All the federal and state funding for Syracuse University is on the line as the final year of a three-year process for accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education will close in the spring.

Institutions are reviewed every 10 years and SU’s report is being prepared for its Nov. 14 review. Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Sandra Hurd was at Monday’s Student Association meeting to listen to feedback from the undergraduate student government.

‘My job at this juncture is to take your feedback,’ Hurd said. She added that she will be meeting with the Graduate Student Association on Saturday and is also receiving faculty feedback on a draft of the university’s report.

Hurd listened as members of the assembly questioned the report’s position on topics ranging from the expense of studying abroad to the value of SU’s slogan: ‘scholarship in action.’

‘I think it is very helpful to get student feedback, and certainly through the Student Association is the best way to do that. You get a livelier conversation going about it,’ Hurd said in an interview.

One question that sparked an interest with the associate provost was on the changing theme of the university from one chancellor to the next. Under former Chancellor Kenneth ‘Buzz’ Shaw, SU was known as ‘a student-centered research institution.’ But Hurd said SU does not use that language anymore.

‘Scholarship in action’ is the university’s description.

‘We need to explain that segue more and allude to specifically the examples of things that have been in place for a long time that provided the foundation for the notion of scholarship in action,’ Hurd said. ‘We need to talk more about the kinds of activities students were engaged in before scholarship in action.’

Assembly members said the different research activities should be highlighted to show the similarities between the two visions.

Meaghan C. Monfort, SA recorder, asked how the university ensures that there is some uniting element in the vision of one chancellor to the next.

Hurd responded by saying that many universities have a similar mission to SU and that it is embedded many others.

‘This is evolutionary rather than revolutionary,’ she said of ‘scholarship in action.’

When asked after the meeting whether there was any chance SU would not receive accreditation, Hurd said, ‘I think it’d be best to wait and see what happens at the end of the process.’

From March 30 to April 2, a team of evaluators will come to SU to meet with and interview students, faculty, administrators and a variety of groups on campus. Tufts University President Lawrence S. Bacow will be leading the evaluating team. That team will file its report with Middle States, which will either accredit or refuse to accredit SU some time during the summer of 2008.

During the question and answer session, the conversation moved across topics of concern in higher education, including:

      – The risks of losing diverse classes by accepting too many early decision applicants.

      – Grade inflation at SU, though Hurd said the report was not the place to address that topic.

      – Undergraduate collaboration with faculty on independent research projects.

      – Funding from the upcoming $1 billion capital campaign to help fight the costs of going abroad.

More information on the Middle States process is available at middlestates.syr.edu.

Judicial activism

Adam Jones, chairman of the Judicial Review Board, reported that the JRB had met with three assembly members during the week for excessive demerits.

Jones said an assembly member from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management had been dismissed from SA for an unprecedented 26 demerits, chiefly earned through absences.

The member was ‘at a level of demerits that was unlike anything I’d ever seen because of the communication issue from last semester,’ Jones said. ‘So that was a pretty straight forward issue in my book.’

Jones would not release the names of any of the SA members under judicial review.

The other two assembly members had each accumulated 16 demerits and Jones put them on probation. If a member on probation earns four demerits, he or she is dismissed from SA.

‘They are still on my little fun-form of probation, where if they reach one more unexcused or two excused absences, they will be removed from the assembly for not doing their responsibly,’ Jones said.

Jones used his JRB chairman’s report to address the communication issues he has seen within SA, but he never had a venue to comment on.

E-mails should be sent to every member 48 hours before meetings with the agenda and other appropriate documents, Jones said. He added that the Web site was created for students to communicate with their government, and it needs to be updated regularly.

‘By the codes, I’m supposed to come up here and address my opinion,’ Jones said. ‘This communication issue is something I’ve noticed through my whole tenure throughout SA, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to address but never had a medium to do it.

‘The only reason I bring it up today is because it was mentioned as an excuse for these two people during their hearings,’ he said.

Swimming and diving task force

SA unanimously passed a resolution, which creates the Syracuse University Swimming and Diving Task Force ‘to conduct an investigation into the process and decision making used by the Athletic Department to cut funding for the Syracuse University Swimming and Diving Team(s),’ according to the bill.

The bill congratulates the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams for their academic excellence and exemplification of SU tradition.

Vice President Marlene Goldenberg said the language of the bill had been tempered during a cabinet meeting earlier Monday.

‘It was originally worded a lot more strongly,’ Goldenberg said. ‘We do disagree with the process that was taken, but until we do a little more research into exactly what happened, we don’t want to fully throw our support until we have all the facts.’

She said the intent of the task force was to help SA get all the facts.

Items passed and president’s absent

Comptroller Mike Rizzolo said the request from University Union to receive advanced funding for its year-end Block Party had been tabled for this week. He and Parliamentarian Marko Markov were still in the process of examining the bill and determining whether early funding was constitutionally possible.

Three budgetary matters were passed all unanimously. They included:

      – Granting $940 to Delta Sigma Theta for a Halloween costume party at the Sky Barn on South Campus. The funding is for a disk jockey and the rental of the Sky Barn.

      – Denying any additional funding to Jerk Magazine to improve the quality of its December issue. Rizzolo said that the $1,930.38 was impossible to award because the magazine had already received its funding for the semester.

      – Following the advice of the Finance Board, the assembly granted $135 from the Special Programming Fund for members from the SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry chapter of Habitat for Humanity to register for the New York state fall conference of Habitat for Humanity.

Goldenberg ran the meeting because SA President Ryan Kelly was sick and unable to attend.

Monfort, the recorder and a senior, was unanimously elected to the University Senate, where there are still vacant student seats.

Goldenberg said the Oct. 25 meeting would be canceled because SA, UU and the New York Public Interest Group are bringing a prominent politician to campus.

The speaker will be former Mexican president Vicente Fox. He will speak at the Landmark Theatre, as reported today in The Daily Orange.

Published on October 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm