On Wednesday, the University Senate will debate and vote on a motion designed to maintain the role of the faculty in University governance. At stake is the survival of the University Assembly’s oversight function.
In the past, the democratic ideal of governance at the University made our campus a beacon for the best faculty in the nation. The Assembly was the University’s governing body and its members were the professors, as prescribed by the University Charter. Attendance at Assembly meetings was expected and encouraged by a University-wide prohibition on conflicting class schedules.
In subsequent years, however, several decisions reduced the effectiveness of the Assembly, leading eventually to its demise as the primary governing body. Those decisions included adding students and employees to Assembly membership and lifting the prohibition on Wednesday afternoon classes, diminishing the likelihood that the Assembly could routinely comply with the 1974 Oregon Public Meeting Law, which requires that the governing body of a public institution can take action only if 50 percent (plus one) of its members are in attendance.
Partly for this reason, in May 1995 the Assembly adopted the “Senate Enabling Legislation,” thereby relinquishing its governance role to the Senate, which now operates as a body that represents the Assembly.
However, recognizing the need for a mechanism by which mistakes of this representative body could be rectified, the Assembly retained for itself a role of oversight. “Full legislative power” was granted to the Assembly by the framers of the Senate Enabling Legislation only if requested by petition of 33 percent of those members eligible to vote for non-student senators (the “voting faculty” of about 1500 Assembly members).
In the Spring of 2003, the Assembly was called by this rare petition process, but was unable to address the issue for which it had been called because it failed to gather the required quorum of 1000-plus members. The causes for this failure can be argued, but one point is beyond argument — the president of the University failed in his duty as chair of the Assembly to take steps that might have enabled a quorum.
In particular: (1) The president set the meeting time for Friday afternoon, a time when many folks have left campus for other obligations; (2) The president failed to appeal to the faculty to fulfill its responsibility to University governance by attending the meeting; (3) The president made no provision for participation by Assembly members who are stationed in remote places; (4) The president declined to close offices and call off classes, effectively disenfranchising many Assembly members.
Most discouragingly, the University Faculty Handbook, produced by the administration to inform the faculty of its rights and duties, described seven conditions under which the Assembly will meet, but omitted (until Sept. 8 of this year) any mention of the only meeting of substantive significance — the one that is called by 33 percent of the voting faculty and has full legislative power.
These developments show disdain on the part of the administration for the University’s governance document and, indeed, for the democratic process of government. They also indicate that Assembly oversight can be restored only if the University Senate prescribes specific steps to facilitate the rare Assemblies called by 33 percent of the voting faculty.
At its first meeting of the 2004-05 academic year, the Senate will decide on the merits of such steps. Opposition to the motion is expected.

Franklin W. Stahl is an American Cancer Society Professor at the
University’s Institute of
Molecular Biology