[Uosenate] Follow-up: Senate meetings will be remote

Wed Sep 22 17:38:09 PDT 2021

Hi everyone,

As promised, I brought this issue to the Senate Executive Committee, where I received the unanimous advice that we should plan to hold the four fall term Senate meetings remotely. There were no advocates for either in-person or hybrid. Expect to hear soon from Betina with Zoom links to the Senate Orientation Meeting next week and also as we approach the four Senate meetings scheduled for later in the term.

I hope to reconsider the question of modality over the winter break, when the circumstances of COVID in our community may be different and the asymmetries may be diminished between households with and without the option to be fully vaccinated.

Best,
Spike

Spike Gildea
Professor of Linguistics
President of the University Senate, 2021-2022

From: Spike Gildea <spike at uoregon.edu>
Date: Monday, September 20, 2021 at 12:23 PM
To: Autumn Shafer <ashafer at uoregon.edu>, Betina Lynn <betina at uoregon.edu>, uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu <uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu>
Cc: Andre Le Duc <leduc at uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: [Uosenate] Welcome back - Mtg Schedule and a few details
Dear Senator Shafer,

This is a very reasonable query and I appreciate you bringing it up (and thanks also to those senators who wrote to me privately on this topic after receiving Senator Schafer’s email). I also appreciate that you have given me a chance to practice my formal register in responding, as formality is not a part of my usual skill set!

I have discussed this question with Vice-President Tichenor and with our Chief Resilience Officer, Andre le Duc. On the one hand, we would very much like to have the benefits of face-to-face interactions in the Senate this year, and all indications are that the aggregate risk on a “fully vaccinated” campus is quite low. To this point, I have been persuaded that the risks were low enough that we should resume the benefits of being in person again and I have actually been pretty excited about the prospect of meeting you-all face to face (well, eyes to eyes, anyway, foggy glasses and all).

On the other hand, as you point out, holding Senate meetings remotely last year seemed to be reasonably effective and efficient — the fact is, I was never a Senator before last year, so I don’t actually have experience to help me weigh the two modalities and assess what is lost and what is gained by adopting either. On the side, our Senators from Portland might also appreciate an option to attend remotely, both to save time and to reduce their carbon footprints. Also, even though the aggregate risk might be low, the potential consequences of a breakthrough infection are not evenly distributed in our group: some of us risk taking home an infection to children too young to be vaccinated and others might share my situation, interacting regularly with elderly parents and/or immune-compromised family members who, even though they are vaccinated, face greater risk of serious illness in the event of a breakthrough infection. In sum, you have convinced me that it is worth exploring this question further.

In the short term, I am moving the Senate Orientation next week (September 29, 3-5pm) to Zoom, so that (1) everyone can participate equally in our first meeting while we sort things out and (ii) our Senators from Portland don’t have to drive down to Eugene two weeks in a row even if we do end up sticking with in-person meetings. I have invited Andre le Duc to come to the Orientation and brief us on what we know of the risks, then to take our questions (including some version of this question, if it is not addressed already in his presentation).

Regarding Senate meetings yet to come, I will take advantage of the first meeting of the Senate Executive Committee day after tomorrow, where I will ask them to fulfill their charge, to “advise the Senate President, assist in setting the agenda for each Senate meeting and facilitate the work of the Senate.” Some members of the Senate Exec have experience with both modalities, so they will be in a stronger position to help me explore the costs and benefits of in-person vs. remote. My experience teaching a Hyflex class last year did not make me a fan of in-person meetings with supplemental remote participants, so I am reluctant to consider the third option of a hybrid model, but if someone has had a more positive experience with the hybrid modality, please feel free to contact me to talk through how we might make that option work for Senate meetings.

Finally, I would like to encourage all Senate committees to have an internal discussion about the modality of your meetings this fall. To the extent that you can effectively conduct business remotely and to the extent that any member of a committee requests the convenience (and relative sense of security) that comes with remote meetings, I hope that you will be generous in addressing those requests, especially while case counts in Lane County remain high.

As a last note, regardless of the initial decision (for any committee or for the full Senate), we can always revisit the question of modality as circumstances change and/or as we see more clearly the benefits of an alternative to whatever choices we make initially.

Best,
Spike

Spike Gildea
Professor of Linguistics
President, University Senate (2021-2022)

From: <uosenate-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of Autumn Shafer <ashafer at uoregon.edu>
Date: Friday, September 17, 2021 at 1:21 PM
To: Betina Lynn <betina at uoregon.edu>, "uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu" <uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: [Uosenate] Welcome back - Mtg Schedule and a few details

Dear Senators Gildea and Tichenor,

Will there be any opportunity to join remotely? As a mom of two children too young to be vaccinated, I am willing to accept the risk of going back to in-person classes, but I would like to balance that by mitigating other exposures. We know we can hold effective and efficient Senate meetings remotely, since we did this all last year, is there a reason to mandate that these meetings be fully in-person with no remote option? At least I'm hoping you will consider options until children can be vaccinated and/or until community spread is substantially lower. Thanks for your consideration.

Cheers,

Autumn Shafer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Journalism and Communication
University of Oregon

***Pandemic schedules: Your working hours may be different from my working hours. Please don't feel obligated to read/respond to this email outside of your working hours.
________________________________
From: uosenate-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu <uosenate-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of Betina Lynn <betina at uoregon.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 12:54 PM
To: uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu <uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: [Uosenate] Welcome back - Mtg Schedule and a few details

Dear Senators,

Welcome to the 2021-2020 academic year!

At this time we are planning to resume in-person meetings and have secured our regular location in the EMU Crater Lake rooms for all but one of our scheduled meetings.

The meeting schedule and location can be found here:

https://senate.uoregon.edu/senate-meetings/2021-2022

Agendas and related materials are posted about a week in advance of each meeting, which are held Wednesday afternoons from 3:00 - 5:00 P.M. We are holding an Orientation meeting on September 29, 2021 and are presently hammering out final details.

We ask that you take the time to skim through the UO Constitution and Senate Bylaws to familiarize yourself with our operating procedures. Those documents can be found HERE<https://senate.uoregon.edu/about>. If you think you will be absent for a meeting, please email and let me know as far in advance as possible. There is a provision in the bylaws that encourages you to find a substitute from your constituent group to fill in on your behalf.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Betina

Betina Lynn
Executive Coordinator, University Senate

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