U. Council mtg. axed

For the second time in four months, a Council session was cancelled. For just the third time since 1993 -- and the second time within the last four months -- officials have cancelled a University Council meeting due to an insufficient agenda. This month's meeting -- originally scheduled for Wednesday -- will not be held due to a lack of "issues ready for discussion," according to Faculty Senate Chairperson John Keene, University Council's steering committee chairperson. The November Council meeting was canceled for similar reasons. Keene, a City and Regional Planning professor, said that two cancellations in a four-month period "has been unusual" but also that "[this] February has been a slow period." And Council member Vivian Seltzer reaffirmed Keene's assertion, adding that "we certainly have not had something like this happen in the past few years." But the Social Work professor and former chairperson of the Faculty Senate explained that the Council committees -- which prepare reports to Council on a number of University issues -- sometimes have difficulty finishing their reports in time for the scheduled Council meetings due to personal time constraints. "All the people on the committees are very busy and they are all volunteers," said Seltzer, who added that preparing the reports takes "a ton of work." While there are currently 12 Council committees charged with examining University issues, none have had enough time to prepare presentations for Council, Keene added. Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Bill Conway attributed the cancellations to a shortened agenda. "If there's nothing on the agenda, there's nothing on the agenda," the Wharton junior said. "[Council] took care of a lot at the last meeting." At its January 27 meeting, Council passed three resolutions relating to consultation policies between the faculty and administrators, closed-circuit television monitoring and the University's charitable giving program. After "the very successful meeting in January," Keene said that the Council had "cleared the table of pending issues" and the Steering Committee voted to cancel this month's meeting. And Conway said, "After we were done deciding what to put on the agenda, there wasn't enough for the meeting." But one of Council's Graduate and Professional Student Assembly representatives, Kenneth Kolaczyk, noted that the cancellation of the two meetings deprives students of the chance to discuss issues with University officials. "[The cancellation] denies a forum for students to express their concerns," the second-year Fels Center of Government student said. At the next meeting, scheduled for March 24, University President Judith Rodin will report to Council on budgetary issues, Keene said. The University Council, composed of about 92 Penn faculty, staff and students, meets monthly to advise the president and provost about issues that affect the University.

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