Academic Senate Meeting

Minutes

05/04/05

Voting Members Present: Blue, Butler, Cheevers, Dowling, Eyadat, Ferrario, Furtado, Ganezer, Goders, Gould, Hay, Heinze-Balcazar, Henschel, Herbert, Hollie, Jones, Kaplan, Kowalski, Malamud, Moore, Moy, Newton, Parker, Silvis and Zoerner.

Voting Members Absent: Clark, Dheeriya, Fawver, Gordon, Han, Hooper, Jacobs, Johnson, Karber, Lewis, Little, McCarthy, Park, Pu, Saunders, Vasquez and Weber.

Ex-Officio Members Present: Bell-Waters, Dote-Kwan, Gordon, Lyons, Mori, Pardon, Rodriguez, A., Strong, Whetmore, Williams, Wood and Yao.

Guests: Behesliti, Davis, Mellblom

Approval of Agenda Approved M/S/P

Approval of Minutes Approved M/S/P

Chair’s Report-Chair Blue thanked the Executive Committee and the Senate for all of their work this academic year. She also thanked the President, the Provost and the rest of the administration. Blue also reported that the issue Senator Goders brought up at the last Senate meeting regarding summer school was taken to the Executive Committee and the Executive Committee could not separate the Senate issues from the union issues and so it was decided that this issue should be taken up by the CFA.

Parliamentarian Report-Parliamentarian Johnson reported that Margaret Blue was elected for another term 2005-2006 as Academic Senate Chair. Johnson will also be sending out a call in the fall for Statewide Academic Senator and for any Senate committees who have members with terms that end this spring.

Time Certain 2:45 p.m. Timi Anyon Hallen CSU Attorney/Home Depot Phase II-

Hallen gave a brief overview of her background to the Senate. She has been a real estate lawyer for 30 years and currently is with a firm that has been around for 40 years whose area of expertise is hospitality law. Hallen said that she believed that the Home Depot Phase II deal was a good deal for the University.

The University will receive 20 new internships in all AEG operations. AEG will include mention of the campus in brochures and broadcasts with the exception of non-AEG events. CSUDH will receive 10% from the naming rights of the hotel. The CPI (Index) will be no less than 2% and no more than 6%, she said that they did ask AEG to change the collar o the maximum and they refused. Currently, Phase II land is leased by Anschutz and they can only use it for specified things.

Wood raised a number of objections such as parking, height of hotel, the problem with internships only being sports related, problems with signage. Blue said that the new internships would be great for political science and government students. Goders said he did not see how Phase II would advance the educational mission of the University and was concerned about the hidden costs. Goders raised concerns about who would be responsible if the hotel failed and Hallen said that Anschutz would be responsible, and if someone else took over, they would have to step into our lease. Hallen said that usually they will want to have the lease with their name on it. Goders also said that Hallen spoke of the negotiations in past terms and wanted to know if that meant that the negotiating was finished. Hallen said yes and no. She said that the outline of the basic terms is done and that they need to negotiate the new documents. Goders also said that it appears we are giving up easily accessible parking for new parking spaces, which means we will have more congestion. Hallen encouraged everyone to please make their suggestions.

Moore asked if Pardon was the author of the responses to the Sense of the Senate letter, and Pardon said yes. Moore asked if the bold print had any contractual value and Pardon said that it did not. Silvis said that the Communications Department has 40 to 50 interns per semester and he said that he welcomed the internships offered by AEG. Goders was concerned about hidden costs and reminded Silvis that the internships will cost 25% of Silvis’s salary in extra work. Butler said that he enjoyed reading the Sense of the Senate and the responses. He said that regarding the issue of the hotel blocking the campus view, he was at the corner of Avalon and Victoria and said that you can’t see the campus from that corner because the ground rises. He said that he would welcome the internships and would welcome the extra work as a faculty member.

Hay said that he supported the HDC Phase I and had the perception we would be friends, but saw that they were bad neighbors. Some of the events like the XGames are loud during classes. We’re caught up in where the roads are going to be, but what about the real benefits and not the financial. If they were our friends they would have fixed the dug outs without litigation. Hallen said that these agreements will require that they adhere to the terms. MacAllister said that they meet every Tuesday and they are friendly they have conceded to all that we’ve asked.

Lyons agreed with Hay to a certain point, but said that he realized we’ve had to understand what the relationship could be. Lyons said that we come from two completely different worlds and we look at things differently from the many opportunities we have to the battles of things but as a result we have found that they have been very supportive. We have made it clear that we had many concerns. There has been tremendous response to the concerns raised in the Sense of the Senate. Lyons said that he risked the entire relationship with AEG and the Board of Trustees when he asked them to pull this item from the agenda, “but I told them that the reason was that there were some concerns from the faculty at CSUDH. Mr. Leiweke and I had to meet privately and I addressed the issues and the fact that CSUDH was not being mentioned at televised games.” Lyons said he came very close to ending the relationship with AEG. He said he felt terrible that after the campus had to give up parking spaces, we were not mentioned once during the two weeks of the XGames. Hallen said that this relationship is a lot like a marriage, there are things that no one would have thought about in the beginning but that it is an evolving process.

Malamud asked if anything had been negotiated regarding giving discounts to the University, faculty, or visiting faculty. Hallen said that this has been talked about, she said that it depends on how well the hotel does financially, the more money the hotel makes the more generous the discounts will be. Ganezer said that there were deficits in programs and facilities, and that it’s hard to get travel money on this campus, or a new science building, but we can have a $200 million sports center. It’s a dichotomy. Hallen said that it is not costing the University to build it and maybe they might generate some money to be used on the campus for things like science which our government is increasingly not funding.

Rita Boggs brought up several objections regarding the firework shows, decibel levels, and AEG not getting permits to do certain things. Auerbach brought up concern about the hidden costs, and emphasized that $200,000 is not a great deal of money to receive per year from this project. A million dollars sounds like a lot but it is really not when you consider the amount of money that AEG will be making as a result of the project.

General Education Committee Report-Sue Scharr-Scharr gave her report as chair of the General Ed Committee. A copy of the report is attached to the minutes.

Meeting Adjourned at 5:15 p.m.

Respectfully Submitted by,

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Mary Brooks Margaret Blue

Academic Senate Chair