Last week, the University Senate executive committee was made aware of a proposal to disband the University Senate. This resolution was authored by Nicholas Barry as a member of Associated Student Government (ASG). Barry recently became a member of senate, the governing body he proposed to dissolve.
Nathan French, chair of the executive committee of University Senate, addressed ASG about the importance of Senate and allotted time during a public hearing on the Senate Enabling Act for concerned parties to express their opinions.
“The university will always have a need of shared governance,” French said. “Since the earliest history of Miami, faculty have participated in the decision-making of the institution, and since that time, faculty have been joined by students and staff and administrators in that project of governance.”
At the public hearing, Barry delivered prepared remarks alongside three other ASG members: Tyreke Farkensen, Susanne Morrissey and Kirsten Osteboe. During the open floor, ASG members spoke on shared governance, focus and synergy.
Each speech emphasized the importance of collaboration between advisory bodies and alluded to backing away from the original piece of legislation. Later, Barry indicated that the resolution will not be on the floor this coming Tuesday and will not reappear the same way it was originally written.
“We’re kind of just hoping out of today and voting on the Enabling Act, that it will be kind of the final push towards ‘let’s work,’” Osteboe said after the hearing. “I don't foresee that original legislation coming to the floor at all.”
ASG speakers were met with silence from University Senate.
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“I’m hoping that they’re willing to put time into [making changes],” Barry said after the meeting. “I don’t know because they were silent, but I’m hoping. I really do think that they were thinking and they were in listening mode. I’m optimistic, but there’s still conversations to be had.”
French reinforced the idea that the senators were processing and digesting the news.
“I think what you saw today, even as quiet as senators were during the public hearing, I think you saw a group of folks who’ve processed last week’s news and have thought really hard about what they want University Senate to be,” French said after the meeting.
He added that the institution feels as if it is amid a moment of tectonic shift towards a fundamental rearrangement of its historic position in the service of mind, spirit and civic life.
“I hope for this Senate to become a place of robust, engaged advice and dissent, a rampart of shared governance whose voice is one worth hearing and engaging,” French said. “To achieve that will require open discussions such as today’s. Our public discussion today is a part of the important work of the renovation of this body, [so] it might provide timely, clear and effective advice, serving, if needed, as a conscience for our institution at a time when our institution works to recover the broader trust of the public it serves.”
On Sept. 8, Senate motioned to create an ad hoc committee, led by Media, Journalism and Film Department chair Rosemary Pennington, to revise the enabling act. The committee was tasked with authoring and proposing an amended version of the act, aligning with Senate Bill 1 and the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act.
The enabling act, which will be voted on at the next meeting, is the first step to a great deal of change to come. Then, the body hopes to engage at the winter retreat to begin to work more efficiently and update important documents.
“Nationally, you see university senates and faculty senates being shut down, and I think when you lose those bodies of shared governance, you lose spaces for transparency and dialogue and discussion and those are really important for the life of a public institution,” Pennington said. “So I'm happy that it seems like we’re moving away from the conversation of dissolution. I’m still a little nervous about what comes next, but I’m more hopeful for what that could be.”
The University Senate's next meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 in 111 Harrison Hall.
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