Faculty deserve to have a voice in academic governance at MSU, but not if that voice comes at the cost of student representation. Students are the reason this university exists, and their needs and concerns should be central to every issue MSU faces.
As the Faculty Council works to restructure the Academic Governance system, which is a government system created specifically for students and faculty to ensure they have a fair say in the decisions made on campus, it has proposed the creation of a steering committee to replace the current Executive Committee of Academic Council.
The executive council is made up of administration, faculty and student members. It distributes policies and proposals throughout the governance system.
The steering committee would be smaller than the executive council, and would be composed of eight faculty members, two students — one undergraduate and one graduate — and the provost.
Proponents of the new system believe a smaller group of people will be more efficient in conducting academic business.
The current system reserves three seats for undergraduate students and two seats for graduate students. The decrease in student seats in the proposed steering committee would give students the same proportion of representation, but only one undergraduate representative and one graduate representative are not enough to cover more than 40,000 students on campus.
Eric Hinojosa, ASMSU’s Academic Assembly chairperson, believes the proposed steering committee would limit student voice because it would be harder to hear students’ concerns through the governance system.
With the current distribution of seats, if one undergraduate or graduate student makes a motion, there is another student in the same level to second that motion and, at the very least, open a topic up for debate.
While undergraduates and graduates are both students, the two have very different concerns and needs on campus, and reducing the representation to just one of each will destroy that support.
The Faculty Council was created to discuss faculty classroom concerns, to make faculty life easier and more efficient and to make classroom environments better for both instructors and students.
While the desire for a smaller, more cogent group is understandable, the voice of the students cannot be compromised, especially when student-faculty issues arise.
Every group of people on campus wants to increase its power and have its unique concerns and needs heard. However, the faculty should empathize with students in not wanting their representation cut, since the faculty also have had to fight for their fair say in MSU’s history.
Members of the Faculty Council, please vote against the creation of a steering committee that limits the number of student representatives.
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