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• THE METROPOLITAN • SEPTEMBER 3, 2009 • NEWS • A7
Student senators set agenda
Mountain meeting
motivates SGA reps
for new resolutions
By Ben Wiebesiek
wiebesib@mscd.edu
Metro’s student senators ap-
proved seven initiatives during their
annual retreat Aug. 21 covering
a broad range of issues including
campus safety, textbook costs, park-
ing fees and state funding for higher
education.
The passage of the new senate
resolutions will set the primary ob-
jectives for President Andrew Bate-
man and the executive branch of the
Student Government Assembly for
the 2009-10 academic year.
“The retreats were incredibly
productive and a lot of good concepts
and ideas came out of them,” Stu-
dent Trustee to the Board of Trust-
ees, Kailei Higginson said.
“The senators made some ex-
traordinarily good decisions about
what the focus is going to be on how
to improve the quality of education
at Metro,” he said.
The senate retreat was one of
two SGA retreats held this summer
in Breckenridge.
Among the agenda items decided
at the two-day event, was an initia-
tive to change how the SGA itself is
funded.
The money collected from the
student affairs fees — an amount to-
taling more than $2 million in recent
years — is allocated to 16 student life
programs, including the SGA.
The student life programs receive
a share of this revenue based on the
appropriation of the Board of Trust-
ees acting on the recommendation of
the Student Affairs Board.
SGA members represent a major-
ity of the SAB, a status that Bateman
Metro’s tenured faculty wins court decision
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu
Metro professors recently won a
six-year court battle against the col-
lege’s board of trustees concerning
job security for tenured professors in
the case of a financial crisis, but the
resolution seems to have only led to
more questions.
The professors’ case, Saxe v.
Board of Trustees, the 12 member,
state-mandated board that governs
Metro, was a response to changes the
board made in 2003 to the faculty
handbook.
The rules govern employee rights
and responsibilities for professors.
The changes gave the board and the
president authority to decide tenured
professors’ rights to keep their jobs or
be transferred to a new department
in the case of a financial crisis at the
college.
“We see this decision as mean-
Speaker of the Senate Hashim Coates, center, smiles during a Student Government Assembly meeting Aug. 29.
Photo by Leah Millis • lmillis@mscd.edu
described as “a potential conflict of
interests,” between the representa-
tives and the committees that deter-
mine the student government’s fund-
ing.
The new initiative, titled SR09-
10, would begin the process of re-
moving the SGA budget from the
jurisdiction of the SAB by drafting a
proposal to create a separate fee for
student government and to reduce
the student affairs fee by the same
amount.
The proposed budget for the SGA
from July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010,
is $299,452.
The senate retreat also placed
campus safety as a top priority for
the SGA. SR09-08 tasks the ex-
ecutive branch with the creation of
several proposals aimed at reducing
crime and increasing emergency pre-
paredness on campus.  Among these
proposals will be an effort by the ex-
ingfully protecting academic free-
dom and shared governance, the
cornerstones of higher education
in the U.S. not only at Metro, but by
extension, for faculty throughout the
country,” said Ellen Slatkin, presi-
dent of the Metro Faculty Federation
The federation, a local union that
is part of the nationwide Association
of Federated Teachers with members
among the tenured faculty at Metro,
supported the professors’ case during
the six years it was in court.
Faculty Senate President Lynn
Kaersvang said she is “delighted” the
professors won.
“It’s essential for Metro moving
towards preeminence that profes-
sor’s tenure rights be fully restored,”
Kaersvang said.
She said such rules protecting
tenured professors are standard
around the country because tenure
ensures academic freedom for profes-
ecutive branch to improve nighttime
lighting and an investigation into the
installation of “panic buttons” in
Metro classrooms, designed to alert
police in the event of an emergency.
With steep cuts in higher edu-
cation threatening the function of
Metro programs, SR09-07 directs
the SGA to coordinate with the As-
sociated Students of Colorado, the
Alumni Action Task Force and the
Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute to
provide “information and perspec-
tive to the state as they continue to
make budget decisions.”
The senate commissioned the
executive branch on SR09-11 and
SRS09-12 to work towards the cre-
ation of several programs designed
to ease the financial burdens for Met-
ro students, including “a free, online
textbook marketplace” to operate as
a service similar to Craigslist where
students can buy, sell and trade text-
sors to research what they choose.
When colleges need to make cuts
during economically trying years
without tenure laws, they might cut
the most expensive faculty, the ten-
ured faculty, Kaersvang said. “It’s of
particular concern to the faculty in
the economic environment we are
currently in because such extreme
measures could be a necessity,” she
said.
The trustees’ date for appeal
elapsed as of Aug. 17, leaving the fi-
nal word in the case, Saxe v BOT, to
the Colorado Court of Appeals June 5
ruling that that no changes be made.
The previous 1994 version of the
faculty handbook establishes a set
priority for tenured professors if the
college has to reduce its staff, leaving
such decisions out of the hand of the
president and board.
Made during the college’s last
state budget cuts, the handbook
books without third-party expenses;
and a “Student Admission/Registra-
tion/Financial Aid Survival Guide”
to communicate information to the
student body.
Another resolution, SR09-06
focuses on changing Denver Munici-
pal Code to allow the construction of
taller buildings at Auraria.
The building code of the city pre-
vents the construction of any build-
ing on campus with a height 5,215
feet above sea level.  importance to getting the position
The ordinance, which grants an
exception to Invesco Field at Mile
High, was designed to maintain a
viewing plane from the location of
the old Denver City Hall west toward
the Rocky Mountains. The old city
hall building was located at 14th
Avenue and Larimer Street but was
demolished in the 1940’s and is now
the site of a parking lot alongside
Speer Boulevard.
changes were enacted before the ma-
jority of the current trustees were ap-
pointed, including President Stephen
Jordan, who started at the college
two years later.
Since 2003, Jordan and the
board have further amended many
of the rights of tenure in question in
the handbook.
Jordan says in the five years since
taking office he and the board have
worked with the faculty on the hand-
book to make things right again. “I
think the issues that were ultimately
decided in the case were issues we al-
ready dealt with in the policy chang-
es,” he said.
“If faculty members and their at-
torneys have differences in opinion
about the intent of the court and its
actions and the current policy, they
are certainly welcome to provide that
to us in writing and we will give it full
consideration,” Jordan said.
Department of
higher education
director resigns
By Caitlin Gibbons
cgibbon4@mscd.edu
David Skaggs, executive director
of the Department of Higher Educa-
tion and the Colorado Commission
on Higher Education, announced his
resignation Aug. 28.
Skaggs served as executive direc-
tor for two and a half years and his
resignation comes during a time of
funding turmoil for higher educa-
tion. With the conclusion of the past
legislative session Metro alone saw a
$10 million reduction in state fund-
ing for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.
Higher education as a whole saw a
$150 million reduction in funding.
The state is now looking at reducing
funding by an additional $80.9 mil-
lion for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
In his official letter of resignae-
tion addressed to Gov. Bill Ritter,
Skaggs states, “I very much regret
that we have encountered a matter
about which, with mutual respect
and on a principled basis, we could
not agree.”
Neither John Karakoulakis, di-
rector of legislative affairs or Evan
Dreyer, Gov. Ritter’s spokesman elab-
orated on the disagreement.
“It is a crucial time for higher
ed. in Colorado given the economy,
the funding constraints and the need
to keep costs affordable. There is a
tremendous sense of urgency and
filled,” Dreyer said
Metro President Stephen Jordan
said he has not heard of any poten-
tial replacements for Skaggs.
“I think Mr. Skaggs was very
interested around the question of
how you get historically underrepre-
sented populations into college and
then retain them and persist them
to graduation and that obviously is
a population that we spend a lot of
time working with so in that sense
we really had a common agenda,”
Jordan said.
“He is an extraordinary pub-
lic servant and someone of strong
principles and integrity. He is a good
friend, and on behalf of the people of
Colorado, I thank him for his service
and his dedication,” Ritter said in a
press release.
The Colorado Department of
Higher Education was founded to
“improve the quality of, ensure the
affordability of, and promote access
to, post secondary education to the
people of Colorado.” CCHE, a divi-
sion of the Department of Higher
Education, was created by the legis-
lature in 1965 to help create long-
term solutions and policies for high-
er education.
The next CCHE meeting was
scheduled for Sept. 10 at Front
Range Community College.
All planned meetings for CCHE
have been pushed back until Octo-
ber.