The Faculty Senate Tuesday voted to send two constitutional amendment revisions to interim President Lou Hencken for review without taking a position on either.

The senate held an election last week for tenure, tenure-track faculty and department chairs to vote on one amendment to change constitutional wording on university council membership, and a second to not allow department chairs to serve on senate and other major councils.

The first amendment passed by a vote of 34-17 and the second by 26-25.

The senate normally does not entertain discussion whether or not to ratify the vote before the president reviews the changes, and was not prepared for discussion Tuesday, said senate chair Anne Zahlan.

A motion was initially proposed to send the president a recommendation of the first amendment and a suggestion not to approve the second regarding chairs.

“The senate as I understand has never recommended to counteract the vote of the faculty … this is not the standard,” Zahlan said.

A senate motion not suggesting to approve one amendment would undermine the election process, said senate member and English instructor David Carpenter.

“I find this outrageous,” he said. “The people that went over to vote took the time to do that.”

Physics professor and senate member Doug Brandt initially suggested not endorsing the second amendment because of impressions the senate was unclear about how it would affect chairs, especially acting chairs.

If approved by Hencken, the amendment will allow chairs to still vote for candidates to the senate and university councils.

“I don’t think the amendment carries the will of the senate … the amendment as we submitted it was ill-poised,” Brandt said. “If we don’t at least send this to the president, we may have a problem with holding elections.”

Faculty elections are March 25 and 26, and senate supervises membership selected for university committees filled by elected members. All the councils, except for the Council on Academic Affairs, are in the practice of specifying membership from specific colleges instead of at large.

The first amendment removed the wording “at large” and added “any elective council may limit particular seats and the electorate for those seats to faculty from particular academic units to ensure balanced representation.”

Hencken will now see a motion basically reporting only the results of last week’s faculty vote.