Alina Popov / Rounduo
The waiting list issue was brought back to the Academic Senate during its Sept. 28 meeting after the Pierce College administration decided to eliminate waiting lists beginning next semester.
After a period of college-wide consultations, Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh, vice president of academic affairs, made his decision known during a senate meeting Sept. 14.
The senate reacted to his decision by reopening discussions with the department chairs at the Academic Policy Committee (APC).
“A lot of times there are reasons why departments want to operate certain ways, because it’s beneficial to their students,” said Bob Martinez, vice president for academic policy.
Department chairs drew a motion approved unanimously by the APC Sept. 22.
Martinez presented the motion to the Academic Senate. It stated “each department at Los Angeles Pierce College should have the right to determine whether or not it will use wait lists during student registration.”
The motion was based on the departments’ realization that their opinions were divided. Martinez said they recognized they had a choice.
“It’s best to have it the department’s choice as to how to set wait lists,” Martinez said. “That’s the way it has been in the past and we want to preserve it.”
Martinez said each departmental chair will be able to individually pick which sections would have wait lists.
The waiting list discussion brought to the surface the issue of shared governance between administration and faculty.
English professor Richard Follett objected to the role of shared governance in this process at the Sept. 14 Academic Senate meeting, which led support from other senate members.
“My concern is the process how we make decisions,” Follett said.
According to Martinez, it is common for administration to disagree with faculty.
“Shared governance does state that all issues should be discussed and come to a conclusion, and you can reopen an idea any time you feel is necessary,” he said. “This is part of the whole shared governance procedure. You make the ideas heard out in the open so nothing is being done behind closed doors.”
Abu-Ghazaleh is concerned about the consultative process working.
He said he talked to faculty members for a long time and the vast majority of people agreed with eliminating wait lists.
“Departmental Council had decided that we were going without the wait lists,” said Abu-Ghazaleh, who based his decision to remove wait lists greatly on this consideration.
“Whether administration thought it was closed, it wasn’t,” Martinez said.
New communication within the APC indicated a reversal of direction on the issue, according to Abu-Ghazaleh.
“The (APC) kept me in the dark about their shift, their change in the direction,” Abu-Ghazaleh said. “I was continuing based on our previous consensus that we were moving in this direction.”
Abu-Ghazaleh said the situation has created “a breakdown in the consultation process.”
“Now there is this firestorm about wait lists,” he said. “The Academic Policy (Committee) are having these conversations and changing their minds again and coming up with this motion. They kept me out of the loop.”
He said he would have expected chairs to come back to the Departmental Council and reopen the discussion in the first place.
“Why petition to overturn a decision that was made initially with the consensus of the group that now is petitioning to reverse it?” Abu-Ghazaleh asked.
Martinez sees a “gray area” between administration and faculty responsibility.
According to him, even if the motion is passed by the senate it still will be up to the enrollment management to make a decision.
“It’s our job in the senate to champion faculty wishes and if they have a good position, we discuss it,” Martinez said. “If it gets passed it would be about administration wanting to go with it.”
Joy McCaslin, Pierce interim president, initially came up with the idea of having focus groups consisting of students to consult with on the issue, but wasn’t ready to comment.
“I decided that I should first talk to the senate about my thoughts on the waiting list issue,” McCaslin said.
The Academic Senate voted to postpone the discussion until its next meeting in two weeks.
All sides expressed hope for the decision to be finalized by the time registration begins for the spring semester.
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