Concerns about implementing the smoke-free campus initiative were brought forth at Wednesday’s University Senate open forum.

The annual open forum was a chance for students, staff and faculty to address Chancellor Nancy Cantor with concerns or questions about SU. The auditorium was mostly filled with faculty and staff, although a few students were in attendance.

Officials at the forum also discussed where the proceeds from the New Era Pinstripe Bowl game would go, as well as concerns about the number of tenured faculty. The open forum in Maxwell Auditorium lasted 11 minutes.

Concerns regarding the smoke-free initiative included how it would apply to people on South Campus or to visitors smoking in their cars.

Allan Breese, head of the group looking into the initiative, said the committee members were still discussing the initiative and setting goals for where they would like to be with the program in three, four or five years. The initiative has received a great deal of support from the Student Association, he said.

Athletic Director Daryl Gross answered the question about whether the Pinstripe Bowl game proceeds would be going to the athletic department or distributed throughout the university. Gross said the football team received a gross figure of a little more than $1 million for attending the bowl game, but team expenses and a ticket allotment detracted from the figure.

‘We’re going to make a little bit of money to put it back in the program so we can try to help the program enhance itself,’ Gross said.

During the discussion of the Pinstripe Bowl game proceeds, a question was also raised about what would happen to possible proceeds from a men’s basketball Final Four game. Gross said it was too soon to answer questions about the Final Four proceeds.

Associate mathematics professor Steven Diaz was also concerned about the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty, which he said he felt were decreasing. He asked to see numbers from the past three decades on full-time and tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Cantor said the university did have data but not three decades of numbers. Recently, both the tenured and tenure-track faculty and the full-time faculty have increased by 12 and 20 percent, respectively, she said.

Diaz also asked what happened to people who forgot to apply for the university’s health care. Cantor said an ‘enormous’ amount of time was spent tracking down those people to make sure their information was accounted for.

Wednesday’s forum was a contrast to the forum last year when students showed up with concerns about making zero-credit courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts worth one credit. Overall discussion last year included more ‘big items,’ such as changes to faculty benefits and the movement of part of E.S. Bird Library’s collection to an off-campus storage facility, said presiding officer Jonathan Massey.

It is possible that members of the campus community are not as involved with USen this academic year because the issues are not the same or because they do not have the same questions, Massey said.

‘Either people feel like they have the info,’ Massey said, ‘or they aren’t engaged with the issues.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

 

 

 

Published on February 8, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride