Faculty Senate voted to send Bill 16004, “Absences for Religious Observances,” back to the faculty affairs committee Tuesday. The motion passed with 28 votes and one abstention.
“I got some feedback from my department and faculty members are a little bit worried about the policy not clarifying enough what faculty can actually do for verifying religious observances and drawing reasonable limitations,” said Dan Colson, FAC representative and assistant professor of English, modern language and journalism. “One person pointed out that as the policy is written, it just basically gives a blanket to students to miss as many classes as they ever want for religious observances.”
There will be more work and research on the bill while it is in committee, according to Colson.
“I feel like we rushed it a little bit,” Colson said. “ We (FAC) didn’t look into other university policies and I’d like to bring in Kevin Johnson and have him actually speak to the committee.”
The bill, as written, states: “In accordance with all applicable laws, statutes and regulations, students will be allowed absences for religious observances with prior written notification from the student to the instructor. Notification should be given as soon as possible in the semester. Any absence(s) due to religious observance will not affect the student’s grade directly, but the student may be required to complete any work missed due to the absence(s).”
“I don’t have any problems with anybody taking their holidays but there are saints days for 10,000 saints, (and) if you celebrate your saints day and got 10,000 saints you might very well take every class day off,” said Kevin Coulson, senator and professor of business. “It’s an abuse of the system…it definitely needs some modifications so we don’t have to deal with these odd occurrences.”
Several questions were raised about the potential of creating policies that deal with an appeal process, verification of the event and how to handle situations if a student should miss every class day during the meeting.
“I think it definitely true that any attempt to craft policy language that addresses every possible situation is not possible,” said David Cordle, provost. “I suspect that the laws are not going to give an answer to every situation either. One possible solution is the phrase ‘reasonable accommodation.’”
Reasonable accommodation honors the principle of accommodation, with the word ‘reasonable’ preserving some discretion on the part of the instructor to use a common sense approach to what can be allowed, according to Cordle.
The senate passed Bill 16005, “Modifications to Procedures for Faculty/Staff Evaluations of the Assistant Provost for Institutional Research and Assessment” with a vote of 72-0-2.
The next faculty senate meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. Dec. 6 in the Preston Family Room.