Well, it appears that the New Constitution is still rolling along, although now we'll get an "ad hoc committee" to review the changes and figure out how to implement it. Once all the furor dies down, next year, this committee will recommend it to the full faculty for a vote.
What changes does it make? Well, for starters it adds four more senators from each of the four schools, for a total of 48 senators, which is almost a quarter of the total university faculty. (In case your algebra bone is failing you, that means we started with 8 faculty from each school). Then it allows for a couple of librarians, and anyone considered "full-time" and not just tenured or tenure-track folks would be eligible to serve on senate. The only "senate-eligible" folks now are tenure or tenure-track, and one of our problems is that we have too many untenured junior faculty on senate now. I can't imagine how expanding the group will work out...
The New Constitution rebuilds all of the senate committees, and it also divides up Curriculum and Teaching into two committees, one for undergrad decisions and one for grad decisions, and allows the grad committee to decide who is "graduate faculty." Administrators now sit on these two committees, presumably so they can report back to other administrators about who the troublemakers are (without the faculty lackeys having to do all of it for them).
Keep in mind that we're being sold all this because "this is how everyone else does it" - see argumentum ad populum . We're also being told that all of the new committees will enhance communication with administration and allow faculty to regain control of things such as the calendar and the catalog.
Ultimately, the result will be a weaker voice for faculty. More untenured folks in senate means a weaker senate, and more committees certainly won't speed things up any or take any power away from the administrators that already wield it. Senate will have the opportunity to change senate bylaws at any time, by itself, without a vote of the faculty. That should work out well.
How did we get to this point? As I mentioned last month it's all about bullying and conflict of interest. John Lennon said "Follow the money" and that's good to remember here, too, although some senate folks clearly just want to go along to get along so that the bullying of faculty by administrators will stop. Given the history of the gang currently running the show at UHCL, it's unlikely that they have some hidden leadership talent stashed away someplace. They've been so successful with bullying and outright intimidation thus far, why change now?
