Merry, and All, I have some comments, in no particular order. This is rushed, so probably too wordy.
First of all, the Senate raised the question of whether combining the positions of Senate Chair and General Faculty President, with or without a further combination with one of the Statewide Academic Senate positions, might make for an impossible work load. I think that in fact this would be a problem. Even though, as the Provost pointed out, the Senate Chair and the GFP do serve on several committees together, their roles do not involve the same work or the same kinds of work, and in fact Saeed and I play quite different roles in the committees we attend together. I speak up regarding different matters than he does. In particular, because I am elected by the General Faculty rather than by the Senate, I am more free to disagree with the Senate and with particular senators' views. Because the Senate Chair chairs both the Senate meetings and the Senate Executive Committee meetings, he often has to concentrate on facilitating discussion rather than on giving his own views, a constraint which does not affect the GFP in those meetings.

I am not sure what weight to give this next. Because I serve on the committees Merry has listed, I often find myself in the position of sitting around a table while someone looks around for volunteers to serve on ad hoc committees and task forces, and they stare at me until I fold and say okay. That is, my membership on these committees and Saeed's membership on his committees leads to involvement on even more committees. I'm currently on the ICC committee designing a new model for supervision of curriculum, heroically chaired by Mary Virnoche, and the University Budget Committee. Combining the Senate Chair and GFP into one position would halve the two of us and reduce the ability of other chairs to prey on us when looking for volunteers.

As some have recently pointed out on the Senate floor, there is often grumbling among the faculty about the ineffectiveness and the glacial pace of the Senate. While I have come to think that much of this grumbling is misplaced or is simply an expression of unrealistic impatience, my point here is separate from whether the grumbling is justified or not. The fact is that the General Faculty President does give the general faculty an alternative venue for expressing their views. I have several times dealt with faculty members who are livid at the Senate, and who wish to air their grievances without subjecting themselves to the procedures of that of which they complain. I don't know how effective I am at soothing people--sometimes I expect they just go away more discouraged than before--but at least they do have another representative who is not beholden to the Senate and who is not seen as a part of it.

There are some functions of the GFP which seem more directly given to her than to the Senate Chair, including the function of calling a meeting of the General Faculty. Also, it seems to me that the Senate has as its basis for existence provisions within the constitution of the General Faculty. I'm not sure about what that means, but if there were to be changes in the structure, then it might be necessary to re-articulate the relationship between the Senate and the faculty members of HSU.

The Provost mentioned that perhaps the main reason for having both a Senate Chair and a General Faculty President is that the faculty then gets another vote, two votes rather than one in some settings. (I hope I've not misrepresented his comment.) At the time I started to raise my hand to ask how many faculty votes is too many, but bit my tongue, thinking perhaps I was being too pissy. The discussion ended abruptly and I did not get a chance to ask. I now think it is a good question, that having another faculty vote on crucial committees is a good reason for keeping the General Faculty President, and that in fact the current Provost would have agreed with me before he became Provost.

I'll be glad to discuss these comments with anyone.

John

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