Members of faculty senate tabled Article XIII for another week to revise language regarding the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

Faculty Senate Chairman John Pommier opened the discussion with questions from members about how petition signatures would be verified by the executive committee.

Vice chairwoman Dawn VanGuten said, if the bylaw were approved, they would not be able to commit to one method of verification.

As the discussion continued, talk turned toward the section of the bylaw that reads “the Senate asserts that petitions signature pages are exempted from inspection or copying by Section 7 of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.”

Senate Recorder Jonathan Coit has been communicating with the State’s Attorney office and said the privacy of the names on the petitions may be upheld by FOIA, but there is no way to know for certain if it would.

John Best, a psychology department professor, led much of the discussion regarding this section.

“Our ignorance of the law does not allow us to break it,” Best said.

Members of faculty senate voted that revisions needed to be made to the information about FOIA and tabled the bylaw until the next meeting on April 6. Best will make revisions that would further outline what FOIA would enable the faculty senate to do.

“We want to be very careful when handling signatures,” Best said.

Members of the senate also discussed an e-mail they received about the process by which faculty senate members are assigned to committees.

Committee assignments are made randomly, but there was some contention over whether this is appropriate for every committee.

Pommier used the example that the student standards committee has training, which may make some returning members more qualified than others.

“Some committees are saying (random selection) may not be appropriate for that committee,” Pommier said.

VanGuten argued the random selection process creates most effective representation of the faculty to university committees.

“The strength of this is you don’t have to have any qualifications,” VanGuten said.

Nominations for the 42 open committee positions will take place after faculty senate elections, which close today at 4:30 p.m.

The School of Continuing Education gave a presentation about their role to the university. William Hines, dean of the School of Continuing Education, said they are working on expanding off-campus programs in the Chicago area.

Students taking off-campus courses have increased, along with semester hours.

Hines emphasized off-campus faculty are selected and approved by both the college and department.

Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs, gave his report to the senate, saying that there has been much discussion about the budget in Springfield, but little action.

Lord also said they now know the fiscal year 2011 budget will need to be six percent less than the current budget.

Emily Steele can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].