Faculty
association
Meet
and Confer notes for April 10, 2003
Faculty
Association:
Theresia Fisher, Andrew Larkin, Annette Schoenberger, Tracy Ore, Robert
Johnson, Judy Kilborn, Terry Peterson, Sandra Q. Williams, P. N.
Subbanarasimha, Emily Schultz, Notetaker
Administration: Roy Saigo, Nathan Church, Steve Ludwig, Diana Burlison, Lin
Holder, Roland Specht-Jarvis, Larry Chambers, Michael Spitzer, John Burgeson
AD: We are not ready to accept the last minutes.
AD: The Atwood Center will be open as it has been;
otherwise offices and buildings will be closed and locked. There are some camps scheduled with hundreds
of kids here, so we need portions of Halenbeck and the National Hockey center. There are about 30 seminar classes; all the
rest are scheduled for Mondays through Thursdays. We would make accommodations for the few classes, or we could
move them to the Miller Center because it’s likely portions of that will be
open because of contracts. We can save
$1500 per day with minimal impact on services to students if we publicize
this. It gives the opportunity for
non-faculty staff to have alternative schedules. They can take vacation days on Fridays or use the salary savings
option. In the past savings have been
$30-70,000 for a summer. There has always been much reduced activity on Fridays
– the campus is dead -- and without much compromise we could save considerable
amounts of money. It would be like
weekends – buildings closed and locked, but faculty could access their offices.
FA:
What about duty days for faculty, the 25 duty days for faculty for a summer
contract? How would these be affected?
AD: We’re not closing the university; were
closing the offices. Somewhat like
Presidents Day. These are duty days for
faculty, but the staff are not here. Not many students will be here either
because only 30 or so seminars are scheduled.
FA:
What about faculty coming in to do research?
Do they have permission to be on campus? What will they do for support services? No mail service or other infrastructure?
AD: Yes, it’ll be like a Saturday during the
regular year, or like Presidents Day holiday – the other services aren’t
available then either.
FA: So you will be turning off the ventilation?
AD: And not providing services in the offices.
FA: So no services, but faculty can get in?
AD: Yes, boiler operators will be working, but
it’ll be like coming on a Saturday.
FA: There are instruments, animals, etc. We’re concerned about the effects on these.
AD: The greenhouse is set up to run fine with
the plants for weekends. Animals will
be accommodated. This works now with the person taking a 3-day weekend during
the summer.. The exhaust and ventilation in Math-Science will be working to a
certain extent.
FA: And the instruments?
AD: Nothing different than what we usually do on
Fridays during the summer.
FA: Maybe you need to talk with faculty in the
music department. They have some
expensive equipment, and there’s concern about the piano and string
instruments.
AD: Those areas will be monitored and will be
watched. We can’t afford to lose those
instruments. That’s important even independent of this event.
FA: What about grants; will they be affected?
AD: I’ve only heard of a GIS one, and we need to
see if Friday has to be included in the work schedule.
FA: Will work-study students be able to turn in
hours for a Friday that the University is closed?
AD: There will be no work-study this summer
because there is no money. If the
department wants to pay for students, that’s up to them.
FA: What about Monday-Friday classes already
scheduled this summer? Will I have to
reschedule a Friday class? These are
regular, 3 and 4 credit classes.
AD: I am not familiar with this, but preference
would be to try to make it work Monday-Thursday. Does it start after June 15?
FA: No. The first summer session, not the
intersession.
AD: There might be two ways to handle this –
reschedule as Monday-Thursday or reschedule on a Friday in a room that has
computers, that is open on Friday.
Miller Center, for example.
There are a lot of spaces in Miller with computer terminals.
FA: But we’d need a lab open on Fridays as well,
a computer science lab. The question
is: how many classes need five days a week and have all faculty been contacted?
AD: We have a list, mostly seminar courses a
couple of weeks long, about 30. I was
not aware of this kind of course. We talked about using Miller center as an
alternative for Fridays. I will talk to
Dennis further about this to see if there are other cases.
FA: What about the Music department?
AD: Also the Theater department. We’ll work on climate control.
FA: We had talked about cuts in administration a
few Meet and Confers ago, looking into matters other than cuts. What is latest?
AD: In response, we just had consultants on
campus reviewing the administrative structure on campus. We will get recommendations from them, and
see if there are things we can do to achieve savings. [handout: size of
administration in relation to peer institutions] Regarding full time students per full time faculty, we are lower
than many peers. Regarding full time students
per full time administrator, we are at the top, having fewest administrators
per student of any of our peer institutions.
In terms of full time faculty per full time administrator, we have
largest number of faculty per administrator.
We are more cost effective, the least administration heavy, of any of
our peer institutions. Still, we are
looking for ways to be more efficient
FA: There is an obvious point, when Mankato and
St Cloud are compared to peers outside the state. The IFO-MnSCU contract does not allow chairs to be
administrators, which might affect these ratios.
AD: These are consistent. Whatever they are called, the people who
prepared these data define all these people the same, regardless of the
contract. If chairs are considered administrators anywhere, they would be
considered administrators here.
FA: One thing we want to consider is how many
faculty are actually doing administrative work through a faculty line. They will count as a faculty member not
generating FTEs, but not a full time administrator.
AD: They [consultants] understand that the
proportion of faculty time is counted for faculty, not as administration. Probably we have enough to discuss. We are working very hard to get accurate,
reliable data. When we get it, I’ll let you know
FA: Any answer about administrative positions
will come from some sort of decision about restructuring.
AD: Yes.
We expect to pursue that as follows – report from consultants, share
that with the university community, ask people to comment, hold town hall
meetings, solicit feedback as we did with budget information, get
recommendations, etc., and then make decisions. But not until after a fairly thorough consultation period.
FA: Can you give us a time frame?
AD: Some time next week we hope to have the
report.
FA:. Reorganization may have implications for
workload and other aspects of the contract.
It may be good idea to bring it formally to Meet and Confer so we can
take it to the Senate and get a Senate response
AD: We can do that. We don’t know what the workload implications are, but if there
are any, we will be sure faculty know what they are and bring it to Meet and
Confer.
FA: At one of the meetings, consultants also got
into curriculum and other areas. They raised this issue.
FA: Another question regards the consistency
with regard to the reassigned time of chairs next year.
AD: We are still working on it, haven’t
completed it yet.
FA: When will we find that out? There are only two Meet and Confers
left. We are concerned about a faculty
member not getting the contractual reassigned time.
AD: We are not finished yet. We will try to be prepared next time, but
before the end of the year.
FA: Concerning the Faculty Research Grants
committee. The Agreement has
been that if funds are left over, they are moved into next round, but last year
carry-overs were taken back. Now we understand the whole amount has been taken
away.
AD: Concerning research money for faculty
improvement grants, they were all transferred on October 1st, the full amount of carry forward, we did not
reduce the carry-over. We did the
previous year; we cut them in half. That’s been solved. Nothing was taken away this year.
AD: Here are documents with information backing
up my points.
FA: We have no control over what OSP does if he
says he doesn’t have this information.
AD: I’m baffled, confused. I don’t know what
happened. I will send a bigger memo
right away.
FA: Are we satisfied? Let’s you [Burlison] and I [Larkin] get together with the chair
of the Faculty Research Grants Committee and with Richard and get it all sorted
out.
FA: Another question, looking into future,
about the biennium ‘04-05, any progress on decisions?
AD: We still don’t know what the legislature
will do. We have no solid information
about tuition, so we really can’t proceed in that direction. We are pretty much focused on next fall,
which is difficult enough by itself.
[administration
handout]
AD: This was last revised, it is a draft, not
official. We thought it was shared in
2001, when it was drafted. We had to
give it to MnSCU, and it went through the president’s council. MnSCU sent it back, but never did anything
with it until they sent out the orange-red-yellow alert plan. We said we’d just implement this, and if
they comment later, we’ll adjust.
Subsequent to this we wrote a plan about meningitis, and a procedure for
tuberculosis. We developed those two,
not in this draft, but will be added to the back. We want to go ahead with it.
Take a look at it. We are not sure if faculty looked at it in 2001.
AD: Will you have to add SARS? Probably. We follow state department
requirements; we may have to add SARS, but there is no procedure out there
except to quarantine people. There is no test for SARS. We’d like your
comments. We would be able to put it online. Give us comments if you have
any. There is nothing on line for
emergencies now. Each department secretary probably has red handbooks in
department offices with old plans.
FA: Thanks, we’ll look at it.
FA: One question – what is meaning of
‘violence’? There is no definition in the four pages. There is quite a bit of reference to handguns, knives, but
violence may be more than that.
FA: What sort of time frame do you want for a
response? We need a definition.
Statutes define specific acts, such as assaults. Some people consider anger to
be violence. So there is a question here.
AD: But behaviors covered in policy formulate
the definition of violence -- from specific acts to menacing or intimidating or
threatening, threaten violence, raising voice to screaming could be experienced
as a prelude to violence. That would be
identified by this policy as something that is prohibited.
FA: This is something we want to get clear.
AD: Larry [Chambers] and Ann [Zemek de
Dominguez] should look at this. There
may be state statutes that define this.
We’ll get back.
FA: We’ll talk about it as well.
FA: Since last time, we met with Rex and are
attempting to move ahead on College of Education agreements. Rex and Michael are looking at some of these
issues. Our concern is that Rex had
indicated he’d work to establish a meeting between parties. We’ve identified FA representatives for discussions
of the English department grievance, but we haven’t heard anything
AD: I don’t know where Rex is on this, but we’ll
check.
FA: If we could meet in a week or so, we could
make progress on this and resolve it on campus.
AD: One of the things that became apparent after
studying the results of the national survey of student satisfaction and Steve
Franks’ survey of students, both studies expressed concern that students are
not happy with advising, are not getting positive advising from faculty. We want to develop a mechanism to improve
the quality of advising. It affects
student attrition. We saw a Faculty
Association email to a committee to look into that, which is a positive
thing. We need to work together to make
advising more successful for students who need it.
FA: Could we get a copy of that survey?
AD: Steve Frank’s? He was distributing it freely on his website. The NSSS survey is
also on the web.
FA: We all think that advising is important,
and we can all exchange anecdotes about bad behavior on both sides of this
issue. What we need is a plan.
AD: We’re not trying to blame anyone.
FA: We need to get a copy of the survey to the
committee working on this. It would be
good to have a campus conversation about this.
We hear all kinds of stories, but a culture on this campus is last
minute -- give me my number (over the phone) so I can register.
AD: To add something to think about, the one
major change we have made is the Advising Center. Neither survey makes a distinction between the Advising Center
and other kinds of advising. A second
phase of a plan is to look at advising for majors. I would be happy to send that to you.
FA: That is not entirely true. We had to take
students interested in computer science but not ready for calculus and put them
in Advising Center. They were supposed to be moved when they got into calculus.
AD: We are trying to use the Center for those
without major.
FA: We can’t solve this without a plan. Does
this mean faculty will not receive undecided students?
AD: Truly undecided students are assigned to
the Advising Center. Any freshman with
an intended major will be assigned an advisor in that major.
FA: We need to come up with a plan robust
enough to address all different facets.
AD: We also need to look at the student behavior
issue as a piece of that.
FA: There is bad behavior on both sides, enough
blame to go around. We are working on
it and agree that it needs to be worked on.
FA: The seniority roster should be updated.
AD: HR sent that out already.
FA: He might have sent it out already. I will let you know if I have it. Is the seniority roster on line?
AD: No.
FA: What is the status of the audit?
AD: It should be complete by next week, and it will be something to talk about at
the next Meet and Confer.
FA: Any news about the students?
AD: So far we have assessed 15, and possibly
all are licensed, leaving 8 to 10. Everyone who has gone through the assessment
is being licensed. Records has been
authorized to make exceptions about credits these students take.
FA: Thank you for taking care of this.
FA: Is Article 22 evaluation being conducted in
the Counseling Center?
AD: Article 22 evaluations have been passed to
Office of Academic Affairs>
FA: All eight?
AD: Just three this year. They have been reviewed and sent on. Are the others perhaps in their four-year
plan?
FA: What about the three fixed term?
AD: The three probationary have been passed on.
FA: Three of the faculty members had been moved
to your office. Are their budget and
staffing needs being met?
AD: I have had regular communications, and my
understanding is that they are. They
might not be happy with decisions made, but paperwork is being signed, and
budgetary requests are being moved forward.
Summer assignment for one of the faculty has been taken care of in order
that that person can be appropriately paid.
Software and computers are being upgraded.
FA: We should talk about their being
re-rostered since three were moved out of the Counseling Center.
AD: Do we need to establish a memorandum of
agreement? That is under
discussion. What might be done to
remove that middle level of reporting structure for the three in Academic
Learning Center?
FA: What we are doing is outside the contract,
because they were rostered in Counseling Center. But it seems everyone is in agreement, so we need to have a pro
forma memorandum of agreement that we are ok on this.
AD: Are the ALC folks in the same roster?
FA: Yes – Counseling and Related Services.
AD: It is just a change of reporting.
FA: Yes. There is just one person with seniority
in the ALC, and she is reporting straight to Nathan. The problem is that they are rostered in Counseling and Related
Services, but they are not acting or reporting in that unit They are not effectively in that unit.
AD: It would be good to clarify this. The seniority roster means one thing, but to
whom they answer on a daily basis doesn’t change their seniority. So how does that relate to the contract?
FA: The contractual question is where are they
assigned. Is it Counseling or some
other unit?
AD: But by the seniority roster, they have not been
changed.
FA: Article 22 would be done differently. Given that, they are in a different
unit. When did this change occur?
AD: A month ago or so.
FA: It didn’t make the March 1 deadline.
AD: We are not sure the March 1 deadline
applies.
FA: They are no longer functioning as a group,
no longer in Article 22, no longer working with other faculty members.
AD: And they never have been; it has been more
of an arrangement of convenience.
FA: We need to get straightened out exactly
what they’ve got there.
AD: It is not that complicated.
FA: What about their budgetary issues?
AD: They still come to Nathan [Church], who
must sign off.
FA: These are not new arrangements.
AD: It is pretty much the same. They always
receive a small budget directly from Academic Affairs. Other things have always
gone through Student Life, so we don’t think the everyday process has changed.
FA: Before, they would have gone through the
chair on these resource issues. We’re
not really objecting, we just want to document the arrangement.
AD: It would be a good idea to clarify it. We have not finalized budget decisions, we
won’t make decisions about cuts until we finalize the internal budget process.
FA: Also there is no chair, just the functional
role of chair.
FA: What about the fixed term position in
ALC? Last year it was a probationary
position.
AD: It became fixed term last fall as a result
of a failed search. The decision was
made to do an emergency hire because of the late date. Circumstances have changed now.
FA: I want to make a general point. Because it went from probationary to fixed
term, we now have people without Ph.D.s in these positions. This is part of the degradation of the
university. If we did have a probationary
search, we’d have to look for somebody else, because these people are not
prepared.
AD: I felt secure about the courses being
taught; the incumbent was qualified to teach that on an interim basis.
FA: We are forming a new committee to try to
put together the first amendment aspect, the communications aspect, and the
civility aspect of the “discuss” listserv.
The TPR committee is only good at doing one or two of those things. They asked the Senate to bring together a
new ad hoc committee to study listserv.
AD: I see that as a very positive thing.
FA: Your draft response was referred to the FA
Committee on the Institution. I asked them to put it as their priority.
AD: There were issues raised at the last Meet
and Confer about that. If the committee
or the Senate has any suggestions about how to modify the document, please come
forward with those recommendations.
FA: We sent both the draft policy and the memo
where Executive Committee expressed its concerns. The committee will consider both, and get back to the Senate with
a report.
AD: We also talked about identifying alternative
spaces, make that available immediately because some of the earlier spaces
don’t exist any more. The policy on-line reflects the new spaces;
that is done.
FA: The last time, there was no link. Has that
been updated?
AD: The link is the same, on the Human
Resources page, where it always has been.
FA: So the link you are talking about goes to what?
AD: To the existing policy… the 1995 policy.
FA: The one that came to Executive Committee
with no identifying marks or date?
AD: The one without a date is probably a
revised version. The old version is in the red book procedures manual. But it is verbatim on the web, accessed
through HR as policy.
FA: Where is the policy, the one that was one
page with no identifying marks, brought to the Executive Committee about two
years ago?
AD: Lucy has that.
FA: Where?
AD: It is not available on the web. It is in a
private file cabinet.
FA: That is the old existing policy?
AD: The old existing policy is published on the
web and also in red books. The new
proposed policy, you have been given a paper copy.
FA: So the old existing policy is new to
me. The one we looked at last time, we
are clear on. The one I am asking about
is the one sheet that came to Executive Committee [three years ago].
AD: That is the one we discussed and decided to
refer to committee. The draft that we
agreed to work on. That sheet is now
meaningless. The policy on the web
site is a revision.
FA: We were told at that time that this was the
policy. The document was presented to
us by a university officer as the policy of the university that we are using to
deal with disturbances. That is our confusion, we were told this and we wanted
to know where this came from.
FA: So the 1995 one was approved? By whom?
At Meet and Confer?
AD: Yes.
All consultation ocurred in 1995, was agreed to, and has been our policy
for 8 years.
FA: All the rumors of reorganization and
requests for information that went out last week have created fear and distress
about what will happen to people in academic support centers. In general, we’re not opposed to thinking
about how to improve services by restructuring, but want to encourage that
people doing these things be consulted all the way along. People in Academic Affairs might want to do
some of the things being discussed right now.
But it is really important that their vocation, passion, and knowledge
bases be included in this discussion.
If there are reorganization plans, that they be a part of forming those.
AD: I think this is exactly what has been
happening, e.g. with the consultants, meeting without administrators
present. We don’t have plans about how
to maximize in terms of efficiency. We
talked about remodeling Centennial and how that might relate to providing
student services. This is new – only
the second meting with staff or with consultants simply to tell us. A lot of learning on our part about what
they do, what works, what does not work.
It tells us a bit about what students think about academic support
systems.
FA: I think you are right that there is just a
lot of fear and anxiety about budget and reorganization. I ran the writing center for 15 years. With
academic success units,
AD: “Academic support units” is just a term; it
is not intended to impact the services themselves.
FA: Two things. Access isn’t so much an issue in terms of vocation as it is in
terms of resources. We have concerns
about differences in theoretical models.
The consultants’ models were more oriented toward services that are not
academic support as these are.
Switching these would change the nature of the services, the nature of
our mission. We talk a lot about what people are trying to accomplish.
AD: That’s good advice. We hope to follow it.
FA: I think our concerns are with two areas,
the WritePlace and the Math Skills Center.
These areas have tight relation to the Math and English departments Both of those areas are looked at as highly
successful and effective, and we don’t want to lose that. Expanding that would be a good thing. But also using it as an opportunity to look
at consistency across campus at training and supervision,
AD: Those concerns drove our interest in this
in the first place.
FA: A technical point: the NSSS data. As I see survey, it took a sample of 500, they talked to 200, so
it is not representative. We are
hanging a lot on the responses of these students. The survey is well designed, but until we get a more
representative response, it gives us ideas, but does not tell us the whole
story. We need to be careful, from a
technical point, and substantive, if we make decisions based on the views of a
handful of people who may not be representative.
AD: The Math Skills Center is already separated
physically from the Math department, but there is no separation of disciplinary
function. There is a model out
there. In the original Centennial
remodeling plan, those were changed at request and input of folks from English
making sure that the WritePlace was not too far from the English department. That is our track record, and may reassure
people that we have thought about those things already, and will continue to do
so.
FA: There were some problems with having the
Math Skills Center not in ECC. It was
put in the nastiest place on campus, the basement of Lawrence. It is better now, but the message to
students is that you are not really part of the Math department, and to
faculty. In the Math department, if
they had their way, they’d have the Skills Center next to the Math department. Those of us who advise would like to have
them in that building with us too.
FA: There are differences of position about the
location of the Math Skills Center.
AD: The qualitative steps we should expect:
centralizing training of tutors and the peer-to-peer learning that will result.
FA: I know you are aware of the proposal for a
Center for Student Success. It is a
result of work among academic support groups.
AD: We met about this this morning, and will do
so again next week.
FA: In last Tuesday’s Senate, we approved a
committee to design and implement diversity training for anti-Semitism and
diversity issues as mandated by the Zmora settlement, and to work together with
administration to follow the mandate of the court. We don’t have a name for this committee yet, but we have five
members. Shall they contact Michael?
AD: Yes -- who are the members?
FA: Jesse Benjamin, Heather Hackman, Chris
Jazwinski, Jayne Lokken, and Geoffrey Tabakin.
We had passed a motion to form this committee previously, but we modified
this motion and took out the idea that it was mandated because we have concerns
about mandated training. Bigoted people
who do mandated training can end up worse.
AD: I agree with that approach.
FA: We initiated the motion to demonstrate
faculty support for the kind of training needed, but we did not support the
notion of it being mandated, we only supported need for training and that
faculty have a role in designing and implementing the training.
AD: A real question is that mandatory training
can become very counterproductive. I
appreciate your modification. Did the
court order leave any flexibility?
FA: The word ‘mandatory’ is in the order.
AD: But there are ways to deal with that
without violating the agreement.
AD: In terms of encouragement of people to come
to training.
FA: Where we agree is that the focus has to be
on the integrity of the training, and move from there.
FA: Where do we go from here? The committee will contact Michael [Spitzer]
directly since the court order puts the administration in charge of the
mandatory question. The court order
says it must begin in the spring, but implemented by fall.
AD: We should commence something by fall.
FA: You are aware of Bill Langen’s concerns in
his e-mail: what to do about the
permanent issue of a person renting a parking space, but there are no stalls,
yet there are other cars without stickers parked in the lot, but they have no
ticket. The lots with arms are better, but the problem is not entirely solved.
AD: We doubled fines two years ago, and we saw
a significant decrease in complaints like this. We did gate a couple of lots,
with a huge reduction in complaints.
Since that time, there has been difficulty with collection; MnSCU
wouldn’t let us put holds, and most violators were students. We rectified
that. Our longstanding procedure has
been, if you can’t find a stall in your lot, call, and if you can, pick up a
permit to assure that insult is not added to injury. So with B lot, in Bill’s case, was that the nearby lot was gated,
he’d have to call and Public Safety would have to come to let him in. We can’t prevent what happened to Bill from
happening. People steal things, say
they needed to do this, but compliance has improved. We are improving our collection, and it will help further. We are adding additional stalls this summer,
and we will be proposing a parking ramp to MnSCU. Also it will be free with an ID to ride the metro bus next year,
and that may reduce some of the demand for parking. We hope that this helps
AD: I have had cases where I have gotten
tickets, and the officers were very helpful in remedying that.
FA: It is not just Bill and what happened to
him. Over the years I have been here,
an average of 10 faculty in business school have complained about being late
because of this problem. What should I do?
AD: I am surprised if they park in H lot, which
is gated.
FA: They can do it in H lot as well…it is
complex, we need to think about it.
FA: One thing: Bill would be willing to pay
more to have better control. It is not
a question about whether we can park or not, but at dinner time, people park
along the middle of a lot. I am convinced
there will be an accident back there when the gate is down.
FA: I park in N, near the Ed building. I am usually here before 8 am, and still
here long after 6 pm, so usually I have no problem parking, but if I have a
meeting off campus or work at home and come in at 9, 10 or 11, there are
students using the lot. Some will put
an old ticket on their car and use that as ruse to get around getting another
ticket. Some pay the price if they have
to, just to get to class.
AD: Another is getting a parking ticket for at
the clinic for kids.
FA: In the N lot, many new faculty can’t get in
that lot, there is a long waiting list. Is there some possibility where a
person could park for 20 minutes while they take their baggage out of their car
and into their offices. They find it
difficult to take a computer, papers, etc, all the way from where they have to
park. Some kind of 20-minute policy, a loading zone?
AD: There are on the north side of Education.
FA: That doesn’t work
FA: When I got my permit for lot behind my
building, you said it was better than getting promoted to full professor. [laughter]
AD: Could we tie this together somehow?
FA: When I had to get a permit because I came in
late, they offered me to park in K lot.
Well, I had in the back of my car the whole back seat full of programs I
needed to get back into my office. So
the guy told me to drive along F lot. They refused to send someone over to
ticket those who were illegally parked.
I have seen them drive through and not ticket illegally parked
cars. This is why they don’t have
enough tickets to put the boot on. You need to be ticketing those cars.
AD: Sometimes this is the case.
FA: They don’t get out and look at tickets.
AD: Sometimes I have observed that. I’ve talked to Skip about that. Gates have
improved it, but they are very expensive.
That has decreased the need for ticketing in those lots. We could have focused attention on N
lot. Sometimes they are not coming to
ticket, but to provide surveillance. That is part of their function. Preventing theft, etc. Students are suffering from break-ins in the
lots. Those who don’t ticket may not be there to ticket.
AD: We raised it to five tickets, then lowered
it to three, in order to get a boot.
AD: Downtown, they talk about traffic people
who need to make a quota. Can we reward
good ticketers?
AD: We haven’t done that. We are on a fine line.
We don’t have quotas, don’t offer rewards for lots of ticketing. Skip would
like electronic ticket writers, but right now they have to call on the radio,
someone has to go check, unlike the police.
AD: We could increase parking fees and hire
full time professionals. By law, parking has to be self-sustaining, a Minnesota
statute. If you are willing to pay, we can gate more lots, if that is the
direction you are indicating we should go.
AD: In the recent survey, faculty said they’d
be willing to pay 25 dollars, and students 40 dollars for parking, for the same
kind of parking.
FA: How much more does it cost to have students
do more ticketing?
AD: They are doing other things now besides
ticketing, and it is hard to find students to fill these positions. They don’t
like to write tickets; people treat them shabbily. Everyone gets mad at them.
They take a lot of abuse. They also have to work different times, which
amounts to 24-7, at about 8 dollars an hour.
Ticketing is a lower priority than escorts, investigation of theft,
response to emergency, etc.
FA: I thought most of the conversation was
better enforcement through ticketing.
AD: We used to ticket with Pinkerton back in
the 1980s. Then we expanded enforcement
to 24 hours a day in many lots, so enforcement time has extended, and we went
to student workers who we thought could be public safety, not just parking
attendants.
FA: Now I need to put in a word for bike
riders. We need more bike racks. Racks were removed from the east side of
Centennial to make room for a smoking area.
On the south side of Miller center, smokers mingle with bike riders.
FA: We could even have permits for people who
ride bikes, and use that money to buy decent bike racks.
AD: I am more encouraged by the bus to cover
the school year in Minnesota. We will
promote that during orientation.
FA:
It is after 5 pm. Thanks.
There
was general thanks for the refreshments provided by Sandra Williams. Also thanks to Emily Schultz for taking the
notes.