Faculty Senate members raised issues about the new President’s Cabinet, a project that brings together a group of area leaders with interim President Lou Hencken to work on community concerns.

At Tuesday’s meeting, senate members worried that the cabinet would act as an advisory board to Hencken about university policy. Several members also brought up a concern that, this year, all of those positions are being filled by white men.

“This group is not representative of the complexion of university,” senate member David Carpenter, English professor, said.

The hope is to create a forum for exchange of ideas between the university and the Charleston-Mattoon community, an e-mail about the new cabinet from Hencken to the senate said.

The cabinet is made up of Hencken, the mayors and mayors pro tempore of Mattoon and Charleston, the director of Illinois Consolidated Telephone Co., the executive director of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health, the superintendents of Mattoon and Charleston schools, the president of the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce, the editor of the Charleston Times-Courier and various city council members.

The senate came up with various ideas for other members of the committee, like representatives from the Mattoon Journal-Gazette the Women’s Business Council, Student Senate, and Eastern’s faculty, as well as one from The Daily Eastern News .

Others pointed out that the president can organize countless meetings without the aid of a “cabinet” anyway, so the formation of one doesn’t make much difference.

“I think this is much ado about nothing,” senate member James Tidwell, journalism professor, said “The president can talk to whoever he or she wants to whenever he or she wants to.”

Still others felt that the Student Senate External Relations committee, which contains ex-officio members from the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce, the Charleston City Council and Eastern’s faculty, staff and administration, already fills the purpose the cabinet is intended to serve.

In other business, the senate continued its review of discussion from the Spring 2002 Faculty Forum.

Senate Vice Chair Reed Benedict, distributed a list of seven suggested recommendations based on those discussions. The first would create an office of faculty development under the vice president for academic affairs with a director and clerical assistance.

This met with the same previous concerns about devoting scarce funds to what could become another bureaucracy and whether there was a need for such an office.

The senate also received a presentation from Roy Lanham, campus minister and director of the Newman Catholic Center, about the student-run Fair Trade Coffee campaign. Lanham and the group are trying to switch Eastern to coffee that is Fair Trade certified, which means that it was grown responsibly and more of the purchase price goes to the farmers in Central and South America and Africa.