represent the administration. We represent the University. I do think however, that we can have a dialogue bearing in mind I understand that most of you with a few exceptions are not attorneys. My job as a counsel is to give good advice, not always to tell my client he is right, whether it was in private practice, government, or here at the University, and I have served in all of those roles. I don’t think I am doing my job when I give my client bad advice. So I am always open to learn that something that my client is doing is wrong. If I agree I will try to set it right. All I can say I don’t represent the faculty, I don’t represent you individually, but I think I have an open mind. My job is to make sure that this University carries out all of its activities consistent with the law. If they don’t, I am not going to sweep it under the rug. I am going to do something about it. To me that was the motivating factor in this long difficult year we went through on the immigration issue. I just felt that it could not be swept under the rug. We had to obey the law and at the same time we had to do something to change it. That would be my reaction to any other issue that is brought to me where I conclude that the law is not being followed.

Karen Kaplowitz (English, John Jay) – If Stefan had used the term ombudsperson in your office instead of advocate would your answer perhaps be different? In other words, someone among the lawyers in your office whom a faculty member could call to present a perspective either on his or her own behalf or the faculty elected to represent and present to this person who would then be the person to have it at one of your general discussions. Not as an advocate but as the go-between. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable calling and speaking with an attorney. VC Schaffer – Could we come up with a different word? I don’t think that one of my attorneys can actually serve in that function. On the other hand, I am prepared when the occasion arises to try to serve as an honest broker with you, bearing in mind my ultimate role – to see that the law is followed. It is not simply to represent a client at all costs. If that is an offer that you want to take up, I am happy to talk to you about issues. Whether you think this University needs an ombudsperson I think you ought to raise that directly with the Chancellor. I will, but I don’t think my attorneys are the right people to serve in that role.

Chair O’Malley thanked Vice Chancellor Schaffer.