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Letters
The role of the Faculty Newsletter
To the Editorial Board of the MIT Faculty Newsletter:
Overall the September/October issue of the Faculty Newsletter , but especially the Editorial, speaks with more candor and authority than I have previously noted. I am encouraged that the Newsletter can become more than another voice of the administration.
The Faculty Newsletter was one consequence of the Applied Biological Sciences Department debacle, with the faculty expressing the need to be better, and more timely informed on administration decisions, and have an instrument in which to express their position.
The more lasting result was the Widnall Committee and changes in Policies and Procedures . But MIT institutional memory is known to be very short. In the current merger of the Mechanical Engineering and Ocean Engineering Departments, mandated by the Dean of Engineering, although the Widnall recommendations are being carefully followed, very few current faculty know why!
My role as the "loyal opposition" in the Faculty Meeting debates on the ABS affair reminded me of my role as member and then chair of the Committee on Community Service in the late '60s, when the MIT community felt a need to know what was going on. Tech Talk resulted, but was soon vetted by the administration. I have been concerned the Faculty Newsletter was on the same trajectory.
Concerns remain. I note a prominent member of the administration, not a member of the faculty, on the FNL Editorial Board. And the FNL should routinely receive its funding as part of the annual budget for operations of the "Office of the Chair of the Faculty," as described in Faculty Chair Bras' article in the current FNL [September/October 2004].
Professor Bras' discussion of the "Preliminary Position of the FPC" has the Chair, the Associate Chair, and the Secretary "Setting the agenda of the faculty meetings." Is this current practice or a proposed change?
I again harken back to the ABS matter. Over the Christmas-New Years holiday the president, the provost and the dean of science made the decision to eliminate ABS, consulting no one on the faculty. With no faculty meeting during January Independent Activities Period, the president, as chair of the faculty meeting, refused to accept discussion of the ABS decision under New Business for February, So it was March before the issue began to be aired at faculty meeting.
Professor Bras proposes (as an experiment) that "Some faculty meetings be led by the Chair of the Faculty." Sounds minimally appropriate.
Robert W. Mann
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