In a referendum this week, faculty members at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute approved a motion calling for the reinstatement of the university’s deposed Faculty Senate.
The institute’s provost, Robert E. Palazzo, suspended the senate in early August following a disagreement among faculty members, administrators, and the university’s Board of Trustees over moves by the senate to extend voting rights to non-tenure-track faculty members.
This week 228 out of 380 eligible tenured and tenure-track faculty members participated in a two-day poll on a resolution declaring support for the Faculty Senate and calling for its immediate restoration, according to Nancy D. Campbell, an associate professor in the department of science and technology studies and the senate’s recording secretary. Of those who voted, 200 favored the resolution, 21 were against it, and seven abstained.
Despite the faculty vote, administrators appear to be sticking with a plan of keeping the senate suspended until a faculty committee appointed last week by the provost completes its review of the university’s faculty-governance structure.
“The information from this unofficial faculty referendum will be discussed with the academic leadership of Rensselaer and shared with the Faculty Governance Review Committee,” the university said in a written statement released today.
The review panel will consider the resolution “along with the many other factors relating to faculty governance it will study as it considers its recommendations,” the statement said. “Meanwhile, we are continuing under a Board of Trustees resolution that approved the establishment of the transitional faculty governance structure, including a temporary suspension of the Faculty Senate.”
Last Friday, the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to Rensselaer’s president, Shirley Ann Jackson, criticizing the provost’s actions as contrary to the principles of shared governance.
In a reply this week, the university’s general counsel discounted the AAUP letter as “based on an admittedly biased representation of an internal matter” and faulted the association for relying only on faculty members’ account of the conflict. —Paula Wasley
