Academic Council introduces public comment at meetings

One of MSU’s governing bodies is giving nonmembers a voice in MSU’s Academic Governance system.

On Tuesday, Academic Council unanimously voted to allocate 10 minutes for public comment at the beginning of its remaining meetings this academic year. The time will allow up to five people to speak for up to two minutes each.

Council members hope the 10-minute session will give people who are not part of MSU’s Academic Governance system an opportunity to voice their concerns about agenda topics and raise issues they want governance to address, said Richard Weber, an at-large Executive Committee of Academic Council, or ECAC, member. He said one reason for the addition of the public comment session is public concerns about recommended departmental, program, specialization and degree cuts announced by MSU Provost Kim Wilcox on Oct. 30 at the Board of Trustees meeting.

“The whole issue with governance is you have a small group of faculty representing the big group of faculty,” Weber said. “Sometimes, that works and sometimes people feel frustrated not being able (to) get anything into the governance process. This is meant to allow people who aren’t directly involved in governance to get their 25 cents worth in about stuff they’re concerned about.”

Faculty Council added public comment to its agenda several years ago in response to community members who asked for an opportunity to weigh in on discussions about increasing faculty voice on university matters, Secretary for Academic Governance Jacqueline Wright said.

“This provided members of the community to speak, if they wished, for two minutes and we only had a 10-minute time period which would allow that,” Wright said. “We hadn’t adopted that for Academic Council and it was brought up at an executive council meeting. This was a suggestion that perhaps we wanted to consider given all the activity on campus.”

Zoology professor Richard Hill, who sits on Academic Council, told council members he would like to see flexibility in the amount of time devoted to public comment.

“It might be advisable to not have this 10-minute maximum too hard wired,” Hill said at the Academic Council meeting Tuesday.

Academic Council will be able to adjust the allotted time for public comment to accommodate more speakers if needed, Weber said.

“It’s a rule of the body and the body can change its rules anytime it wants,” Weber said. “If suddenly 50 people are standing around waiting to make a public comment and we have the ability to deal with that, then we can have somebody make a motion and then vote on it.”

Wright said officials expect the public comment session to begin at the next Academic Council meeting, which is scheduled for Jan. 26, 2010.