Agenda Items

1. Letter to Gov. Hunt Gretchen Skidmore, in her role as our liaison to the Finance Committee of Board of Trustees mentioned at our last meeting that this committee is eager to hear from the faculty concerning financial needs of the school. Since this announcement at the last meeting she has had numerous contacts from faculty and as many of these related to technology, she initiated a series of meeting with Director Friedrick and others to discuss technology needs at the school. From these meetings came the suggestion that the faculty, the administration, and the Board write parallel letters to Gov. Hunt urging him to ask for increased funding on a continuing basis for the school. Gretchen is in the process of drafting a letter, which she will share with the faculty and which the Faculty Council Officers will sign, that will go to Director Friedrick. He will present this letter to the Board along with his letter with the hope that they will include their own letter and forward all there to the Governor. Gretchen's letter will remind Gov. Hunt of our accomplishments and inform him that current funding has not kept pace with our needs. Faculty with specific ideas for inclusion should contact Gretchen.
2. Academic Honesty: This is the third discussion on this topic. John Kolena stated that his goal for this discussion was to come up with a general statement that the faculty can support and to decide, if possible, on what violations go the the Hearing Board and which are handled by the individual teacher. To that end John proposed the following statement:

   Academic dishonesty is presenting work as something other than what the student knows it to be. Academic dishonesty includes the giving, taking, or presenting of information or material with the intent defrauding or unethically or fraudulently aiding oneself or another person.

   Some examples of academic dishonesty include the fabriction of facts or data, assisting another student in a dishonest act, uauthourized collaboration with other people, presenting of work or ideas taken from a text, web site, etc, as your own, or failure to do your share of work on a group project.

   This list is not meant to be complete in any sense. Some concern was expressed that it might be difficult to for individual teachers to have their own statement if we put a general statement like the above in the Student Handbook. Perhaps a statement of rationale, which included the goal of being academically honest would help. Perhaps a statement like this will help each of us when we talk with students at the beginning of a course. The current Handbook has a small paragraph that tells what teachers and students are supposed to do. This new statement is more specific and will help. If anyone has any suggestions or changes they should contact John Kolena. At a later meeting we will vote on the statement for inclusion in the handbook.

   The second issue, that of determining when and how violations are reported, was discussed. Many faculty felt that without hard evidence, it is very difficult to take a case to the Hearing Board. Bet there was also strong support for reporting cases in which teachers felt that students were being dishonest. Cheating on tests, wandering eyes, seems to be a major concern, but also one that is very difficult to document. It was suggested that the only way to prevent this was to create a "testing environment" where seats were far apart, where no materials were allowed in the room, and where very close monitoring occurs. When an offense is major and could serious affect a grade, and there is hard evidence, we agreed that such cases should go to the Hearing Board, but even here it is difficult to get hard evidence. Waren Basket, speaking from the perspective of the Hearing Board, said that is is difficult to decide cases that are brought the the Board when each teacher has a different standard. He also mentioned that in the Residential Life side of the school, students are given warnings for suspected violations of rules, and suggested that we might try the same thing for suspected academic dishonety. It was suggested that we send to John Kolena examples of incidents of academic dishonesty and our response to these. John will compile this before or next discussion on this issue.

3. Smoking Policy: Dot Doyle, our liaison to the Educational Policies and Practices Committee of the Board, stated at the last meeting that she knew that the EPPC was considering a change to the current smoking policy. In an attempt to represent what the enitre faculty felt about the proposed change, she asked Dr. Barber to tell us about the change and have a discussion. Dr. Barber informed us that the policy being considered is for students only and that there were four aspects to to be considered. First, she feels that there is a bigger issue that just smoking. Many of those students who smoke also exhibit other "risky" behaviors that often lead to problems. She feels that we need to look at the big picture and not consider this just a smoking issue. Joan reminded us of the chronology of our current smoking policy. In 1991/92 parents expressed concerned about students taking up smoking after they got to NCSSM. At that time staff members could smoke anywhere on campus. We reacted by moving staff smoking outside of the buildings and 2 years later we designated smoking areas. In 1994 we began to tell candidates at regional testing that NCSSM was moving to become a smokefree campus. In 1996 we started giving Level II's for students smoking on campus, Level IIIs for those caught smoking in rooms. In 1997 a new state law prohibitted the sale or distribution of tobacco to any person under the age of 18. Under age 18, any attempt to buy or receive tobacco products was illegal. The law does not say they can't use tobacco products.

   Students know that NCSSM is tobacco-free as the Intent to Enroll form mentions this. The recommended policy changes takes into account other problems associated with smoking, namely the health and safety concerns for our students, academic problems, and neighborhood concerns about students.

   The recommendation is to make posession on or off campus, while under jurisdiction of school, will result in a level, of yet-to-be-determined magnitude. Input from the faculty as to the type of level, the punishment and the type of remediation is encouraged.

   John Kolena suggested that we might vote on proposed policy. He expressed concerns about enforcement of this new policy. In the discussion that followed, it was suggested that each time a student is caught, he or she be sent home for a weekend. The survey done earlier in the year of parents (with only about 160 in attendance) indicated that parents are concerned and few think their own students use tobacco. Helen Compton, who was attending the meeting as a parent, did not feel like the parents understood the issue or the intent of the survey. The Parents' Council has recently voted to support the results of the survey, however.

   A vote was taken on the motion to allow students to smoke on campus with parental permission. The motion passed 23 for and 2 against. A second motion to support the recommended change, that is to make the possession of tobacco on or off campus, was made and this motion failed, with 2 for and 23 against. A third motion, to allow smoking in a designated area on campus without any parental permission, passed 11 voting for and 10 against the motion.

Jo Ann Lutz announced that the Math Department is finally fully staffed. Agida Manezade has gotten her papers was will take over classes second sememster. Also we have hired David Reid to take over Robin Cunningham's classes in January.

The meeting adjourned at 5:12 PM.

Respectfully submitted

John Goebel, Secretary