Camfield tenure case may reopen

English Department considers student input English Professor Gregg Camfield's fate at the University may be determined next week at an English department senior faculty meeting. According to English Department Undergraduate Chairperson Al Filreis, the department's tenured faculty will meet November 6 to discuss a variety of personnel matters. At that meeting, the group will decide whether to reopen Camfield's tenure case. Camfield, who is highly regarded by both his students and colleagues, was denied tenure last March by the School of Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee. By doing so, the committee rejected the English Department's recommendation and infuriated many students. Groups and individuals protested the decision through petitions and letter-writing campaigns. In May, the tenured departmental faculty authorized a committee to prepare a case for Camfield's renomination. According to English Professor Robert Lucid, that group spent the summer gathering additional materials -- including input from a variety of constituencies. Lucid said the tenured faculty will take student input very seriously, noting that the English Undergraduate Advisory Board was very vocal in its opposition to the decision last semester. But representatives of the UAB said last night that they were disappointed with the amount of input they have had and information they have received. College junior and UAB member Alex Edelman said he first learned of the tenured faculty meeting from The Daily Pennsylvanian. "That really shocks and disappoints me," he said. "I would think the UAB would be one of the first to be contacted." Edelman also said that Camfield was the first recipient of the UAB's teaching award two years ago. And College junior Christy Goralnik said that in light of the award, the University made a "strong statement about how [it] views teaching and the opinions of its students" when Camfield was denied tenure. She noted that the entire tenure process generally lacks student input. "The administration does not want students involved in the tenure process," she said. The UAB will probably write a formal statement advocating a reopening of the case and a reconsideration of the decision, Goralnik said. Despite student reservations, Lucid called student input "one of the very real sources of material" on which the faculty will base its decision. He said he could not predict how next week's meeting would turn out. Lucid said, though, that the committee must have sufficient grounds to begin the process again. "The SAS Personnel Committee last year rejected a departmental recommendation to promote, after hearing our best arguments and reviewing our most persuasive materials," Lucid said. "Can we come up with a sufficiently stronger and better case than the one we have already submitted and had rejected? That is the question that we must consider and answer," he added. Although the meeting is closed and confidential, the decision on Camfield's case will most likely be made public, Lucid said. "I suppose it will be impossible to keep it anything but public," he added. Camfield was unavailable for comment last night.