In the sparsely attended all-faculty meeting Tuesday, professors revealed what they described as an increasing rift between University faculty and administration.

The annual meeting sponsored by the Faculty Senate was designed to allow faculty members to begin a discussion about their issues with the senate and the University.

Despite having about 30 faculty attend, some participants speculated that their colleagues have lost hope of ever beginning a meaningful dialogue between themselves and the administration.

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“People had a hard time believing that things would really change,” said Randy Hughes, associate professor in mathematics and former faculty senator.

Professor John Gregory and others suggested the ongoing issues with the Judicial Review Board could be a source of problems.

“I don’t see any kind of shared governance at this University,” Gregory said.

Senator Mike Sullivan told the audience that the tensions found at SIUC is not the norm. He also said the senate is researching other universities’ systems of shared governance and see if SIUC improve its own.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Walter Wendler, who was unable to attend because he was in a meeting in Springfield, said he believes the rift between faculty and administrators has gotten much smaller since he first arrived in 2002.

Senate officers attempted to answer questions from faculty members, including difficult ones about the University’s budget. Some attendees asked if the senate could help make the budget process be more transparent.

Benford said the senate’s budget committee has tried and mostly failed to decipher the University’s budget when it attempted to find trends of how money is spent.

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Some people floated the idea of having people pay dues to allow the senate to have a larger budget. Some of the services the body could purchase would be for an accountant.

One of the problems the senate faces is frequent turnover, said Peggy Stockdale, who spoke for the budget committee, and this makes it difficult when new members are forced to quickly learn a complicated process.

Former senator Ed Hippo suggested the senate consider creating a standing committee of experts that could help with the transition.

The issue of program elimination also rose during the question/answer session. Some attendees said the elimination process discourages them and called it a strategic move to drain programs for years and then claim the program’s state cannot be fixed.

“One resolution to this could be to bring programs before the senate before they are finalized, rather than bringing a mostly completed proposal for a rubber stamp,” Hughes said.

Reporter Andrea Zimmermann can be reached at [email protected]