RECORD OF THE COUNCIL JUNE 9-11, 2006

Academe, Nov/Dec 2006

The Council of the Association met on June 9-11, 2006, in conjunction with the annual meeting at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C. The Council session on Saturday, June 10, ran concurrently with the annual meeting plenary session.

President Jane Buck presided. Members of the Council (with the exception of Linda Bell) were present, as were AAUP general counsel David Rabban, general secretary Roger Bowen, and other members of the staff. Kerry Grant served as parliamentarian.

Reports were presented by Christina Turner, chair of the Committee on the Organization of the Association; David Hollinger, chair of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure; Ariel Anderson, chair of the Collective Bargaining Congress: Estelle Gellman, chair of the Committee on Membership; secretary-treasurer Jeffrey Butts; Rama Murthy, chair of the Development Committee; Robert Gorman, chair of the Presidential Task Force on Restructuring; and members of the AAUP staff.

Redistricting

Christina Turner presented the recommendation of the Committee on the Organization of the Association for the redistricting of the membership. She noted that Article IV, section 2, of the Association's Constitution calls for the Council to authorize redistricting of its membership not less than once each decade, and the last changes were made in June 1997.

Turner outlined the criteria used by the committee to formulate its recommendation and noted its acceptance of a friendly amendment proposed by the Executive Committee at its meeting the previous day that would exchange two of the states in District V with two in District X, achieving basically the same distribution of members but providing for better geographical contiguity. A period of debate followed in which an alternate redistricting plan was proposed and defeated.

After further discussion of the original amended proposal and an additional friendly amendment, the Council adopted the amended redistricting plan, as follows, effective with the nomination and election of Council members for 2007-10. Current Council members whose districts have changed will continue in the districts to which they were elected until their terms expire.

COUNCIL DISTRICTS (APPROVED JUNE 9, 2006)

District I: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah; District II: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming; District III: Michigan; District IV: Arkansas, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia; District V: Alabama, Canada, Florida, Foreign, Georgia, Guam, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Virgin Islands, West Virginia; District VI: Ohio; District VII: New Jersey; District VIII: New York; District IX: Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont; District X: Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island.

2006-07 Nominating Committee

Gregory Scholtz, Wartburg College (District IV), was selected by the Assembly of State Conferences (ASC) as its representative on the 2006-07 Nominating Committee. Jeffrey Halpern, Rider University (District VII), was selected as the Collective Bargaining Congress (CBC,) representative on the committee. The Council then elected, from its ranks, three additional members of the committee: Klixabeth Derrick, Valdosta State University (District V); Roxane Gudeman, Macalester College (District III); and Susan Meisenhelder, California State University-San Bernardino (District I). Members of the Nominating Committee elected Gregory Scholtz to chair the committee.

2007 Election Committee

Under the Association's election bylaws, revised in June 2005, the Council, at its June meeting, elects a member of the Association to serve on the Election Committee along with the two designated members of the committee-the Association's general counsel and the chair of the Committee on Membership. According to the bylaws, members of the Election Committee cannot be candidates for or incumbents in Association elective office, nor can they endorse a candidate for elective office during their service on the committee.

Martin Snyder, staff liaison to the Election Committee, noted that Membership Committee chair Estelle Gellman was recently elected second vice president of the Association and was thus ineligible to serve on the 2007 Election Committee. Pursuant to the election bylaws, Snyder called for nominations for the two positions on the Election Committee. Ballots were prepared containing the names of the nominees, from which the Council elected Tom Dietz (Kalamazoo Valley Community College) and George Lang (Fairfield University) to serve with the Association's general counsel on the 2007 Election Committee.

Jeffrey Butts, chair of the Election Bylaws Task Force that developed the 2005 revisions to the bylaws, indicated that the task force will revisit the language that prohibits incumbents from serving on the Election Committee, noting that their exclusion was not the intent of the task force.