UA demands stronger voice on committee

Student government leaders said yesterday they will fight to guarantee that student voices are heard by restoring the faculty to student ratio on one of University Council's top committees. Undergraduate Assembly representatives said they want to reverse a November Council decision that made faculty members outnumber students on the Safety and Security Committee, an action they say will squelch student voices. UA Council members have criticized faculty since last semester for adding two faculty members to the large committee and are demanding either a repeal of the decision or a reciprocal increase in student representation. Previously, three undergraduate and three graduate students sat on the committee with five faculty members and two administrators. "We want to have a strong student voice on any body at the University that has any impact on students," College junior You-Lee Kim, a Council Steering Committee member said. "[The item is] not on the [January] agenda, but ideally we want to see it discussed." UA Chairperson Mitchell Winston said last night he does not know if Council by-laws will allow members to reverse their decision, but said he and Kim will propose a counter-amendment to restore the strength of student participation on the committee. At last month's meeting, Council members voted against adding two faculty members to the Council Bookstore Committee, giving students hope that they will also be able to regain their status on the Safety and Security Committee. "The student victory at the last Council meeting does encourage us, but it's not the only impetus," Kim said. "We would have brought it up anyway." "I think especially with the last vote faculty understood how serious we are on this issue and how much it means to us," said UA Vice Chairperson Ethan Youderian. But since both students and faculty have claimed that safety and security issues affect them most, the students' demands this month may prove harder to meet. While faculty members have traditionally outnumbered students on University Council committees, Council by-laws do not stipulate that faculty members maintain a majority on committees. Rather, faculty members said yesterday that the committees have been dominated by faculty as part of an "understanding." "The general idea has been that for the sake of long-term view and for some continuity and institutional memory, the idea was clearly to have a substantial faculty majority," said Statistics Professor David Hildebrand. But students, who fear the loss of their vote and their voice, said they were disturbed by the automatic majority given to faculty members. "When any one group automatically has a simple majority that group can always direct debate and whenever there's a vote, it will go in their favor," Youderian said. Graduate student activist Elizabeth Hunt, who said graduate students are in favor of reversing the Safety and Security Committee decision if such action is possible, said while she is not surprised that the faculty were guaranteed a majority on committees, she feels that changes are in order. "It is an old convention that needs to be taken apart," she said.

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