[Advice to Vice Provost Barbara Horwitz at the request of a member of the Division 1/27/2004]

A faculty member has brought to the Committee on Elections, Rules, and Jurisdiction's (CERJ's) attention the following passage from the APM (Section UCD 220 Exhibit A):

Within the limits of Bylaw 55, departments must decide upon their own voting procedures and submit those procedures in writing, through their dean, to the Oversight Subcommittee of the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) for review. Departmental voting procedures may be reviewed every year.

In personnel actions the recorded vote should clearly separate the view of faculty members normally eligible to vote on an action from those to whom the department has extended the right to vote. When a separate recording of votes could breach confidentiality, the department chair shall aggregate the vote so that confidentiality is maintained. No vote need be recorded in cases where only one faculty member is eligible to vote.

He points out that it is inconsistent with the advice about Senate Bylaw 55 that you received from the Committee on Elections, Rules, and Jurisdiction (CERJ) in our memo of 17 October 2001, the relevant portion of which read:

...the vote may be extended to tenured faculty who are below the rank of the faculty member being evaluated or it may be extended to non-tenured Senate members.  In such cases there are no provisions for recording the votes of those entitled by default separately from those entitled by extension.  It would be invidious to record or report separate votes.

Our advice was given with respect to a question about Exhibit D, but the same considerations apply directly to Exhibit A.  CERJ suggests that the passage in question simply be deleted, with the possible exception of the last sentence.

Exhibit A also states:

Within the limits of Bylaw 55, departments must decide upon their own voting procedures and submit those procedures in writing, through their dean, to the Oversight Subcommittee of the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) for review. Departmental voting procedures may be reviewed every year.

Although CAP must be informed of the voting procedures of departments, procedures with respect to some questions require CAPs review (and approval), while procedures with respect to other questions are matters for the departments to decide on their own.  CERJ advised Linda Bisson on the intricacies of when CAP approval is required in a memorandum dated 15 April 2002.  I attach that memorandum.  It would have been better if you had been copied on it in the beginning.

This passage is also problematic in that it says that procedures may be "reviewed every year" and that procedures must be submitted through the dean.  ASB 55 actually says that one particular class of changes must be maintained for a full calendar year (12 months) before any additional changes are made.  It does not refer to "review" in the sense in which CAP might review and approve a change.  What is more, it does not permit (as one reading of Exhibit A might suggest) a change in Winter 2004 followed by a further change in Fall 2004 -- these fall in separate academic years but are less than 12 months apart.  Voting procedures under ASB 55 are a Senate matter.  Therefore, communication between the department and CAP should be direct and not brokered through the dean.

CERJ suggests that this section of Exhibit A might be redrafted as follows:

Within the limits of Bylaw 55, departments must decide on their own voting procedures.  The Oversight Subcommittee of the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) must be informed in writing of all changes in voting procedures and must, where required by Bylaw 55, review and approve them.