With no quorum, UMC fails in bid to obtain Council seat

The United Minorities Council's bid to obtain a seat on University Council was stalled yet again at the April 30 Council meeting as the body failed to meet the quorum required for a binding vote on the issue. Council needs 46 of its 91 members present to make in order to make a bylaw change, but Council Secretary Constance Goodman said there were only "30-something" members at the meeting. A motion for a straw poll to determine Council members' positions on the issue failed, leaving it unclear whether the vote would have succeeded. The low turnout at the meeting was not totally unexpected. Council experiences an ongoing attendance problem, with few of the 45 members of the faculty delegation attending meetings regularly. In a report to the few members who were present at last month's meeting, outgoing Council Steering Chairperson Peter Kuriloff criticized the body for its lack of participation and failure to generate productive dialogue this year. "University Council has been spotty in its successes this year," the Education professor said. "We didn't have the kind of interesting discussions that we could and should have at all times." Kuriloff, who also chairs the Faculty Senate, added that the lack of stimulating dialogue meant that Council has not been useful in its capacity as an advisory board to the president and provost. To end the difficulties involved with meeting quorum, Kuriloff has proposed a bylaw change for next year to reduce the number of members needed at meetings. "If we don't get our act together and get the quorum changed, this body is totally undermined in its capacity," he said. But Council members noted that a successful vote to lower quorum may be difficult to achieve, since the vote would also be subject to the current quorum guidelines. "The quorum rule is pretty ridiculous, since the people who always come to meetings are obviously the ones who care about the issues, so they should be able to vote," said Undergraduate Assembly Secretary and Olivia Troye, a College sophomore who served on the UMC last year. And former UA Vice Chairperson Larry Kamin, a College junior, said lowering quorum is not the underlying issue, and that the poor attendance needs to be addressed first. For the UMC, the failure to meet quorum means that the group will have to wait still longer before it may receive a seat on Council. The UA had granted the UMC one of its seats on Council until 1994, when a change in Council bylaws required that all members be elected by their constituent bodies. Since UMC members are not elected by the UA's entire constituency, they were unable to retain the UA seat. Much of the UA has opposed adding a UMC seat to Council, arguing that the UA serves as the representative body of undergraduates, and that groups seeking representation should run for a spot on UA. But persistent UMC members said they would not let the issue disappear. "The issue is not going to die -- minority students will continue to be a part of the University and will remain active," said UMC Chairperson Tope Koledoye, a College junior. "I'm very disappointed -- I wish for once something would come out of this issue and people would care enough to come out and vote," she added, noting that the failure to fill quorum is reflective of the University's lack of commitment toward minority issues.

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