University Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
4:30 — 6:00 p.m.
701 Clark Hall
DRAFT MINUTES

I. Call to Order

J. Glenn called the meeting to order at 4:36 p.m.

M. Hatch said that E. Loew is on leave this semester, so he was asked to step in this semester to finish his term. As required by UA legislation, he has dropped his membership on the CJC, but will serve as the UA liaison to the CJC.

II. Roll Call

Role was taken by sign in sheet.

III. Call for Late Additions to Agenda

There were no additions to the existing agenda.

IV. Approval of Minutes for 12/6/06

J. Glenn asked for a motion to table minutes because they are long and need many changes.

L. Lawrence seconded. Motion passed.

V. New Business

CJC Presentation

M. Hatch began by discussing a proposed resolution. This resolution is something he suggested as a UA liaison to the CJC. He wanted to consider this resolution as a basis of action and amendment for the March 28th meeting. We have quorum now and good strong representation.

K. Rourke, co-chair of the CJC, said if there were questions on the report before we pass the resolution, now would be time to ask them.

J. Glenn opened the floor for questions.

J. Marwell asked if the CJC wanted to put together a workshop to consider revisions to the code. She asked where it is mentioned because it’s not in the resolution.

M. Hatch clarified that it’s in CJC report, but not in the resolution.

M. Hatch said that on page 4 of the report, the CJC asks the UA to extend and expand its charge to review and deliberate more. They acknowledge the size of the task, and believe it’s the CJC’s right to engage in. There are a lot of specifics to work on.

K. Rourke suggested that as the semester ends, they could take two or three days as a subcommittee to sit down and try to craft something. She acknowledged that it is hard to meet once a month to do this enormous task.

A male representative asked if they should delegate the work to a two-person draft committee.

K. Rourke said she knows the committee’s work: they met weekly for over a month to just come up with this report, and she commended them.

S. Kong said there are two JA requirements that don’t affect independent judgment. He went to the JA office and asked where they report their work. They said they reported directly to the President. He questions the suitability. Should JA’s work be reported to VP or someone else?

M. Grant said she doesn’t report to the President. The budget comes from the President, but she doesn’t report to him.

S. Kong said that the cases are increasing, and they need more employees. He asked if they met any difficulties because the budget is set.

M. Grant said the staffing crunch is under budget issues, so the President makes decisions about increasing staff, but they don’t report to the President in respect to annual reviews or complaints. It is handled by the ombudsmen if there is a complaint.

K. Rourke said on the other side, there is administrative support if they want staffing or funding.

A. Epstein asked everyone to state their name to benefit the student clerk.

S. Kong said one important issue that was not addressed is a change to the civil procedure. Krause suggests that a minor misconduct should have a simplified procedure. Is that shown in the CJC report?

J. Purcell said when you are talking about simplified procedures, are you talking about lowering the burden of proof to a civil preponderance standard?

S. Kong said no. What he meant was if something doesn’t result in dismissal, it can’t appeal to the University review board.

A male representative said he thought they covered that. There is a uniform procedure process for all different constituencies. They are keeping things more like they are.

K. Rourke said pages 3–5 of the report talk about parameters of the code. First, things should apply equally to all members. The current judicial system has specifics like burden of proof and other things we want to address in our next stage. Part of our recommendation is we want to do it sooner, but there are details we still need to work out.

S. Kong said the annual report from last year there were only twelve cases reported to the Board, and only one to the University review board. Even if we take Krause’s suggestion, at least for last year, there is nearly no affect on the efficiency to deal with cases. Only one case was a decision of dismissal if we take Krause’s procedure. Is it necessary to take Krause’s suggestion to change that?

M. Hatch clarified that the CJC has not said we should.

S. Kong said there is more incentive to appeal to the University review board.

M. Hatch asked for clarification if he meant under the Krause report.

L. Lawrence asked of resources and supervision, and if there would be a time line associated with potential solutions. This shouldn’t go on for the next five years if there’s a lack of resources and supervision and what not. Are we talking about the end of the academic year in 2007–2008 or 2010 or what? With many reports, there’s no action taken in a long time. If it’s that crucial, shouldn’t there be a timeline recommend too?

J. Marwell said they were planning on establishing a timeline once they passed this resolution.

K. Rourke asked M. Hatch to report to the UA on Monday about a timeline.

M. Hatch that he sent a memo where CJC requesting to set aside three day. Results of the retreat and recommendations will be presented to the UA in the fall of 2007. For the second CJC retreat in January 2008, a period of UA comment in the spring of 2008 may be required before substantial revisions of the code can be put into effect. This is put in front of the executive committee as a timeline, but it’s not in the resolution. They thought that once they resolved this report and found it acceptable in these terms, then the UA and the CJC could sit down and come up with a more refined timetable. CJC needs to meet if you approve it, and find out how to get itself into a more intensive review mode.

R. Kay commented on parameters and who the code applies to in the Cornell community. In house for the work-related penalty, there are any number of ways and it is unknown how this is operating. Someone should look at the work-related penalty are and see how it works actually.

M. Hatch asked if the assembly wants to assume that we have to react to the Krause report going forward before a decision is made that the CJC’S recommendations being accepted.

R. Kay clarified that it’s just an issue whether in the Krause report or not.

M. Hatch said the UA can ask to consider if there is an issue in that. For example, the UA wants to think about where academic integrity issues fit with a more general code. As an issue, maybe the UA wants to explore inclusion of work-related violations by faculty and staff fall under the purview of current code.

R. Kay agreed, because in terms of procedures and outcomes, everything seems murky.

J. Purcell asked if anything in the code detracts from the ability to discipline employees. Does it depend on the incident, or it can be handled with warning.

R. Kay asked about retribution and things like that. It’s that step in the question because things are not clear on the work and the student side.

J. Glenn said the CJC wanted to discuss that on the next step.

D. Rosen had a question about the resolution where it says the assembly has seen and reviewed the report�it doesn’t say we approve it. Are we presenting discussion aimed towards resolution and looking at the report to approve it or are we talking about the resolution itself?

J. Glenn said we listened to the CJC report, accepted it, we’re now moving onto the resolution. That covers parts we want to change in the resolution.

M. Hatch said speaking as a UA member, he moved to approve and accept as it stands.

H. Granison asked M. Hatch about the last UA meeting when H. Granison asked about B. Krause’s materials. Did M. Hatch report back on that?

M. Hatch said that all of B. Krause’s materials are in her report.

H. Granison asked if there are any other comments from the Cornell community in writing that are not yet on the website.

M. Hatch said he did get a comment sent to M. Grant that was included on the website. Another comment that was sent to residential life was put on the website too. Approximately 90% of the comments are on website.

K. Rourke said verbal comments aren’t transcribed to the web.

H. Granison said in the report, it’s intriguing. It talked about who B. Krause talked to. Many didn’t submit public comment to the CJC this time; he is curious if that’s confidential or just that they didn’t say anything.

M. Hatch said the Office of Policy Administration, three representative of the Dean of Students Office, residential life representatives, and two people from the CJC were all interviewed. He asked K. Rourke if she had particular individuals in mind that she wanted to solicit comments from. M. Hatch thinks they did a pretty comprehensive job.

H. Granison asked if the Women’s Resource Center or any other advocate group submitted anything.

M. Hatch said the Women’s Resource Center is very interested in working with us. They want to participate and testify in any discussion. Victims did not identify themselves in comments because they don’t identity themselves as victims.

H. Granison said he was curious about the police department’s interview.

M. Hatch said that one of the members of the CJC who passed this report is the Deputy Director of the Cornell Police.

M. Hatch said the Counsel’s office sent a memo to B. Krause in response to her presentation having to do with the Henderson Act and it had particular comments on the code. They only considered questions framed as legal briefs.

R. Wayne said that means no.

R. Kay asked if the ombudsmen had anything to say.

M. Hatch said he spoke at the Faculty Senate meeting a month and a half ago, but he’s not certain because he can’t remember. They really haven’t interviewed him, and it’s something we should do because there could be a possible linkage.

K. Duch said they are having a retreat to look at the code to solicit more community response.

M. Hatch said there are a lot of comments on the website from well-experienced and well-educated people. We expected to be an important part of subsequent deliberations in future. It is also proposed in the time table that we have a period after working through the questions for public comment, but that part of the process will take place somewhere in the fall of 2007.

K. Rourke said it’s helpful at this point for the CJC and its subcommittee to work on digesting the volume of stuff. It might be helpful to look at something that pulls everything together. If they can get it done in the fall at some point, we should allow community response

J. Purcell said he is graduating, but he thinks there should be more participation if and when contentious issues are raised. The CJC is broadly representative, but it isn’t itself the community. New people will always have new ideas.

H. Granison said the resolution talks about soliciting resources from administration to make this go forward. He asked what the resources would be because the report doesn’t talk about University resources.

J. Glenn asked if they could hold off until they get to the resolution part. There were no more questions.

Motion by J. Marwell, seconded by R. Kay. Passed, with 1 abstention to move to debate.

Discussion about presentation and resolution

M. Hatch presented Resolution 5. He opened the floor to the UA to accept comments and that he was willing to accept almost anything as a friendly amendment.

D. Rosen, K. Claymont and R. Wayne suggested minor edits.

J. Glenn asked if there were any questions.

R. Wayne said the CJC did such a good job bringing in the whole University community through the forums and the websites; is there a place to acknowledge that? The fact that so many people contributed in such a short time. He just wanted to say it was remarkable.

J. Glenn said you can put something like that in the cover letter.

M. Hatch didn’t know who was drafting the cover letter, but people should decide and put those things in. A cover addendum was created for the document on page 5: noting there were many acknowledgements to add to the cover letter�it’s a great thing because it says this is a community document, both in process, and organization.

J. Glenn said he just envisions a lot of flowery language that says here’s our result, here’s what happened, and we’re passing it on to you.

M. Hatch thinks that R. Wayne is right. We should have something that affirms the UA’s interest in being a body that does this kind of stuff. We should recognize having this as a community representative body. He is happy to have been a part of process and see the CJC report as resulting from a lot of community involvement.

J. Glenn clarified that the executive committee will take care of the cover letter.

R. Wayne added that the discussion was an enlightening and educational experience, and he learned a lot.

M. Hatch asked all members of the UA to submit their own sentence or two that would be useful to the cover letter.

J. Marwell said to email them to her, and they’ll consider them when they write the cover letter.

M. Hatch asked to do that within the week, and to think about what is important.

J. Glenn asked for more questions on the resolution.

H. Granison asked to discuss the clause where it asks the President to provide sufficient resources, etc.

M. Hatch said as a note to the UA, the CJC asked for support from the administration in the form of food, leave from job, etc.

H. Granison said he was still curious to what you meant in terms of support. What sort of resources�people power?

M. Hatch said there is no budget yet, but he was told by different members of the administration that they were ready to supply any resources within to help the process of the review go forward.

K. Rourke said P. Beach and A. Epstein were instrumental in the administration side of things in assisting the CJC in accomplishing the report.

D. Brown made one additional change.

M. Hatch accepted the change as friendly.

J. Glenn saw no more questions or debate. He asked for a motion to vote.

R. Orme moved to accept the resolution as amended.

D. Rosen seconded. 14–0−1. Amended resolution passed.

K. Rourke asked for a copy of the resolution and report when it is sent to the President.

J. Purcell had three quick things not in report because it’s not in the scope of the report, but still very important to remind. The Krause report talks about prohibiting or making punishable VIDEO-recording of the Cornell police. They are well-trained professionals and you should be able to take their pictures. Krause advocates the prohibition, and students think that that is a bad idea. Max Henderson brought voices out who thought the Krause report was an attack on students’ rights. It’s not in the scope of our report, but students feel like it’s attack on them, and we can’t forget that. Office of Student Conduct doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. OJA is good at investigating important things, not simple petty things. I don’t suggest what Krause suggests where we throw out the JA, but just that we send small petty things to a different office. Stop clogging the OJA with copyright law infractions. There has been a backlog ever since the congress changed laws. Far better time spent on more serious infractions. OJA always has the right to take from the OSC. Krause said things should be split up from students and staff.

K. Duch said it’s important to look at academic integrity and the honor code in the next phase instead of having a separate code of conduct. Honor codes are widely accepted. In moving forward, it may be something we should consider.

M. Hatch asked if she meant an honor code for academic integrity issues.

K. Duch said to combine both: the academic issues and the code of conduct. She wasn’t aware there were two separate documents until it was publicized. Freshmen are acquainted with honors code, and it’s better to deal with.

M. Hatch said L. Lawrence and O. Hammer will meet with C. Walcott, and UA will take action to make movement towards academic integrity issue. Faculty has a deep interest in keeping hold over academic integrity issues. That stage of deliberation should go forward.

H. Granison said President Lehman suggested this a few years ago, which led to the Krause report. History is rich with having these issues and not doing anything. Dean Walcott came to the UA to ask for assistance with academic integrity. They were looking for a forum with a broad base of representation, even though we don’t have jurisdiction. It’s better to look at academic integrity and conduct at the same time. President Rawlings’ charge to Krause was to look at both at the same time as well as look at different systems.

He was a member of an academic integrity subgroup when B. Krause was appointed. The very issue that started all this was the sick out policy at Gannett, and it’s still not resolved. We still haven’t given her any assistance. We want to stress that we want more action or movement on these issues before CJC moves forward to a comprehensive review. We should look at academic integrity and conduct at the same time.

S. Kong had a few small suggestions. He suggested placing an appendix or something to help understand all the legislative terms at the end of the report. It would make it much more readable, as well as provide some clear definitions. There was a student’s comment on the web that said they met someone whose case was delayed for half a year. He suggests that there should be a response system with a certain time limit.

M. Hatch said the issues of timing and response are important ones. One of the issues is a lack of response by students to requirement of appearance. It slows up the timing of procedures. CJC has to consider whether it’s not an indication for guilt, or a penalty for lack of appearance to charge. Time has specific examples and each has to be thought through. We can’t really have a blanket rule for that.

S. Kong suggested giving priorities to certain things.

J. Glenn said to email the CJC if there were more comments.

M. Hatch also suggested posting to the website.

VI. Adjournment

R. Orme motioned to adjourn. H. Granison seconded.

J. Glenn adjourned the meeting at 5:32 p.m.