University Council to hold first meeting of year today

University Council will hold its first meeting of the semester today with administrative business and summertime initiatives heading the body's agenda. Council, which serves as an advisory body to the president and provost, is composed of about 90 administrators, faculty members, staff and students. Members meet monthly to discuss campus-wide issues in a public forum. The two-hour meeting is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. in the Quadrangle's McClelland Hall. It will feature reports from members of the steering committee -- including University President Judith Rodin, Interim Provost Michael Wachter and Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson and College junior Bill Conway -- along with committee reports and the selection and ranking of Council's focus issues for the academic year. Rodin said she is planning to discuss the University's recent partnership with the city's public school district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to bring a Penn-aided elementary school to 42nd and Spruce streets, along with several other initiatives introduced over the summer. "I have worked closely with the chairs of the Faculty Senate and the chairs of the Council committees to develop charges for the upcoming year," she said. "I look forward to our work together as a deliberative body." Wachter said he will discuss several initiatives coming out of his office that "have momentum," including the new college house system, the University's distance-learning initiatives and the external reviews being conducted on the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Law School this year. Council's Personnel Benefits and Student Affairs committees will also present their year-end reports from the 1997-98 academic year. While nothing controversial is on the agenda for this year's first meeting, last year's Council term was plagued with dissent. The body began the year on a controversial note, as it voted to reduce the percentage of its members needed for quorum -- the minimum number needed to conduct official business -- to only 40 percent of its membership. "There is rarely a quorum at Council," Council Secretary Constance Goodman said last year. "The purpose of revising the quorum is to provide a number which is realistic so the votes are valid." The measure could not be officially ratified until Council's October meeting due to the lack of a quorum when the bylaw was introduced in September. Council ended a long-standing debate last fall when it voted to give the United Minorities Council a permanent seat, over the objections of the UA. While proponents of the move emphasized the need for greater diversity on Council, detractors called upon members of minority groups to seek seats on the UA instead. But the most heated moments of the term came at special meetings called by Council members to discuss the University's decision to outsource facilities management to Trammell Crow Co. and the city ordinance restricting food vending on most campus streets and sidewalks. The special November 5 meeting on Trammell Crow -- which required a quarter of Council's membership to sign a petition asking for the meeting -- was the first special session called in more than two decades. Though Council asked the University Board of Trustees to vote down the deal, Trustees unanimously approved it less than a week later.

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