Senate
Senate
The January Senate meeting was a little more interesting than is often the norm. To be blunt, most Senate meetings are rather dull, and follow a set routine: reports are received, and sometimes votes are taken, but rarely is there a gripping issue which provokes any stimulating or meaningful debate. It is a form of death by boredom. And I hasten to add that this is not because the academic work of the university is in any way unimportant. To the contrary! But most of the main work of Senate is undertaken in its myriad committees, and not by the body as a whole. What comes to the latter has been picked over, digested, revised and refined, with the result that there is rarely anything of real substance left to discuss.
But the meeting this month was enlivened by a motion that the Mandate Working Group – the committee charged with engaging the campus in dialogue and providing advice to the President and Provost as they re-negotiate Carleton’s “mandate” with the provincial government – should become a committee of Senate, with some members appointed by the President and an equal number elected by the Senate itself. The issue of the role of Senate in this process is complex, and I anticipated an engaging debate about the nature of a bi-cameral university, in which certain powers are invested in the Board of Governors and others in the Senate. Before that could really get going, however, the mover of the motion agreed to a postponement of any further deliberations until the February meeting, pending additional discussion of the specific wording of the motion.
In preparing for the meeting, at first I wasn’t entirely certain how I would vote. In principle, those proposing the motion have an excellent point. As the supreme authority on academic matters, Senate certainly has a very legitimate interest in the university’s “mandate”, especially as this relates to the academic apparatus of the university, including its Faculties and units, degree programs and courses. And if some of the discussion documents coming out of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario reflect the government’s thinking in any way – and here I am referring specifically to the notion of a possible “differentiation” between “teaching institutions” and “research institutions” – then the Senate really does need to be involved, since the “academic” character of Carleton would be at stake. That said, however, would this specific motion be the best way forward?
I suspect not, and thus I had decided to vote against, while at the same time hoping that a better motion might emerge afterwards. Indeed I was prepared to propose one myself. The Mandate Working Group was established at a moment when the timetable for the negotiations was completely unknown – and indeed, to the best of my knowledge, that is still the case. They were given the charge of canvassing a broad swathe of campus opinion, and in my humble opinion they have set the proverbial gold standard in this regard: a series of consultations with individuals and groups, including a number of open “town hall” meetings as well as special convocations of each of the Faculties. (Just a reminder that their meeting with FASS is scheduled for Tuesday January 31st at 1:30 in DT 2017.) It is hard to imagine what else they might have done to elicit a range of opinion and suggestions. Doubling the size of the committee would simply have made it even more difficult – if not outrightly impossible – to schedule all the meetings that need to happen by mid February if the Working Group is to submit its draft report on schedule at the beginning of March. So, I perceived a proposed enlargement to be a potential recipe for disaster. And in any event, any person can take advice from any individual or group that they wish, and can establish working groups for that purpose. I have done it a number of times myself; it is simply common sense. And thus Senate has no legitimate authority to take over the existing group, or to insist on changes to its composition. It was created to be advisory to the Provost and President, and as such is their “creature”.
This is not to say that Senate doesn’t have rights and responsibilities here. They certainly do, but not with respect to the existing Working Group. One option would be to establish their own advisory committee, with the similar aim of providing advice to the President and Provost. But I suspect both that the timing is bad, given that the negotiations with the government may begin at any moment, and also that this would entail a needless duplication of efforts. A much better way forward, in my view, was the suggestion by the Provost that the draft report of the Working Group could be brought to the Senate Academic Planning Committee (SAPC), and then to the Senate as a whole, for additional discussion and comment. After all, the Working Group’s report is simply “advice”, and it seems appropriate for Senate to comment on that advice, and indicate what part of the advice it supports – especially in any areas that fall into its particular mandate. In other words, it could add its own advice – and I hope that this may be the compromise that is agreed upon in the forthcoming discussions.
In any bi-cameral or federated system of administration and governance, whether it be countries like Canada or the United States, or universities like Carleton, there will always be debate around the edges, where the jurisdictions of the varying bodies intersect and overlap, or where the governing documents remain silent regarding precise mandates. This provides plenty of work for constitutional lawyers, as we have so often seen – and it also provides plenty of food for thought for members of the university Senate. This is healthy, and to be strongly encouraged. It’s one of the things that keeps our institution vibrant.
I hope that there will be many more discussions of this sort at Senate meetings in the future, as otherwise it is not always easy to stay alert late on a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week.