Trustees consider changes in voting

In an effort to cut costs and increase participation in IU board of trustees elections, members of the board discussed developing a Web-based voting system Thursday, during the first day of their two-day meeting.\nRecommendations to take the voting system online came from a Kelley School of Business graduate student consulting team that told the trustees that by developing an online voting system, the trustees could initially save about $50,000 per year.\nCurrently, the trustees spend about $150,000 annually on elections, according to the students' presentation. Under this system, all alumni trustee voting is done by mailed-in ballots. With this procedure, about 7 percent of alumni participate in voting. \nThe five team members, who work as consultants as part of their graduate-level coursework, said after examining the success of other universities in online voting -- namely, Penn State University -- they thought that with an online voting system, the number of voters would immediately increase. The five consultants were Frank Adams, Shu Ming Feng, Dan Gofman, Jamie Kakuk and Saree Olkes.\nIf the trustees chose to pursue online voting, they would have two options -- keep the service an in-house project or outsource the system to a private corporation. Members of the group said outsourcing the project was not a feasible option because it would immediately cause costs to spike, according to their research. \n"These students spent an entire semester analyzing the election; looking at the state law, demographics, the costs and the technology of going online," said Robin Gress, secretary to the trustees. "I'll have you know that, that team's entire grade rested on us and we were extremely pleased to give them an A-plus."\nAlthough the trustees said they were pleased with the work the students had done, questions of cybersecurity, measures to combat voter fraud and how to ensure alumni without access to the Internet would be equally represented arose.\nThe group said in order not to alienate alumni without Internet access, voters would have an option to request a tradition mail-in ballot. No action was taken on the issue, but all of the trustees acknowledged the merits of developing an online voting system, which could launch as early as 2008. \nTed Miller, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council, followed the discussion of online voting with a presentation on potential changes to the University's general education coursework curriculum. \n"As you will recall, in my inaugural speech, I challenged the faculty to develop a general education curriculum for Indiana University," said IU President Adam Herbert. \nTalks about such coursework at the University have been ongoing for several years and Thursday the Bloomington Faculty Council submitted a 60-page report to Herbert, outlining the direction they foresee general education coursework headed. \n"One of the things that became clear as we went through conversations was that a one-size-fits-all approach was inconsistent with the mission differentiation process with which we were going," Herbert said. He also said there would have to be curricular differences among the different IU campuses. \nMiller fielded questions from the trustees and said there was still significant work to be done before a final curriculum was presented. \nThere would need to be a dialogue between those developing the curriculum and individual department heads in order to select the appropriate type of general education coursework, Miller said.\nThe trustee meetings continue at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the Frangipani Room at the Indiana Memorial Union and will be open to the public.