USenate Power Different in Practice than on Paper

Last Friday afternoon, as undergraduates were just dragging themselves out of bed, University President Lee Bollinger and Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin exchanged a knowing look across the senate floor, glancing down at their respective Blackberries.

While not typical of the monthly University Senate plenary meeting, this scene does capture some of the informality of Senate action. The Senate’s bylaws ensure that it could be a source of great power within the University, yet its energy remains like that of a ball at the top of a hill: great potential, yet no momentum to unleash it.

The Senate exists as a forum for discussion among administration, faculty, students, and staff—the perfect body for disseminating information about crises involving the entire university—but this base. comprised of factions, can be as much of a hindrance as an asset in times of relative peace.

Perhaps Provost Alan Brinkley said it best at a meeting with the Student Affairs Caucus Friday when he stated, “The senate is an extraordinary resource for the University and a very important part in how we would handle a crisis,” but, “It is so big and there are so many constituencies represented in it that it is a somewhat cumbersome institution.”

Yet to say that the Senate has no power is to take a simplistic view of University politics. The Senate’s institutional power is far greater than its everyday actions show, and there is a steady stream of opportunity in the Senate for those who take advantage of it. For faculty members who involve themselves, it provides key access and connections to top-level administrators. Similarly, students form a coalition that enables them to voice their concerns to a high-level body that takes them seriously.

HISTORY OF THE SENATE

The Senate was born in 1969, just after the 1968 protests, one of the most dramatic events in the University’s history. Its creation followed months of deliberations, proposals, and 14 drafts of a constitution.

It is a testament to the Senate’s alleged lack of power—or to Columbia’s personality—that dissent against its organization began to accrue before its first meeting. “The most common reaction of students and professors questioned at Columbia University yesterday about a proposal for a university senate was praise for the over-all conception of the plan but criticism of some of its details,” wrote the New York Times on February 19, 1969.

The creators of the Senate designed it as a body contrary to the revolutionary mindset that swept over the University in the late 1960’s. Eben Moglen, a former Senator and current professor of legal history at Columbia Law School, described it as a “counterrevolutionary republican institution.”

“The senate is not an institution to change the University,” he said, “It is meant to stop a revolution, not to start one.”

The editorial board of the Spectator wrote on February 18, 1969, that “the most critical matter—namely the powers of the body—is treated in a wholly unsatisfactory manner.” It went on to say, “It would be better to have no senate than one which pretends to fill a power vacuum but does not.”

CONSOLIDATING DECENTRALIZATION?

The design of the Senate is meant to give a voice to all parts of the University, so that it is a problem-solving forum that bridges the gap between bureaucratic levels. The body represents practically all University groups—administrators, faculty, students, and staff including librarians and researchers—rather than the more common type of faculty senate seen at universities like Yale and Stanford.
On the one hand, this set-up provides a forum for discussion for representatives of an array of interests on campus.

“It’s a democratic way of approaching the administration,” said Amena Cheema, School of the Arts ’09 and one of the two student senators who co-chair the Student Affairs Caucus. “They will take you seriously.”

On the other hand, the Senate is a representative body for the University, which is such a large and decentralized institution that consensus and action can be difficult to come by. Much like the divisions themselves, the way that the students, faculty, and administration view the needs of the University are extremely varied.

“The Senate is therefore structured so that if it is operated in good balance it can’t do anything,” Moglen said. “Making real political common cause between the students and the faculty is difficult. They do not speak the same political language.”

Moglen described the Senate as having a “party of the court,” not dissimilar to the historical makeup of the English Parliament in the first half of the 18th century. To a certain extent, the faculty and staff owe their jobs, and therefore their favor, to the administration.

Bollinger conducts something similar to the English Parliament’s “Prime Minister’s Questions” during his report at the beginning of each plenary meeting, and senators generally use the opportunity to grill the President on issues such as University finances.

The key difference between Bollinger and the Prime Minister of England is the Prime Minister’s need to attract votes from populace for reelection.

POWER IN THEORY

Despite any ideas about the Senate’s inaction, on paper it is far from powerless. The bylaws give it the formal power to legislate and make final decisions, except in rare cases where Trustee concurrence is required. There are only two instances in which the Trustees have overturned a Senate decision: in 1983 on an issue of divestment, and in 1998 on an issue concerning faculty affairs.

Some of its powers are rarely, if ever, invoked, while others are used frequently.

In addition to giving input to the University’s executive committee on important appointment decisions, such as the President, Provost, and six of the 24 trustees, there are also several University-wide issues in which the Senate has played a key role in the last few years.

In 2005, the Senate spent several months discussing the possibility of the Recruitment Officer Training Corps returning to campus. After creating a special Task Force on ROTC and holding a town hall meeting, the Senate voted 53-10 to reject the resolution.

“I think it was an extremely healthy thing to have done,” said James Applegate, a senator and professor from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and co-chair of the Task Force on ROTC. “I thought the idea of the students holding a referendum on an issue of general interest was a very positive step.”
The Senate also takes up issues as they arise within the politics of greater academia. Two current issues are the question of financial conflicts of interest in research policy and the subject of effort reporting, concerning how the University uses funds from the federal government. These topics are regular fixtures on the Senate agenda, as they also make headlines in national news.

The process of streamlining the University’s financial conflict of interest policy began in the Senate not long before reports surfaced that Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) was looking into records of Columbia cardiologists. Effort reporting appeared on the agenda just before Yale paid $7.6 million to the government for misreporting the way the school handled grant money—a story that earned column inches in the Wall Street Journal.

It is important to note that while significant votes take place at the monthly plenary, the majority of Senate discussion happens in committee meetings. There are 16 standing committees who meet regularly prior to the plenary meeting in order to discuss specific issues of the Senate and the University. Committees have the power to hold hearings and sponsor resolutions that then go to the entire Senate.
There are additional special task forces and subcommittees that the Senate can create to discuss specific issues. Currently, the most prominent is the Task Force on Campus Planning, which conducts extensive work on the Manhattanville expansion.

The most prominent of the committees is the Executive Committee, comprised of the President, the Provost, co-chairs Paul Duby, professor of mineral engineering, and Sharyn O’Halloran, George Blumenthal Professor of International and Public Affairs , three other tenured faculty members, two nontenured faculty members, and three students. The committee plays a key role in decisions that affect the entire University, from the selection of trustees, to the selection of the President, University Professors, and Provost, to consulting with the President on key administrative decisions.

This Friday, the Executive Committee will meet to discuss the selection of trustees.

FACULTY AFFAIRS

For those who take advantage of it, the Senate can provide faculty members with powerful opportunities to make their mark on the University. There is a stipulation that allows faculty to reduce their teaching time or students to reduce their courseload as a result of serving on the Executive Committee.

O’Halloran, who also co-chairs the Task Force on Campus Planning and chairs the External Relations and Research Policy Committee, has been instrumental in monitoring the planning stages of Manhattanville since 2003, though in recent months progress on the new campus slowed considerably. Currently, the Task Force is attempting to create a structure to organize the planning process in a fair and transparent way.

“The administration has been very open to the Senate,” said O’Halloran in an interview last semester, in reference to the Senate’s work on Manhattanville.

Part of O’Halloran’s success in the Senate may come from her background as a political economist. Yet not everyone’s research fits well into the Senate’s agenda. A possible worry of some faculty—especially those without tenure—in expressing their views in the Senate is the presence of those administrators who hold sway over their job security and salary.

Many Senators serve after being asked to run by their deans. Attendance at Senate meetings is paltry. The February meeting was the first of the 2008-2009 school year in which enough senators were present to vote on resolutions needing three-fifths majority attendance. A core group of about 20 senators regularly partake in discussions on the Senate floor.

In addition to the time commitment, members of the Senate willingly subjugate themselves to publicly expressing their individual views on politically contentious University issues. Votes are open and public, usually taken out loud by a simple request for “yays” and “nays.” Informal ballots are used on some particularly controversial issues, such as the 2005 vote on ROTC.

“Service in the Senate has been a thing not sought after but accepted—with some degree of a reluctance to serve,” Moglen said.

But not all Senators are so apathetic. Joan Ferrante, a former University Senator and retired Comparative Literature professor, had an opposing viewpoint. “What did make the Senate useful in the past was the fact that it was a place where individual faculty could go to have their concerns heard not through their individual chairman,” she said.

Section §22c of the University Statutes declares that “It shall be the duty of the University Senate to consider any question that may arise as to the conduct or efficiency of any officer of administration or instruction, and to report thereon to the Trustees through the president.”

As part of the faculty affairs committee, Ferrante took on cases of faculty abuse. “Heads of department tend to last forever and tend to be autocratic,” she said. “They would do terrible things to their faculty and they [the faculty] would come to the faculty affairs committee.”

The Senate’s bylaws give the Committee on Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom, and Tenure, one of its subcommittees, the power to “sit as board of appeal on faculty grievances,” though it stipulates that the committee may, but does not need to, report to the Senate and remain confidential in its investigations. The ability to make such instances public is one of the Senate’s most important powers, but it is also one that is rarely invoked.

While Ferrante was serving on the Faculty Affairs Committee, there was a scandal concerning the conduct of the dean of the Nursing School. The confidentiality of the committee’s investigation prevented more information from surfacing, but Ferrente did reference the fact that it failed.

“The administration never moved on that one,” she said.

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Students who serve as senators generally view the Senate in a much different light than the administration and faculty do, simply as a result of their limited time on campus. Students generally serve for two years, giving them a short-term perspective.

At the same time, their short term gives them more incentive to act quickly if they want to produce results.

“It’s a democratic way of approaching the central administration. They will take you seriously,” Cheema said.

One of the first resolutions of the new University Senate, at its first official meeting September 26, 1969, was an expression of opposition to the war in Vietnam. And in 2005, it was a student, Sean Wilkes, CC ’06, who brought up the ROTC issue for reconsideration. One of the co-chairs of the Task Force on ROTC was also a student, Teachers College Senator Nathan Walker.

Today, the students are concerned about student-centered policies, such as making the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a holiday, securing better housing for General Studies and graduate students, allowing graduate students to attend sporting events free of charge, and allowing students to speak at Commencement.

This year, since the turnover of 20 out of the 24 student Senate seats, the students are making a concentrated effort to improve the way their caucus is run. “We have a restructure subcommittee that is working on trying to come up with a plan to make the SAC [Student Affairs Caucus] function in a more codified way than it has been functioning in the last 40 years,” said Monica Quaintance, CC ’10, and one of the Columbia College Senators.

What the students lack in staying power they make up for in tenacity, which is perhaps the opposite of how the majority of the body would be characterized.

shane.ferro@columbiaspectator.com