Senate duties extend beyond undergraduate issues

To the Editor
The Reporter account (Nov. 14 issue) of the Nov. 6 Faculty Senate meeting ends with the comment that the senate's principal concern is UB undergraduate programs. This is inaccurate and misleading.

It is inaccurate in its implication that the proposed limit of 25 percent Senate membership for units whose student enrollment—undergraduate, graduate and professional—is less than 20 percent of the university total is based on supposed senate concentration on undergraduate programs. It is misleading in its suggestion that senate concerns with research, libraries and information technologies, student life, educational programs and policies, academic planning, academic freedom and responsibility, affirmative action, budget priorities and facilities—to list several but hardly all areas addressed by senate committees—are considered by the senate only to the extent they affect undergraduate programs.

The Faculty Senate is the means whereby the faculty of the university participate in its governance and guidance as these affect all the university's instructional, research and public-service programs and activities. The proposed limit of 25 percent membership rests on recognition that no one of these areas should dominate Faculty Senate activities.

William H. Baumer
Professor of Philosophy
College of Arts and Sciences senator
CAS representative to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee