A New Type of Faculty Organization

Abstract

N JUNE of last year, the Board of Trustees of the University of New Hampshire gave its approval to a new constitution drawn by the University Faculty for the purpose of securing a more democratic government of educational policy and student activities. Built about a Senate of fifty-nine members, the new organization includes a system of rotating memberships, a paucity of standing committees, and has as a corporate part a University Council of twentyone members to which is delegated advisory authority, executive power in emergencies, but no jurisdiction. On July first the constitution took effect with the beginning of the fiscal year of the University. The New Hampshire Faculty (one hundred and twenty-seven members in I936) for years has been vested by the governing board (subject always to its approval) with legislative jurisdiction in all matters of student government and educational policy. The Faculty has consisted of the president of the University; the dean of the faculty (now dean emeritus); the deans of the three colleges of the University-liberal arts, agriculture, and technology; the deans of men and women; the professors, the associate professors, the assistant professors, the instructors of two or more years service; the director of the experiment station and the extension service; and the librarian, the registrar, the assistant to the president, and the treasurer. The Faculty has met regularly at the beginning of each semester and on the Friday preceding commencement day in June. Special meetings were provided for in the discarded constitution, but in recent years have been rarely held. Nine standing committees have been employed to recommend and in some cases to execute legislation, though in recent years because of the unwieldiness of the body, the committees have increasingly taken unto themselves both the business of making policy and of executing or of supervising its execution, usually with the approval of the president but seldom with the approval of the Faculty of which they were the agents. Their gradual assumption of power was never openly challenged but more because the Faculty as a whole was ignorant of the misuse of power than because of