The University of Connecticut Senate held a meeting on Monday, March 31 to discuss potential revisions to the UConn bylaws and the UConn Senate bylaws. These changes would expand the size of the senate to account for changing populations, create backups for people unable to fulfill the duties of their senate role and codify a process to remove senators.
A vote to approve these revisions will be held at the next University Senate meeting on April 7. If approved, the university senate by-laws will be enacted immediately, while the university bylaws will be sent to the board of trustees for approval. The board of trustees will then hold a vote to enact the bylaws as early as June 25.
At the meeting, Michelle Everard, the University Senate administrator, said that the purpose of the bylaw revision was to “clean up things that were outdated, simplify language that was confusing, build in flexibility… and also just modernize things.”
The full list of proposed changes to the bylaws can be found on the University Senate’s website. A significant amount of the revisions are language changes that do not affect the contents or additions that are already common practice among the senate but aren’t written in.
The senate started by discussing the proposed changes to the university bylaws.
Large changes to the bylaws were made in Section B, titled “Elections.”
In the current bylaws, a constituencies’ size remains at a set number regardless of a change in population. Currently, the faculty constituency has 72 senators, the professional staff constituency has 17 senators and the undergraduate and graduate constituencies have nine senators and three senators, respectively.
The revised bylaws would determine a constituencies’ size based on its total population. The revisions would allot one senator to the faculty constituency for every 25 eligible faculty, one senator to the professional staff constituency for every 125 eligible staff members and one student to the undergraduate and graduate constituencies for every 2,500 respective students.
During the meeting, an amendment was made to the revisions to prevent the number of student senators from decreasing below the number allotted in the current by-laws.
Another revision in the bylaws would increase the number of senators in the dean constituency by one, which is to be filled by a campus dean from one of the regional campuses.
If these revisions are approved, then the size of the senate would increase by five seats to 109 senators, with one new senator in the dean constituency, one new senator in the undergraduate constituency and three new senators in the staff constituency.
Section G, titled “Committees,” also saw changes relating to the representation of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Senate Executive Committee.
The SEC, which “is responsible for organization and coordinating the business of the Senate and of Senate committees” according to the current bylaws, consists of eight faculty members, two professional staff members, two undergraduate students and two graduate students. The current bylaws state that at least two and at most four of the eight faculty members should be from CLAS.
The revisions to the bylaws would change it so that at most three of the eight faculty members could be from the CLAS, reducing the total number of possible CLAS members by one. The revisions also state that any CLAS faculty members on the SEC must be from different CLAS subconstituencies.
These revisions were made to “ensure balanced representation from CLAS subconstituencies,” and to “further balance the SEC… as CLAS currently represents approximately 1/3 of faculty,” according to the meeting agenda.
After the discussion around the revised university bylaws concluded, the senate moved on to discussing the proposed changes to the by-laws of the university senate.
A revision was made in Section C. 2, which relates to “Standing Committees/Special Committees,” to rename the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) committee to the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice and Accessibility (DEIJA) committee. This change was done to “include ‘accessibility’ in the title and to avoid references to Star Wars by the original acronym,” according to the meeting agenda.
The largest change to the bylaws of the university senate was the addition of a new section, titled “Removal from Senate Service.” This section highlights what behavior can get a member removed from the university senate and the process to remove them.
Under this change, senators could be removed for “non-participation in Senate or committee activities,” “actions that undermine the effectiveness or integrity of the Senate or its committees” and “any conduct detrimental to the fulfillment of the Senate’s responsibilities.”
The removal process would require a recommendation of removal from the SEC or a senate committee or a petition signed by at least 25% of voting members.
The recommendation will then go to the senate nominating committee, who shall notify the member in question of the initiation of the removal process and how to submit a response. After hearing the response, the nominating committee shall decide whether to recommend removal by a two-thirds majority vote of all committee members.
If the nomination committee recommends removal, the member in question will be given the option to accept the recommendation or to appeal the recommendation to the university senate at the next regular meeting. If the member appeals, the senate will hear from the nomination committee and the member in question, and afterwards will take a vote on the removal, with a two-thirds major vote required for removal.
In the meeting agenda, it says that “it was found that most University governance structures include processes for removal. The intention [of this section] is to have a safeguard in place in case a situation arises where these processes are necessary.” During the meeting, Everard said that the addition of this section was not spurred on by any individual’s behavior.