Academic senate suggests freedom of expression statement, makes changes

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Courtney Boyd
CMU President Bob Davies and Provost Nancy Mathews give their opening announcements at the Academic Senate meeting on March 19, 2024. Davies will be at the SGA meeting on April 1 to discuss the Academic Senate's freedom of expression efforts. (CM Life | Courtney Boyd)

Members of the Academic Senate voted by a wide majority to approve Yale’s freedom of expression statement as their formal recommendation to President Bob Davies. 

The 43 senators present approved the statement 88% to 12% at the end of the meeting, a margin that increased 18 percentage points from an informal poll at the beginning of the meeting. 

“To me, just having this discussion and taking a stance and endorsing a statement of freedom of expression, it does say very loudly what type of institution we are in wanting to have that,” Davies said. 

Credit hour requirements for interdisciplinary programs and the approval of spring graduates were also discussed at the April 2 meeting. 

The discussion of adopting a freedom of expression statement began at the March 19 Academic Senate meeting. The discussion at that meeting centered on the differences between two potential templates: the University of Chicago statement and the Yale statement. 

The Yale principles put expression in the context of community impact, while the Chicago principles focus more on individuals and academia. 

Since that meeting, the Student Government Association voted in favor of the Yale statement at their meeting on Monday, April 1. Here’s how that vote broke down: 

  • Yale statement: 55.4% (36 votes) 
  • Chicago statement: 40% (26 votes) 
  • Neither: 4% (three votes)

Vice President of SGA Ryan Biller presented their vote to the Academic senate, raising student concerns about policy transparency and communicating policies to students as they’re established. 

“A lot of the questions that were asked … were about policies that student’s don’t know about, like academic freedom,” Biller said. “I think something that came out of that is communicating it to students.” 

Senator Scott De Brestian is a member of the Freedom of Expression Ad Hoc committee that took a closer look at both statements. He said there are different stages for establishing a policy and communicating it to students. 

“Deciding on a statement and implementing it are two different things,” he said. “We need to think of this as the beginning of the process, not the end of the process.” 

Approving the Yale statement, however, would be making a recommendation on a statement, which is different from a policy. 

“A statement is a way to start the process of building a culture and it also informs and puts action into various policies,” Davies said. “There’s no enforcement of the statement, but that’s what policy is for.” 

He added that some changes may be made to the student code of conduct policy and the advocacy policy as a result of a new freedom of expression statement. 

Senator Guy Newland proposed a change to the Yale statement, which protects “all speech.” He recommended limiting the speech allowed to what is already protected by the first amendment. 

“Some speech is actually illegal and contradictory to the interests of the university,” Newland said. “I just wanted to make sure that we don’t have a bald statement that we’re not going to suppress speech when, by law, we are going to suppress some speech.” 

This edit passed unanimously. The next step in the process, according to Senate chair Tracy Davis, is for President Davies to begin writing a statement for the University. 

“Whatever we say here is a recommendation to the president,” Davis said. “I think what he’s looking for is more of an umbrella statement.” 

Credit hour requirements

The senate also voted to approve changes to the Curriculum Authority Document (CAD) where it dictates the required minimum credit hours for each major and minor. 

Previously, here’s how the credits broke down between interdisciplinary and regular programs: 

  • Regular major: minimum 30 credit hours 
  • Interdisciplinary major: minimum 39 credit hours 
  • Regular minor: minimum 21 credit hours 
  • Interdisciplinary minor: minimum 24 credits. 

Davis led this discussion, and said in trying to figure out why there was a difference in the first place, no explanation was available. 

“The point is to bring all majors and minors into the same requirements,” Davis said. 

The changes passed and majors are now, at a minimum, 30 credit hours and minors must also be at least 20 credit hours. 

Announcements

  • The list of Spring 2024 graduates was approved: Davis said there are 2,443 expected degree and certificate recipients. 
  • Vice President Jim Bujaki said the help desk is moving forward on an initiative to standardize some software on CMU technology. This would allow help desk employees to (with user approval) “sign in to your machine to resolve problems.”
  • The presidential search continues with a university-wide listening session scheduled for 2:30 to 3:15 on Wednesday, April 10. A link is also available to provide online feedback. 
  • Elections for the SGA Executive Board are open until 5 p.m. Friday, April 5, with voting available through engage and candidate information on the Student Activities and Involvement social media pages. 
  • The next Board of Trustees meetings will be April 17 (committees) and April 18 (full session). 

Future Academic Senate meetings will occur at 3:30 p.m. every other Tuesday at the Education and Human Services building in the French auditorium. Livestreams of this meeting and all future meetings can be found on CMU’s website.

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