Student Senators Set Agenda

DID YOU KNOW? In 21 states, Wal-Mart is the single largest employer. • THE METROPOLITAN • SEPTEMBER 3, 2009 • NEWS • A7

Student senators set agenda Mountain meeting motivates SGA reps for new resolutions

By Caitlin Gibbons [email protected]

By Ben Wiebesiek [email protected] Metro’s student senators approved seven initiatives during their annual retreat Aug. 21 covering a broad range of issues including campus safety, textbook costs, parking fees and state funding for higher education. The passage of the new senate resolutions will set the primary objectives for President Andrew Bateman and the executive branch of the Student Government Assembly for the 2009-10 academic year. “The retreats were incredibly productive and a lot of good concepts and ideas came out of them,” Student Trustee to the Board of Trustees, Kailei Higginson said. “The senators made some extraordinarily good decisions about what the focus is going to be on how to improve the quality of education at Metro,” he said. The senate retreat was one of two SGA retreats held this summer in Breckenridge. Among the agenda items decided at the two-day event, was an initiative to change how the SGA itself is funded. The money collected from the student affairs fees — an amount totaling more than $2 million in recent years — is allocated to 16 student life programs, including the SGA. The student life programs receive a share of this revenue based on the appropriation of the Board of Trustees acting on the recommendation of the Student Affairs Board. SGA members represent a majority of the SAB, a status that Bateman

Speaker of the Senate Hashim Coates, center, smiles during a Student Government Assembly meeting Aug. 29. Photo by Leah Millis • [email protected] described as “a potential conflict of interests,” between the representatives and the committees that determine the student government’s funding. The new initiative, titled SR0910, would begin the process of removing the SGA budget from the jurisdiction of the SAB by drafting a proposal to create a separate fee for student government and to reduce the student affairs fee by the same amount. The proposed budget for the SGA from July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010, is $299,452. The senate retreat also placed campus safety as a top priority for the SGA. SR09-08 tasks the executive branch with the creation of several proposals aimed at reducing crime and increasing emergency preparedness on campus.  Among these proposals will be an effort by the ex-

ecutive branch to improve nighttime lighting and an investigation into the installation of “panic buttons” in Metro classrooms, designed to alert police in the event of an emergency. With steep cuts in higher education threatening the function of Metro programs, SR09-07 directs the SGA to coordinate with the Associated Students of Colorado, the Alumni Action Task Force and the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute to provide “information and perspective to the state as they continue to make budget decisions.” The senate commissioned the executive branch on SR09-11 and SRS09-12 to work towards the creation of several programs designed to ease the financial burdens for Metro students, including “a free, online textbook marketplace” to operate as a service similar to Craigslist where students can buy, sell and trade text-

books without third-party expenses; and a “Student Admission/Registration/Financial Aid Survival Guide” to communicate information to the student body. Another resolution, SR09-06 focuses on changing Denver Municipal Code to allow the construction of taller buildings at Auraria. The building code of the city prevents the construction of any building on campus with a height 5,215 feet above sea level.  The ordinance, which grants an exception to Invesco Field at Mile High, was designed to maintain a viewing plane from the location of the old Denver City Hall west toward the Rocky Mountains. The old city hall building was located at 14th Avenue and Larimer Street but was demolished in the 1940’s and is now the site of a parking lot alongside Speer Boulevard.

Metro’s tenured faculty wins court decision By Andrew Flohr-Spence [email protected] Metro professors recently won a six-year court battle against the college’s board of trustees concerning job security for tenured professors in the case of a financial crisis, but the resolution seems to have only led to more questions. The professors’ case, Saxe v. Board of Trustees, the 12 member, state-mandated board that governs Metro, was a response to changes the board made in 2003 to the faculty handbook. The rules govern employee rights and responsibilities for professors. The changes gave the board and the president authority to decide tenured professors’ rights to keep their jobs or be transferred to a new department in the case of a financial crisis at the college. “We see this decision as mean-

Department of higher education director resigns

ingfully protecting academic freedom and shared governance, the cornerstones of higher education in the U.S. not only at Metro, but by extension, for faculty throughout the country,” said Ellen Slatkin, president of the Metro Faculty Federation The federation, a local union that is part of the nationwide Association of Federated Teachers with members among the tenured faculty at Metro, supported the professors’ case during the six years it was in court. Faculty Senate President Lynn Kaersvang said she is “delighted” the professors won. “It’s essential for Metro moving towards preeminence that professor’s tenure rights be fully restored,” Kaersvang said. She said such rules protecting tenured professors are standard around the country because tenure ensures academic freedom for profes-

sors to research what they choose. When colleges need to make cuts during economically trying years without tenure laws, they might cut the most expensive faculty, the tenured faculty, Kaersvang said. “It’s of particular concern to the faculty in the economic environment we are currently in because such extreme measures could be a necessity,” she said. The trustees’ date for appeal elapsed as of Aug. 17, leaving the final word in the case, Saxe v BOT, to the Colorado Court of Appeals June 5 ruling that that no changes be made. The previous 1994 version of the faculty handbook establishes a set priority for tenured professors if the college has to reduce its staff, leaving such decisions out of the hand of the president and board. Made during the college’s last state budget cuts, the handbook

changes were enacted before the majority of the current trustees were appointed, including President Stephen Jordan, who started at the college two years later. Since 2003, Jordan and the board have further amended many of the rights of tenure in question in the handbook. Jordan says in the five years since taking office he and the board have worked with the faculty on the handbook to make things right again. “I think the issues that were ultimately decided in the case were issues we already dealt with in the policy changes,” he said. “If faculty members and their attorneys have differences in opinion about the intent of the court and its actions and the current policy, they are certainly welcome to provide that to us in writing and we will give it full consideration,” Jordan said.

David Skaggs, executive director of the Department of Higher Education and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, announced his resignation Aug. 28. Skaggs served as executive director for two and a half years and his resignation comes during a time of funding turmoil for higher education. With the conclusion of the past legislative session Metro alone saw a $10 million reduction in state funding for the 2008-2009 fiscal year. Higher education as a whole saw a $150 million reduction in funding. The state is now looking at reducing funding by an additional $80.9 million for the 2009-2010 fiscal year. In his official letter of resignaetion addressed to Gov. Bill Ritter, Skaggs states, “I very much regret that we have encountered a matter about which, with mutual respect and on a principled basis, we could not agree.” Neither John Karakoulakis, director of legislative affairs or Evan Dreyer, Gov. Ritter’s spokesman elaborated on the disagreement. “It is a crucial time for higher ed. in Colorado given the economy, the funding constraints and the need to keep costs affordable. There is a tremendous sense of urgency and importance to getting the position filled,” Dreyer said Metro President Stephen Jordan said he has not heard of any potential replacements for Skaggs. “I think Mr. Skaggs was very interested around the question of how you get historically underrepresented populations into college and then retain them and persist them to graduation and that obviously is a population that we spend a lot of time working with so in that sense we really had a common agenda,” Jordan said. “He is an extraordinary public servant and someone of strong principles and integrity. He is a good friend, and on behalf of the people of Colorado, I thank him for his service and his dedication,” Ritter said in a press release. The Colorado Department of Higher Education was founded to “improve the quality of, ensure the affordability of, and promote access to, post secondary education to the people of Colorado.” CCHE, a division of the Department of Higher Education, was created by the legislature in 1965 to help create longterm solutions and policies for higher education. The next CCHE meeting was scheduled for Sept. 10 at Front Range Community College. All planned meetings for CCHE have been pushed back until October.