SHORELINECOMMUNITY COLLEGE
CAMPUS CLIMATE TASK FORCE
Friday, May 13, 2005
12:30 – 2:20 pm
Members Present: Cindy Mix, Donna Myers, Jim James, Paul Duernberger, John Backes, Chris Melton, Sean Keller, Elliot Newlin, Greg Williford, Bonnie Frunz, Susan Hoyne, Norm Rogers
1.Recorder: for this meeting will be Susana Villamarin
2.Review of minutes: A recommendation was made not to incorporate quotes in the summary and also not to approve the minutes until members not present today have a chance to review the changes to the minutes. John Bakes will ask Dorothy to send a message to the CTF to send changes to the minutes from May 6th to her and then we will approve them during the May 20th meeting.
3. Agenda review/changes: Sean Keller representing the Student Body requested item 8 to be added to the agenda for Student body update.
4. Update from Data Review Sub-Group – Jim James
The Sub-Group met once and was given categories to classified responses. 4 out of the 5 have completed the categorization and done a terrific job. Jim did an initial passat the categorization of issues. The group has consensus in 2 thirds of the comments. There are items that they do not agree on and they believe that new categories need to be created. The task is very big and they cannot set an exact date that they will be done but pretty sure it can be done by May 27th … hopefully before.
5. Begin Planning May 27th All-Campus Meeting
It was announced that there was a change in presenters for the upcoming BOT presentations: Susan Hoyne traded with Chris Melton their attendance to the BOT meetings for May and June. There were some concerns about the all-campus meeting and the way it will be presented to the campus community.
It was suggested to we should get the data done as much as we can and show campus what we did and what the results are so far and clarify that we do not have a plan of action yet but present the model that John Bakes presented to the CTF at a previousmeeting. It was agreed that it is extremely important to let people know what we are doing with the data so people know that something is being done with their results. It was suggested that we get feedback from the attendees to the May 27 meeting.
We will make every effort to give campus enough notice and also to set the right expectations about the all-campus meeting.
Donna informed us that there will be an article in NetNews to let the campus community know what the CTF is doing.
Edith announced that the response from the board to the all campus board meeting will be published next week.
It was asked if we feel comfortable to share the results of the data to the campus community without reviewing it as a group. The group agreed that sharing the data with the community is OK.
The concern again is how the meeting is being presented and the expectation people would have about it.
Paul suggested talking about:
- Quality of Shoreline People
- Workload issues
- Decision making
- Campus structure
It was suggested to add more categories in order to represent all the constituencies.
It wassaid that we have to be honest with our work and let the campus know what we have done. Show the progress, show the data, and show the framework on how recommendations will be presented.
The CTF wants to make sure that the campus knows that this meeting will be a CTF updates and initial results of the survey. We need to make sure that it is published well in advance and explain very well what the meeting is all about, not to set false expectations.
There was a concern as to what will happen with the final plan we come out with and John Bakesclarified that the plan we come out with is a suggestion of actions, not necessarily what administration will put into place.
The subcommittee meets on Wednesday 5/18. After they meet we will have a better idea as a group on what needs to be presented.
Students want to see the faculty more involved with the CTF so it was suggested presenting the raw data we received. If we do that maybe they will feel that it is not a joke and something is being done. The student body has a feeling that they failed the faculty and understand their frustration so he would like data to be shared. Greg
suggested that we need to build confidence with the campus, therefore present what we have.
A member of the CTFwas concerned about the way people expressed some issues and said that as long as we continue these conversations and always focus on the faculty being the problem we will not be able to come to any kind of resolution. We should forget about ranking. She feels uncomfortable about what keeps coming up here.
Member of the CTF clarified that he was speaking out of frustration and apologized about it, but he does come to the table believing that we see ourselves as a community; but in reality it is hard to leave the ranking out. We have a challenge to convince everyone not just faculty, but the 27th meeting will give us an opportunity to build a little confidence.
A member of CTF suggested keeping in mind that there are some people that do share the faculty issues but they are afraid to talk out of fear of retaliation. Sometimes people refer to the faculty issues when in reality is the way they feel but are afraid of saying it.
Summary of conversation – John Bakes
For the meeting on the 27ththere are 3 elements to present
- Program elements that have been discuss (broad categories, numbers, etc.)
- Framework for action plan based on results
- Feedback from audience
In our next meeting we will decide if 90 minutes is needed for the May 27thall-campus meeting or maybe less time.
A suggestion was made for Holly to do a presentation at the meeting to let them know that she is listening and that she supports our work. At this point some members of the CTF did not agree with Holly being part of the CTF therefore they we opposed to her presenting at the meeting.
A member wanted to bring up a rumor that is going around for the CTF to validate. The rumor is that someone who attended the all-campus meeting presented by the board wrote a comment to the board on one of the anonymous white cards, and the next day that person was confronted by one of the members of the President Leadership Staff about it. A member of the CTF validated the rumor saying that they heard it first hand from the person it happened to. This issue brought up a lot of concern about the job the CTF is doing and the safety of their members. People were very upset that handwriting was analyzed, privacy violated and retaliation was taken. Is that the way we operate? How can we trust that we are safe?
Items 6 and 7 from the agenda were skipped per John Bakes suggestion to allow Student Body to present their update.
8. Student body update: Greg and Elliott were present to supportSean’s update. Sean opened the update by saying that students are dedicated to keeping an open heart when it comes to the campus climate. Students want to trust that we all have integrity in what we are saying our values are regarding campus climate. They keep hearing that the administration is dedicated to being inclusive and to having transparency in the decision making process but they have had experiences over the last couple years that have not instilled trust. They are usually told of decisions made after the fact, without consultation and/or approval from them. Such as:
- Expenditures from their budgets after they were incurred
- Creating a new position for the Athletics’ Department having the student’s fund 1/3 of it
- Changes to the design of the PUB to include programs that have very little to do with student programs, but take up valuable real estate. They have tried to have dialogue with administration to present their point of view but they were threatened by Beverly Brandt with the removal of support for the C.O.P.(certificate of participation). She said she would not present it to the legislature in Olympia.
- Sitting on committees for an entire year and voting on recommendations for policies that have already been designed.In other words, the feeling was that the committee work was just to give the perception that there was student input, or community input for that matter, when the decision was already made two years prior (i.e.: smoking policy on campus).
- They had protocol written for them that attempted to turn their deliberative process into a rubber stamp process for the allocation of our technology funds.
There are also more items to the list of issues such as being told that employees here have been threatened by the with-holding of bonuses and promotions, or even with termination unless they convinced the students to vote a certain way around issues.
When they came to participate in the Climate Task Force they were willing to leave those issues aside in order to help solve the climate problems but they have recently learned of other issue that concerns them and makes them doubt the commitment of administration to the values.
The issue presented by the student body and the rumor discussed during this meeting make some members of the Climate Task Force uneasy, and wonder if participating in the task force with honesty will put their jobs in jeopardy.
A student said that sometimes he feels uncomfortable when Holly attends the meetings because we do not have the freedom to speak. He appreciated Holly’s support but when he hears what happens he feels he is between a rock and a hard place.
We ran out of time but it was agreed at the end of the meeting that this subject should be part of our discussions to help the board and administration with the campus climate.