October 18, 2004

 

To:       Ad hoc Senate Committee on Motion US03/04 10

 

From:   W. Andrew Marcus

            President, University Senate

 

Re:       Committee membership and charge

 

Frank and Peter – thank you for your earlier notes regarding the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on the Assembly Motion.  Due to the standard onslaught of courses and other activities, it has taken me a while to take on my Chair duties within the committee – hence the delay in responding.

 

I want to thank all of you for agreeing to serve on the Ad Hoc Senate Committee for revising Motion US03/04 10 on the Assembly.  To refresh your memories from last Wednesday’s Senate meeting, the committee membership consists of:

 

W. Andrew Marcus, Chair

Peter Gilkey

Melinda Grier

Gina Psaki

Frank Stahl

Gwen Steigelman

 

I am also inviting Jette Foss to be at the table, although she will not be a voting member of the committee because she is not a member of the Assembly.  In addition, I will be circulating copies of our revisions to Garrett Epps, Senate Rules Committee, and Paul Simonds, Senate Parliamentarian. 

 

In broadest terms, the charge given to our committee is to revise the Assembly Motion so that future Senate debate can focus on the intent and principal of the motion rather than the details of the wording and notification procedures.  More specifically, topics we need to address in revising the motion are:

 

(1) Insuring consistent language use throughout motion, particularly with regard to methods used to communicate with Assembly members;

 

(2) Developing language that insures accessibility to listing of Assembly members for potential petitioners, while also preventing intrusive communications for purposes not related to the Assembly (e.g., grabbing of e-mail lists by spammers); and

 

(3) Developing a screening mechanism as part of section (a) that prevents the circulation of trivial or malicious petitions.

 

Although – as Frank points out in his e-mail - there are other issues that can be raised regarding the convening of the Assembly, it will not be the mission of our committee to craft new amendments.  Such activity can certainly take place outside our committee, but our role will be more limited, focusing largely on insuring consistency, confidentiality, and practicality within the language of the present motion.    

 

Thank you once again for agreeing to be part of the committee.  I will soon be sending you a note to set up a meeting time.