Faculty Senate discussed their feelings about last week’s canceled Council on University Planning and Budget meeting at Tuesday’s senate meeting.

Faculty Senate chair Anne Zahlan said the cancellation seemed odd, and there was a lot of gossip and speculation about why the meeting did not occur.

The meeting was scheduled for last Friday, and Zahlan said she did not receive notice of the cancellation until she e-mailed CUPB chair Robert Augustine in regards to the agenda not being posted on the CUPB Web site. Agendas must be posted at least 48 hours in advance to comply with the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

The CUPB is a body which is used to rank university priorities and ask representatives from the entire campus how to allocate money to those priorities, said David Carpenter, professor of English.

“CUPB essentially was created to give faculty maximum input into establishing budgetary priorities,” Carpenter said.

Currently, there are 37 voting members on the CUPB, 11 of which are faculty.

Zahlan said CUPB was much originally much smaller, but during former President David Jorns’ term, the number of council members was expanded, and faculty became outnumbered.

The cancellation left some faculty members concerned, Zahlan said.

“There was so much confusion and distrust, people actually went over to see if (the CUPB) was actually meeting,” she said.

The CUPB bylaws call for monthly meetings, but Zahlan has not heard of a make-up date yet. The next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 13.

The Faculty Senate also heard a proposal on grade appeal procedures from Ronnie Deedrick, student vice president for academic affairs.

Deedrick discussed a Student Senate resolution for which he is trying to gain support. The Student Senate has not voted on the resolution yet, but Deedrick said the support is wide.

The resolution calls for the inclusion of students in the grade appeals process as a voting member and a counsel for the student who is appealing a grade.

In the grade appeals process, a student first goes to his or her professor, and if the issue is not resolved, the student presents the appeal to the department chair, Deedrick said.

If the appeal is still not resolved, Deedrick said the student goes up before a department grade appeals committee.

Then, if it’s still not settled, the student goes before a university committee that includes the vice president for academic affairs.

Deedrick’s resolution asks for a student vote on both the departmental and university level, as well as the student vice president for academic affairs or a graduate student to accompany the student in the “intimidating” process.

“I think it’s important to keep my seat as well as a graduate student’s for legal counsel for a student,” Deedrick said. “A student should have some semblance of a jury of peers.”

The Faculty Senate responded to the proposal with mixed feelings, and members agreed to revisit the issue later.

A proposed policy on computer privacy also was introduced to the Faculty Senate Tuesday by John Kilgore, professor of English.

Kilgore’s draft resolution asks for a clearly-stated computer privacy policy that protects employees from any infiltration of assigned computers and private communications.

Computer privacy is a major concern of Kilgore’s, and he felt there was an important need to spell out privacy policies, especially while on the university server.

“It just gives me the willies,” Kilgore said. “No one has any more right to look at my e-mails than to come to my house and look in my mailbox.”

Zahlan said the Faculty Senate will create a subcommittee on computer privacy to draft a policy.

The subcommittee won’t provide technical methods for computer privacy, Zahlan said, but will instead provide suggestions for what the faculty would like to see happen.

Administrative search procedures and the allocation and distribution of resources are future agenda items for the Faculty Senate.