From: "John E Bonine
Date: April 9, 2009 10:14:45 PM PDT
To: "Paul van Donkelaar"
Subject: Emeritus professors as members of the voting faculty

Dear Paul,

Please take a look at University Policy Statement 3.130, Retired Faculty: Rights, privileges, and perquisites. http://policies.uoregon.edu/ch3m.html It states:

Voting Rights

1. Faculty legislation gives voting rights in the University Assembly to all emeritus faculty and recognizes that department and minor faculties may extend the franchise at the local level."

While you were correct in your suggestion at the Senate meeting yesterday that "retired" faculty members are not, per se, voting members of the faculty, those retired faculty members who have status as "emeritus faculty" do have voting rights, by faculty legislation. They have had that status for more than 60 years, as far as I can tell.

1940s

Sixty years ago, a report of the Regular Meeting of the Faculty of January 5, 1949, stated that when the question was raised, "The chairman ruled that persons with emeritus status, if otherwise qualified under faculty legislation, are voting members of the faculty." The report further notes that this ruling was based on existing practice, in which the chairman "stated that emeritus professors are included in the list of the voting faculty compiled each year in the President's Office." http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/AssemblyRecordsVol4/Assembly-Vol4.html In other words, the inclusion of emeritus professors in the voting faculty predated even that 1949 meeting.

1960s

Minutes of the regular meeting of the Faculty on October 2, 1968, noted the following:

" VOTING FACULTY. The secretary read the definition of the voting faculty of the University, as follows: The voting faculty includes (1) all persons holding, in the University, the academic rank of professor, associate professor, or assistant professor; and (2) persons holding the academic rank of instructor or senior instructor who are employed in the full-time teaching of courses, giving instruction exclusively in schools, colleges, and tepartments that offer work for University credit. Persons with "visiting" or "emeritus" status have been ruled to be voting members, if otherwise eligible." http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/Assembly1968-1969ALL.html

1980s

As the University Assembly has recognized, faculty legislation that explicitly included emeritus faculty in the University Assembly was passed at a meeting of the University Assembly on May 2, 1984. http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/dirA834/A02May84-1.html This stemmed from a motion originally drafted by (famed) Biology Professor Sanford Tepfer, presented at a meeting the previous month. http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/dirA834/Assembly9Apr84.html It was part of a "governance package" that was debated and acted upon during the fall of 1983.

2000s

The status of emeritus faculty as voting members of the University Assembly was noted as recently as the notice of the Assembly meeting on February 28, 2003, from Gwen Steigleman, Secretary of the Faculty. http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/28Feb03assembly.html

CONCLUSION

Unless there is a motion depriving emeritus professors of their voting status on the faculty that I have not found, it seems clear that they do have that status. Is there anything I am missing in this? Or do we have the same understanding?

Thanks,

John