Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1976 [PAGE 598]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1976]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

587

At this point, Professor Lorbe was asked to make a presentation to the Board. She reiterated the position taken by tenured faculty members of the department in a communication sent to the Trustees: that the action to promote constituted an infraction of the University Statutes which gives predominance to the role of the department in appointments; and emphasized the principle involved, warning: "Now that individuals increasingly are taking recourse to litigation, while the faculty can bring no such outside pressures to bear, the administrators are likely to become ever more inclined to originate recommendations for promotion which in past years have come from the faculty." In a written presentation she reiterated some of these points, reviewing as well the departmental policies and procedures with regard to achieving balance in staffing and emphasizing the department's posture of caution in granting indefinite tenure appointments. She also expressed satisfaction in the record of the department with regard to affirmative action. (Copies of the communications from the tenured members of the department, from administrative officers, and communications between the Secretary of the Board and the department were provided members of the Board of Trustees in advance of and during the meeting. Copies of these documents, identifying the faculty member involved, are on file with the Secretary of the Board.) In continued discussion of this matter and the application of the Statutes to it, President Corbally commented upon a section of the Statutes emphasized by the members of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures (Article IV, Section la, stating: " . . . A l l appointments which carry academic rank, title, or tenure indicative in any way of departmental association shall be made only after concurrence of the department(s) concerned."). H e stated his construction of this language: that it is intended to prevent the appointment by one department of a staff member carrying rank, title, or tenure binding on another department, and that neither he nor the Chancellor could accept the interpretation that the departmental view of an appointment (or promotion) is to be the definitive one. Mr. Neal stated that, if the objective of the tenured members of the Department is to clarify the departmental role, the remedy would be the presentation of an amendment to the Statutes as provided in the Statutes. President Corbally stated that the recommendation for promotion in this case would come before the Board in due course and that no action was being requested or sought; rather, that the Board was simply being provided information. T h e Board received the information as presented and took no action. Litigation Initiated by Willie Nell Love

(31) On September 12, 1973, the Board authorized defense of a complaint of sex discrimination filed with the Illinois Fair Employment Practice by Willie Nell Love, a member of the faculty of the Department of English of the Chicago Circle