Faculty Senate decision unfortunate
Student Congress initially worked towards much more sweeping reforms than those finally compromised on in the final proposal. When beginning the dialogue nearly one year ago, Congress aimed for reforms that would make pre-finals week closer to a true dead period. However, ideas such as that were immediately shut down and we chose to work with the Faculty Senate to compromise in order to come up with a fair and clear policy that is mutually agreeable to all students, faculty and the administration alike.
Unfortunately, despite continued work and countless meetings with members of the Senate, what was left after compromise was essentially a clearer version of the same policy with a slight reduction in the amount of work allowed for the week.
The current language of the Dead Week policy is ambiguous and extremely poorly written. This fact has even been acknowledged by leaders of the Faculty Senate. The changes to make a clearer, more straightforward policy were privately agreed upon by Congress representatives, Faculty Senators, and the Provost’s office.
There is no excuse for the Faculty Senate’s decision to blatantly ignore the feelings of 93 percent of the student body and completely waste the time of student leaders working to change an antiquated policy. The complete disregard of the views of the student body and the absolute disrespect of those student leaders working together with the faculty to come up with a better policy is extremely disappointing.
If Faculty Senate was planning to completely disregard students as they did on Monday, it would have been preferable for them to have done so in August, rather than stringing along Congress and the Student Body for seven additional months.
- Kurt Davidson, chair, UOSA Student Congress
Faculty Senate does care
In Thursday’s editorial, you claim the fact that the OU Faculty Senate voted down (12 to 19 against) the UOSA proposed change to the current OU Dead Week policy “shows the Faculty Senate doesn’t really take student feedback into consideration as 93 percent of the 8,000 students who voted in the spring of 2008 were in favor…” I have the pleasure to serve as an OU Faculty Senator and also serve on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. I was one of three who abstained from the vote on Monday, and I must take issue with your claim for several reasons.
First, the Student Congress’ proposed change of reducing the percentage of a course grade that is due during Dead Week from 10 percent to 5 percent is a very modest change. I am confident that the outcome of this resolution should not be interpreted to mean we don’t consider student feedback. Your editorial states “UOSA was fighting the wrong battle.”
I agree.
While the students might want a change to the current Dead Week policy, the proposed policy really wouldn’t change the students’ experiences much. Several Senators suggested that dead week should truly be a Dead Week with no classes thereby allowing students to complete major projects and assignments and study for their final exams; that would be a major change. True, the language of the current policy is somewhat confusing, but I believe some sort of more innovative resolution might have garnered more support.
- Jeffrey B. Schmidt, Faculty Senator
New low for UOSA
The news of the outcome of the vote by the Faculty Senate regarding Dead Week reform, and the subsequent motion to not review the policy until 2014, paired with an article in The Daily on Monday mentioning the lack of interest in UOSA elections, highlight a new low for student influence at OU. The lack of interest in UOSA and its elections are a result of both poor outreach on the part of UOSA as well as a general perception of the student body that UOSA holds very little power to effectively and meaningfully represent its interests.
While making a concerted, prolonged effort to engage the student population will go a long way to assuaging negative views of UOSA, the actions of the Faculty Senate emphatically demonstrate the limits the student body, and its elected representatives, have in enacting any sort of significant change within the OU community and further reinforces the underlying problem causing student disengagement.
The whole-hearted disregard of the Faculty Senate, as expressed by its majority, of the interests of more than 8,000 students who voted in favor of Dead-Week reform by deciding to not engage in any sort of productive solution process for five years is condemnable, and demonstrates the need for reform within the governing framework of the university.
Only after students feel their interests, represented by UOSA, are treated fairly, seriously, and equally at the highest levels of the university will students actively participate in the student government process.
- Brandon Mikael, candidate for Student Congress
Letter was wrong about Dawkins
I must take issue with Mike Strass’ letter criticizing Dawkins’s lecture at OU. The gist of the critique is that Dawkins’s talk was insufficiently scientific. Strauss first accuses Dawkins of attacking the “straw men” of intelligent falling and the stork theory. This is absurd. Dawkins was obviously parodying the unscientific tactics of the intelligent design movement and it’s vapid “teach the controversy” sloganeering. Most of the audience had no difficulty understanding this.
Strauss goes on to demonstrate an actual strawman when he lambasts the “patently false statement” that believers who claim to derive their morality from scripture don’t read their holy books. Dawkins neither said nor implied such a view. He was clearly attacking the reprehensible morality found throughout these books and the specious, ad hoc contortions employed by theologians in ignoring them.
Strauss’ only factual claim is that the talk was short on numbers and hard data. This is true but largely irrelevant. The talk was a public lecture aimed at a general audience, not a scientific finding presented to specialists. The distinction of archeo and neo-purpose was a broad conceptual framework to explain an important evolutionary concept to the attendees.
These are not particularly new or radical ideas in evolutionary theory but they may present a new mode of thinking to the uninitiated. In short, if Strauss was hoping for a more technical talk I’m sorry he was disappointed, but I saw nothing inappropriate in the talk Dawkins chose to give. Rather, I see a personal disagreement with Dawkins’s religious conclusions beneath a veneer of scientific authority.
- Joshua Sayre, postdoctoral physics student
Atheist are indeed stereotyped
In response to the column “Anti-atheist prejudice wide spread in America” by Zac Smith, I agree with his opinion. As an atheist, I have noticed how people stereotype atheists into people that have no sense of morals or beliefs and that we support, if not are the cause of, everything wrong with society.
This became apparent to me when a co-worker said, “I would have never expected you to be an atheist” referring to how I act, look and the fact that I am not the stereotype society excepts me to be, which is shocking to many people who find out I am atheist after they get to know who I am. I advise those who do stereotype atheists that I can assure you it would be impossible to pick me out from a crowd of religious persons based upon appearance or non-religious ideology.
Furthermore, I fail to understand where these stereotypes come from because I have yet to meet an atheist that is any more immoral than persons who are religious. Atheists are just as diverse as any other group in America and just like everyone in America. We deserve the respect of not being stereotyped.
What I ask of others here is the next time you come across the phrase “this is a Christian nation” please bear in mind, I am an Atheist, and I am American.
- Kevin A. Reidy, social work graduate student
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mktgwhiz 3 years, 2 months ago
HERE IS A LONGER VERSION OF MY LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Faculty Senate DOES Care!
Your March 12th editorial (“Either kill dead-week classes or stop fighting for 5 percent”) claims that the fact that the OU Faculty Senate voted down (12 to 19 against) the OUSA proposed change to the current Dead Week policy “shows the Faculty Senate doesn’t really take student feedback into consideration as 93 percent of the 8,000 students who voted in the spring of 2008 were in favor…” I take issue with your claim for 3 reasons.
First, proposed change to reduce the percentage of a course grade that is due during dead week from 10 to 5 percent is a very modest change. Our vote should not be interpreted to mean we don’t consider student feedback. Your editorial states “UOSA was fighting the wrong battle.” I agree. While the students might want a change to the current policy, the proposed policy really wouldn’t change the students’ experiences much. Several Senators suggested that dead week should truly be a dead week with no classes thereby allowing students to complete major projects and assignments and study for their final exams; that would be a major change. The language of the current policy is somewhat confusing, but I believe some sort of more innovative resolution might have garnered more support.
Second, the Faculty Senate and Executive committee worked with the OUSA over this entire academic year on this resolution and offered many suggestions and even helped to re-write portions of the resolution. We spent more time on this issue than any other single issue this year.
Third, although the Faculty Senate was informed that 93 percent of OU students surveyed wanted dead week reform, the results of the research were not presented in a compelling fashion. We were not provided with results indicating student preferences with regard to dead week policy. I agree with my fellow Senators who said proponents did not provide us with evidence of problems with the current policy. (See article from Thursday, March 12 “Faculty: lack of evidence to blame for dead week reform failure” by Lauren Stalford and Cadie Thompson).
I asked my students about the failed dead week revision. A few (out of 150) were aware of Monday’s vote, and fewer still were concerned about the current dead week policy. The student leaders failed to convince us that there is a problem with the current policy, and my informal poll suggests we probably could tackle larger issues.
The current policy stipulated that it would not be revised for 5 years. We reviewed the policy and felt that the proposed policy was not sufficiently beneficial to implement. Given the time invested trying to revise the dead week policy, more important issues could be tackled that would result in a higher benefit to students because believe it or not, we actually do care about the welfare of our students very much.
Jeffrey B. Schmidt, Ph.D.
JJanowiak 3 years, 2 months ago
Wow... those were some significant cuts - shouldn't the Daily have tried to make room for an important letter from a faculty member?
TheJR 3 years, 2 months ago
I wish the faculty staff letter had been printed in full. That definitely adds much to the story.