Editors, the Gauntlet,
Re: "Porco and team get vote," SLC View, March 29, 2001
I am afraid that Jane Alkhouri got wrong (i) what the background was to the recent discussions at the Appointment Promotion and Dismissal (APD) Committee, (ii) what the Faculty Association’s views were in those discussions, and (iii) what issues had been under discussion by the APD Committee.
The issue raised by Nic Porco had nothing to do with voting rights for students on GFC; he has been raising the question of student voting rights on Faculty Promotions Committees (FPCs)–a very different and quite unconnected issue. FPCs review the annual report of each academic and make recommendations to the Dean about the merit increments that should be given out to that academic and about applications by academics for promotion from one rank to the next.
All this being said, the Faculty Association has supported the rights of students to have representation on the FPCs. We think that whether or not the student representative is voting, they too can fulfill a very valuable role and the Faculty Association would be delighted to work with the Students’ Union to help make their representation more effective.
Ms. Alkhouri states "TUCFA argued that students weren’t mature enough to have voting rights." I am the Faculty Association representative on the APD committee and at the APD meetings I never argued nor implied any such thing. What she may be referring to was the discussion about whether students are in a position to evaluate the full range of an academic staff member’s performance.
I have enjoyed and found very fruitful all my interactions with the members of the outgoing SU Executive, and I am looking forward to working with the new SU Executive and SLC members. I urge the SU and SLC to work with TUCFA to make this university a fine university.