Excused--Barnhard, Boren, Fagot, Frahs, Greene, Horner, Howell, Kintz, Klinghammer, Sprague.

Absent---Carter, Fisher, Fuller, Good (2), Hayes, Holland, Hosticka, Howe, Ponder, Reed (~), Riedl (23, Shafer, Trombley, Wade.

The President of the Senate has informed the Secretary that he received a request for an excused absence from Senator Goldschmidt for the January meeting of the Assembly. This correction has been made in the minutes of that meeting. Also, Senator Howell and Boyd explained their absences and each has been given an excused absence.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

President Simonds announced that at the March 8, l995 meeting of the University Senate a discussion of the "Report of the Commission on Faculty Rewards and Development" would take place. At the end of the discussion the Senate will be asked to endorse the Report.

At the April 12, 1995 meeting of the Senate the Assembly Committee on Governance Reform will present several alternatives for discussion by the Senate. No vote will take place as the Committee is a creature of the Assembly and it is the Assembly that will have final disposition of the work of the Committee.

OLD BUSINESS

President Simonds introduced the following draft of a proposed policy on "Family Support" for Senate discussion. The President explained that the move toward forming such a policy was initiated by the Senate two years ago and Mr. John Nicols who was then a Senator. It was emphasized that this was a draft and thus no vote would be taken on the draft.

Title: Family Support

Purpose: To set forth guidelines to meet the University's commitment to support members of the campus community with family responsibilities. In accordance with Oregon Revised Statute 326.785, family, for the purpose of this policy, is defined as a group of individuals related by blood, marriage or adoption, or individuals whose functional relationships are similar to those found in such associations.

Policy: Recognizing the vital role the family plays in the well-being and productivity of its students, staff and faculty, the University of Oregon is committee to helping its members balance their work, educational and family responsibilities. The organizational benefits of family support, as established by national research, include improved employee motivation, morale and capacity for service. These immediate and long-range benefits emphasize the importance of implementing family-support practices.

In order to create an environment that results in high productivity while responding positively to the family issues of its members, the University asks deans, directors, department heads and supervisors to:

Recognize the existence and importance of family responsibilities;

Work with employees and students to understand and accommodate their needs;

Establish and implement flexible and responsive practices whenever possible to balance employee needs with unit goals.

This respectful and supportive environment shall include:

The continuation of a professional, non-demeaning atmosphere for women who become pregnant;

Recognition of the legitimacy of requests for reasonable accommodation due to family responsibilities and equitable consideration of requests without recrimination.

These requests may include but are not limited to reasonable accommodation for committee meeting times and assignments, flexible work schedules, requests for reserved parking permits, children occasionally in the classroom ¡F workplace,

accommodation of space and time for nursing mothers, extension of student and faculty deadlines and allocation of resources.

The ultimate responsibility for determining the relevance, feasibility, and timing of implementation of family-support practices rests with the individual's supervisor, within these policy guidelines. However, flexible and creative strategies must be consistent to move successfully towards mutually beneficial solutions.

Implementation

This policy will be communicated annually to all personnel by the Office of the President.

Deans, directors and department heads are responsible for implementing this policy, and for assisting unit heads and supervisors in adopting successful strategies. A report for each vice-president assessing progress in the development of successful strategies will be submitted annually to the President and should include specific indications of proactive changes in local policy and practice.

President Simonds introduced Ms. Louise Bishop, English, who would serve as the Chair for the discussion of the draft policy. Ms. Bishop is member of the Committee. In turn Ms. Bishop introduced Ms. Karen Logvin, Human Resources, also a member of the Committee.

The discussion of the draft policy created a number of comments and questions from Senators and others present. A summary of the discussion follows:

If the proposed policy has any tie to State Statute, State System OAR or University OAR it should be noted where applicable in the Policy Statement. The answer was that there were none.

What were the pro and con statements within the committee? Mostly about changes in the work place, the climate, attitudes, etc.

Personnel decisions are involved in this policy, goals and needs of individual and separate units are involved and it is difficult to assign a general and equally weighted policy campus wide. Whenever possible an accommodation should be attempted, was the reply, as long as consistency within the goals was the result.

On page 1 it states that the draft has as its purpose "To establish guidelines....", but further on in the draft reference is made to "policy guidelines...." Which is it: guidelines or policy? Policy indicates a mandate and guidelines provides considerable flexibility. In response it was stated that the draft was establishing pro-active measures and that a mandate did not preclude conversation taking place.

The draft was putting into writing what has been done historically on campus. Since people and time change it is best to establish in writing the tradition of flexibility that we has become custom here. An unwritten policy is not dependable or is application universal. The proposal will provide a written, and reliable, policy for the campus.

A written policy is important to new-hires as they are not fully aware of all of the possibilities available to them. These same people might be timid in asking for flexibility not knowing that it is quite acceptable to do so. With a written policy everybody will be fully aware of what is possible in the area addressed by the draft.

Annual Reports, as required in the last paragraph, would be onerous and would very well go unread and perhaps not even prepared and sent forward. Could this be changed? It was suggested that the reports could be done "periodically" at the request of the President. Further suggestions included the request from the President could be specific as to content and not just have a generic report. Follow-up would be possible as the time to read and study the report would be more likely.

Denial responsibility should be a part of the policy. It is not always possible to meet demands for flexibility because of staffing, schedules, etc. It was stated that the policy attempted to provide leeway and thus was not establishing an absolute that each request had to be granted, but that they should be seriously considered and judged within the constraints of the unit involved as well as past history of requests from the individual, etc. An added comment was that the individual employee was responsible to fulfill expectations of employment, and not free-load. A disclaimer would make it possible for the supervisor to have a base upon which to stand when considering a request. This was a very popular suggestion.

Would it not be better to make the policy more broad, more humanitarian. To limit it to such a narrow group as defined in the "Purpose" statement would exclude a number of individuals employed at the University and thus it would be of no use to these people. It would establish another class of people by not addressing their concerns.

Since the proposed policy includes "Staff" would this not cause problems with the OPEU contract. Most union contracts include an evenness or equality of treatment, yet this policy would allow some to have an advantage not-available to others, this might be contrary to the OPEU contract. The response was that this should not cause any problem with the OPEU contract. But the response to that was that certain state laws do govern this area, the union contract as well as the leadership of the union would have to be involved in the formulation of this policy as it impacts on "staff" and consistency or lack of consistency could be a breeding grounds for difficulty down the road. Interjected at this point was a claim that part of the policy seems to undercut the authority of the supervisor and that this should not be an interpretation as the supervisor should not be in a defensive position in addressing situations this policy will address.

Students must learn deadlines, papers are due when they are due and this date is established well in advance. To waive deadlines will cause problems. One response was that this policy was for exceptional circumstances and not daily occurrences. The requests must be legitimate and the person making the request must feel at ease whenever she/he makes the request and that it is not risky behavior to make such a request.

This is not a "woman's" policy, it is for all employees and students. The policy will force us to think about situations in a different way--work and family must be considered along with the employee or the student.

Student fees now cover child care for students. This fee is paid by all students even though the vast majority of the students will never take advantage of the service provided. It is a popular program and last spring the students, in the ASUO election, endorsed the continuation and expansion of the program. This policy will force faculty and staff to think of students outside of the context just being a student, but being a spouse or parent.

With the discussion having concluded the two committee members thanked the Senator for their input and stated that they will go back to the committee with notes from the discussion and will attempt to address the concerns in refining the policy. Ms. Logvin stated that she would inquiry about the questions concerning OPEU and state laws/rules as they might pertain to the policy,

ADJOURNMENT

The business of the meeting having ended the meeting adjourned at 4:04 p.m.

Keith Richard Secretary

Web page spun on 24 June 2002 by Peter B Gilkey 202 Deady Hall, Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1222, U.S.A. Phone 1-541-346-4717 Email:peter.gilkey.cc.67@aya.yale.eduof Deady Spider Enterprises