President Jeffrey Hurwit called the May organizational meeting to order in the Knight Library Browsing Room at 3:05 p.m.

The president indicated that the minutes from the May 12, 1999 regular senate meeting would be available for approval at the senateís October meeting.

President Hurwit welcomed and congratulated the newly elected senators and invited them to remain after the short meeting for a reception. The full text of his remarks as outgoing president follows as an attachment to these minutes. President Hurwit received warm applause after his remarks and was presented with a gift from the members of the senate executive committee in appreciate for his dedication and service as president.

Confirmation of the Committee on Committees. Senator John Baldwin, chair of the Senate Nominating Committee presented a slate of candidates for membership to the committee. He noted the committee was missing one nominee representing the humanities division. President Hurwit asked for a motion to elect the nominated candidates. There was no discussion and the motion was passed by voice vote. (A list of all members of the 1999-2000 committee can be found as an attachment to these minutes.)

Confirmation of incoming Senate President Peter Gilkey. President Hurwit called Vice President Gilkey forward to thank him for his service this year and to officially confirm him as the new senate president for 1999-2000. At this point, former president Hurwit relinquished the chair and turned the remainder of the meeting over to the new president. President Gilkey thanked everyone and indicated he would do his best as senate president. He also announced the members of his Senate Executive Committee and several other internal senate committee members.

Nomination and election of the vice-president. Senator Baldwin indicated that Senator James Earl, English, was the nominee for the senate vice president position. President Gilkey asked if there were any other nominations from the floor and hearing none, Senator Earl was elected by acclamation as the new senate vice president.

With no more business, the meeting adjourned to the reception at 3:30 p.m.

Gwen Steigelman

Secretary

(as elected by the senate on May 24, 1999)

Mike Hibbard (prof/sch -- AAA) 1998-2000

David Boush (prof/sch -- business) 1998-2000

Randy McGowen (CAS-soc. sci/hist) 1998-2000

Jim Imanura (CAS-nat. sci/physics) 1998-2000

Julia Heydon (OA-Center for Hum) 1998-2000

Leslie Harris (prof/sch -- law) 1999-2001

Carl Bybee (prof/sch -- journ.& comm) 1999-2001

Cathy Page (CAS-nat. sci/chemistry) 1999-2001

TBA (CAS-hum.) 1999-2001

Anne Leavitt (OA-stu. acad. affairs) 1999-2001

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You may at this point be expecting me to summarize the past year and recapitulate the course and actions of the Senate of 1998-99, from its year-long interest in following the progress of the Process for Change, to early motions urging a new direction for the Riverfront Research Park, to the late passage (after a long and difficult debate) of a new recommendation on Post-Tenure Review policy, to the beginnings of conversations--conversations that I hope will continue next year--concerning the future development of the core campus and modifications of the process of decennial program review.

Instead, I prefer to do two things. First, I wish to thank the many people who saw me through this year. At the head of the list is, of course, Gwen Steigelman, Secretary of the Faculty, who kept me on task and told me what to do, and who was a constant source of support and good humor. I know I could not have done this job without her. Next, come the members of the Senate Executive Committee: Gwen, Vice President Peter Gilkey, Nathan Tublitz, David Bousch, Linda Kintz, Wayne Westling, Paula Burkhart, Michael Olson, and Jennifer Luck. Their advice has been invaluable to me, and I¼ll miss the conversation and Pepsis and cookies we regularly shared in EMU Century Room B. Next, I offer my gratitude to President David Frohnmayer, Provost John Moseley, and Senior Vice-Provost Lorraine Davis, who were invariably gracious to me throughout the year, accepting my invitations to speak before the Senate and supplying support and information whenever I needed it. Finally, I thank you, the members of the Senate, for allowing me to serve.

Second, I would like to offer you a few brief thoughts on a difficult and sensitive issue: the relationship between the faculty and the administration, and its future. As I have discovered over the past year, the President of the Senate, though he or she is nominally just a facilitator, an agenda-setter, a moderator of meetings, actually occupies a delicate position between faculty, students, and staff, on the one hand, and the administration, on the other. Elected by the senate to serve the senate, the president is also privy to many conversations held at high and confidential levels, and becomes quickly aware of the intense pressures and demands that our administrators labor under. It saddens me to say that from this peculiar vantage point I have detected a serious rupture in the fabric of the university.

As I have noted often enough before--as I have in fact testified before the Joint House and Senate Committee on Education in Salem--the faculty of the U of O works harder, for less, than any faculty at any other University or College with which I am familiar. We teach hard, we research hard, and we take our long tradition of faculty governance seriously (though, I must also say, I wish more faculty who say they favor faculty governance would actually be willing to stand for election to committees!). Still, it is no secret that this faculty is seriously, almost clinically, demoralized. And it has a right to be: it is hard NOT to be demoralized after over ten years of budget cuts, neglect, and mistreatment by governors and legislators, Democrats and Republicans, alike--a mistreatment that may now, finally, be about to end.

But, I think, justifiable demoralization has lead to something else on this campus: suspicion. I wish this were not true. But some of the long debates we have held this year have convinced me that it is. Over the past year I have heard many faculty whom I greatly respect tell me that they actually believe the impetus to reform Post Tenure Review policy, for example, was the result of a dark administration plot to undermine academic freedom, and to create a sharp tool with which to excise faculty members without cause. Everything I have seen and heard in countless discussions with the Faculty Advisory Council (on which I have sat for four straight years) and individually with President Frohnmayer and Provosts Moseley and Davis convinces me that that is not so, that our administration has the best interests of the University--and that means its faculty, students, and staff--at heart. The suspicions are not justified.

On the other hand, it gives me no pleasure to say that, in my opinion, the administration has not always been as sensitive to the needs, opinions, and temper of the faculty as it might be. Above all, I do not think the administration fully grasps just how low faculty morale on this campus really is, or how even the slightest step or change in policy can, given the history of the past decade, be perceived as a threat or as the proverbial back-breaking straw.

The ironic thing, of course, is that so much of our past and present difficulties have been beyond our control--beyond anyone¼s control. It is neither the faculty¼s nor the administration¼s fault that Measure 5 passed or that more California high-schoolers have decided to stay home or that the economy of the Pacific Rim went down the toilet last year or a host of other things. We ALL have been forced, too often, to react, rather than to create. That¼s what happens when there are not enough resources.

Now, I am not today suggesting that faculty and administrators hold hands and sing songs in harmony and peace. But I do firmly believe that there is now, for the first time in many years, cause for, if not celebration, than at least for optimism. With the new budget model and with, we all hope, an adequate start to funding it, we will have greater control over our future than ever before. Let us seize that opportunity. It is my hope that, when the fiscal dust finally clears, the administration will, as its first priority, take some dramatic step to begin to repair the morale of its faculty--by, say, enhancing ASA accounts, or constructing a schedule for substantial salary improvements over the next five years. But it is also my fervent hope that the faculty will give the administration the chance to do so, that it will realize that that it is not in the administration¼s interest to administer one of the lowest-paid faculties in the nation and that the administration knows it.

It is, in the end, my hope that the administration will act and that the faculty will respond with the good will that, I am also confident, still exists, not far below the surface, on this very special and remarkable campus.

Thank you.