To expedite the process of creating legislation, Faculty Senate is considering implementing workgroups, as discussed during their Aug. 21 meeting. These groups will be made up of students, faculty and staff, and will have the power to research and propose legislation to the Senate about various assigned projects.

The first project the workgroup will be working on is the policy for consensual relationships between faculty and students.

This is to expedite the process of creating a policy, according to Steve Lovett, faculty senate president and assistant professor of business administration, who was in charge of implementing the workgroups, which was not a formal process.

“Committees, in my estimation, again my personal opinion, are not really well built … to do the research and draftsman kind of work that needs to be done in order to put together policies,” Lovett said. “Instead of formalizing it and making it hyper-formal and calling it a ‘taskforce’ or whatever, I’m just going to put together a couple work groups that can begin the process.

The workgroup is chaired by Kevin Johnson, general counsel, and should be thought of as “graduate assistants,” according to Lovett.

“The idea behind these two or three workgroups is that they’re really going to do the research, the deep drilling, and maybe put together some recommended language for purposes of policy and then hand that over to you, to one of our standing committees that’s been assigned that particular item,” Lovett said. “Then the committee itself has something to work on. It has a springboard. It can criticize it, tear it apart, dismiss it, whatever they want to do, but it’s not starting from scratch.”

Faculty Senate also spoke about the December deadline for creating a policy on consensual relationships between faculty and students. The deadline was set by the Kansas Board of Regents and applies to all of the regent universities.

If Faculty Senate doesn’t put together a policy by December, KBOR will and it could be a zero-tolerance policy for relationships between faculty and students.

A few senators shared concern about the role of the work groups, including Marian Riedy, senator and associate professor of business administration, who spoke about communication and what role they would play in Faculty Senate.

“The idea is not so that the committee is not doing the work, it’s so the committee can do it more quickly,” Lovett said. “Workgroups have no decision-making capability … They don’t vote on anything.”

There were additional concerns about the transparency of the workgroup, especially since the policy they are working on affects everyone on campus.

“I have a concern about the work groups in general, and specifically I am concerned about transparency,” said Max McCoy, senator and professor of English, modern languages and journalism. “Who appoints the work groups? Are the work groups only faculty senators? Are there other members of these work groups? I’m a little anxious about being handed legislation to vote on without having participated in its drafting.”

There were also concerns as to whether the workgroups would be subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act. Lovett said he could not answer those questions at this time.

The next faculty senate meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 4 in the Skyline Room.