To have and to hold

Joe Milholland reports back with the latest from the University Senate.

At the beginning of the December 11 University Senate plenary, Executive Committee Chair Sharyn O’Halloran talked about the protocols for the University calling the police. At every protest on campus, she stated, VP of Public Safety James McShane notifies the police. However, for the police to be asked to come on campus because of a demonstration, there is a procedure O’Halloran described as “very elaborate.”

Specifically, PrezBo is required to consult the Executive Committee and decide if the demonstration poses “that a demonstration poses a clear and present danger to persons, property, or the substantial functioning of any division of the University.” O’Halloran quoted this from page 139 of the University charters and statutes. This rule goes on to state (although O’Halloran did not quote this) that the president “ shall take all necessary steps to secure the cooperation of external authority to bring about the end of the disruption. The President shall make public his or her decision to the fullest extent possible as soon as it is feasible. Nothing in the above shall be construed to limit the President’s emergency authority to protect persons or property.” O’Halloran called the criteria for calling the police onto campus a “pretty high threshold.”

Advisory Committee Socially Responsible Investing Chair Jeffery Gordon talked about proposals to divest from the fossil fuels and private prisons industries. Both he and PrezBo have met with students from the private prisons divestment group, and on January 20 there will be a panel discussion about private prisons. With regards to fossil fuel divestment, Gordon said the ACSRI only rejected a specific petition from Barnard-Columbia Divest, and the committee is looking at other methods to deal with fossil fuel divestment.

Gordon was asked a three-part question about how irresponsible companies need to be to be divested from, rewarding responsible companies, and voting via proxy in companies instead of divesting. Gordon said, “the slippery-slope issue is a serious one.” He said different actions on investing are possible but he cannot give anything certain yet.

After Gordon spoke, Vice Provost for Online Education Soulayme Kachani talked about the work the Provost’s Faculty Advisory Committee on Online Learning did on technology in education and MOOCS. Their key recommendation was “Columbia should establish a university-wide center for teaching and learning.” The goal of the center would be to improve the pedagological abilities of instructors and encourage innovation in classrooms. PFACOL wants the center to work closely with the CUIT Teaching & Learning Applications Group, which oversees CourseWorks.

PFACOL has also given out 16 grants of less than $20,000 each to faculty who want to use technology in their classes. The Committee is piloting a new learning management system (CourseWorks was the old one) called Canvas, at the url courseworks2.columbia.edu. “If you use Canvas ever, you will never use CourseWorks again,” said Kachani.

As for MOOCS, Kachani still wants to work on them. Columbia has 14 MOOCs on Coursera, over 500,000 enrolled students, and a 5-10% completion rate on its courses (higher than average). Kachani noted MOOCs collect lots of data on students; they “can capture every click,” according to Kalchani and can see when students stop watching lectures and when they rewind. Responding to questions about whether professors will still have control over their classes on MOOCs, Kachani said professors need approval for MOOCs used for commercial use but have more latitude for free courses.

Other Updates:

• Speaking about the Rules of Conduct Committee’s decision to take the rules into review, co-chair Christopher Riano said that the committee hopes to do a “serious review” over the winter break of the proposals it received from town halls, e-mails, and individuals. The committee is also looking at the history of the rules and rules at peer institutions.
• There will be university-wide forums on sexual assault policy next semester. According to Columbia College University Senator Marc Heinrich, the forums will be focused on getting feedback from the community, but he wants to hear discussion of preferred sanctions and continuing consent education. He also wants to hear from constituencies who have not yet had a large voice in the sexual assault discussion on campus. If PrezBo is to review these recommendations by the end of the school year, PACSA has to collect them by March 1.
• SEAS senator Jillian Ross will be the co-chair of a committee on diversity that links discussions on race, gender, and class across the university.

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