The Bloomington Faculty Council gathered for their first meeting of the academic year, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was among the major topics discussed.
Provost Lauren Robel passed out a notice of President Donald Trump’s removal of the DACA program to all members of the BFC. The program allows young people who were brought to the country illegally as children to stay in the country to work or live, and Robel said it is something IU has always supported.
Robel said the University needs to keep this issue in their thoughts as as it gets passed to Congress to act on.
“We will continue to support students as we always have,” Robel said.
The BFC also introduced its new website that was launched this summer and contains information about meeting agendas and the BFC scholarship, which the members of the council contributed donations to offer.
Steve Sanders, chair of the Student Affairs Committee and Michael Morrone, chair of the Diversity and Affirmative Action Committee, gave a presentation that brought up the idea of faculty’s role in controversial conversation in a classroom setting.
Sanders said the idea comes from a retreat he attended and the goal is to ensure safety and civility on the campus while still abiding by the First Amendment.
He also said offensive clothing cannot be banned from a classroom unless it generates a disruption to the learning process, such as students not showing up to class.
Robel also discussed the statistics of the new freshman class of 8,001 entering students during the meeting, which John Nieto-Phillips, vice provost for diversity and inclusion, touched on as well.
Nieto-Phillips said the University has received a record number of Hudson and Holland Scholars this year. In addition, underrepresented groups of students increased as a whole.
He also said the new group of faculty members on the tenured track is more diverse than it has in the past.
Director of faculty mentoring initiatives Arnell Hammond spoke about the campus mentoring program in which students can be paired directly with a faculty member for support.
Any student can sign up for a mentor. The program, however, needs more male mentors to sign up, Hammond said.
The meeting also included a memorial resolution for former faculty member Vernon Dee Pace that was read at the beginning. Pace died in 2014 and was professor in the School of Education.
Robel said many of the topics from this meeting would be discussed at later meetings.
