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Volume 23
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January 27, 2011
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The Independent Student Voice of Boise State Since 1933
Sports
Men’s basketball continues its road trip after defeating Idaho.
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Culture Bound over to culture for a peek at some up-and-coming clubs at Boise State.
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Opinion
Faculty Senate members discuss the new constitution Tuesday afternoon. The most powerful amendments include a document adopted from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, a statement of principles for academic freedom.
Constitution updates bolster academic freedom Kimberley O’Bryan Journalist
Opinion looks at the problem of jail overcrowding.
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The Faculty Senate at Boise State is proposing big changes. They’re no longer happy with the former Constitution that was last amended in April of 1998. “It has stood the test of time” according to Senate Faculty president and associate professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Owen McDougal. “At this point, the constitution no longer represents the current campus climate.” The section on Academic Freedom for the new constitution is
largely based, not on a current source, but a document first adopted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities 70 years ago: the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. According to McDougal this is the “gold standard” of faculty rights document, used by more than 200 universities nationwide. Among other things, the new constitution defines the freedoms and rights of teachers to openly discuss their subjects with students, research and publish papers and to “speak or write freely without institutional discipline or restraint on matters pertaining to faculty gover-
nance and development of educational programs and policies.” According to McDougal, it also protects faculty from dismissal without grounds and unfounded drops in salary, something many faculty members feared with the current economy and budget cuts. Despite the good intentions in the new Constitution “to facilitate communication, understanding and cooperation among the officers of Boise State University … ” it has given rise to some strife of its own. Tuesday, the Faculty Senate scheduled a meeting to discuss moving the new Constitution before the faculty for a vote. Although the ma-
jority of senators seemed ready to do this, one sentence stood out for others that had caused much deliberation in their Nov. 11, 2010 meeting. The culprit statement: “Faculty are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.” At the January meeting, the Senate seemed, at first, unable to come to a consensus. They deliberated between altering the Academic Freedom Statement of the Constitution, giving options or leaving it out altogether.
Barbara Allerton, professor of nursing and senator for academic standards said, “I would not be comfortable going forward without some kind of Academic Freedom statement.” Finally, a vote was called to put the constitution as-is to a faculty vote. Four senators voted against that proposal and two abstained from the vote. Associate professor of history, Lynn Lubamersky, one of the abstainers, said after the meeting, “We should be talking about controversy here. If not at a university, then where?” while shaking her head. “I predict it won’t pass.”
MLK Jr. assasination witness shares words on inequality, technology Andrew Ford News Editor
glenn landberg/THE ARBITER
Lola Michaels poses for a photo with Rev. Billy Kyles during his visit to campus for a speech Monday night.
Q&A with Reverend Billy Kyles page page page page
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Assistant News Editor daniellecraig @stumedia.boisestate.edu
STUDENT >>>> MEDIA WANTS
YOU! The Arbiter
Some little backwater towns might think integration isn’t the right thing to do, but we step right over them and go for the jugular.” On the technology: “That Internet is so powerful. You can hook up Birmingham to Berlin, just like that, with the click of a mouse. And then, we’re gonna have to learn to be world citizens. It’s not America alone anymore. We are world citizens.” Young people today get a lot of flak for not being active enough. Have students changed, have the times changed? “Well, the times have changed. We had, in my generation, we had signs. These signs are in the museum. We didn’t have ‘em made up, these are signs that people actually used. ‘Negro,’ ‘Colored,’ ‘White.’ The sign was there. The fact that you
couldn’t go in the movie, was there. ... Dr. King was down with his children and he couldn’t take them to the park. What do you say to a 4- or 6-year-old child, that you can’t go in the park because white children are in there? You couldn’t say it like that, you’ve got to do something else that preserves the dignity of the child at the same time. (We) couldn’t stop at a restaurant like McDonald’s or Wendys. Couldn’t stop there. It was like our money wasn’t green.” Notable: “I took Mr. Mandela to the museum in Memphis where the motel is that he was at when he was killed and going to that room and just, he asked me, ‘What were you guys talking about? What did you do the last hour?’ and I answered him and he wept. He just wept like a child. This is Mr. Mandela, weeping.”
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Reporters note: Reverend Samuel “Billy” Kyles is the last remaining aide who was with Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was shot. Since then, he’s given tours of the motel (now a museum) to three former Presidents, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. He spoke in the SUB Monday. Before his speech, he interviewed with The Arbiter . There’s been a lot of progress in the last 40 years toward achieving racial equality. Do you think we’re “there” yet? “We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close. What I think is needed is for this generation to discover what is it that we need to do so that it can be complete. What are we doing
to keep the dream alive? Because, with the stroke of a pen, the wrong person at the wrong place can cause more havoc than you can believe. So we continue to work.” What is the modern day dream? “The dream that people all over the world want to be a part of: Reasonable health and a good education, a place to stay. The things that people who don’t even speak our language, people all over the world (need). It was Martin Luther King’s dream that he articulated. That’s the dream.” Do you see racism or inequalities today? “Racism is still very much alive, very much alive. And we work on straightening it out, but at least we have the law on our side. In the early days, the law was Klan, Ku Klux Klan, but that’s not the case now.
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