We met with a faculty member who spoke about campus safety in the evening hours, and the fact that staff and faculty cannot take the BOSS (“Be On the Safe Side”) buses due  to how that program is funded. This led to a broader discussion about “disaggregated budgets” and the need to think of these things more holistically. In this case, we need “evening safe transit” for all of the UWM community, and will pursue the issue. Once the Provost arrived, we had a follow up on previous issues of the TKE fraternity house and Charter School recruitment. UWM has severed all ties with the fraternity, and the “money for students” Charter School recruitment will no longer be allowed. We had an animated discussion about faculty numbers, faculty exodus, and conversely, faculty recruitment and retention. We also discussed our ongoing messaging issues in regards to both internal and external communications and their impact on morale.

We then met with Interim Chancellor, Mark Mone, who updated us about numerous issues, such as the Med Scholars program, the Chancellor’s Task Force on Sexual Violence and how it is populated, the status of the Strategic Planning document in context of the timing of the Chancellor’s search, the idea of the Plenary being decoupled from the Faculty Senate which could make a joint meeting more inclusive of all UWM workers. We have the good news that marginal tuition revenue is projected at this point to be up between 1.2 and 1.6 million, which indicates a stabilizing “uptick” trend, and we also discussed the chaotic way that student scholarships are disbursed, and the need to do a better job with this. After this in-depth conversation, we met with the Secretary of the University to discuss the specificity of procedures for the FAGC (Faculty Appeals and Grievances Committee) and sought to clarify what kind of cases should come before that committee.