• APC also addressed the issues of how to roll out Maymester and how financial aid might be impacted for those students who want to enroll in Maymester and Summer I and Summer II. It has been suggested that Academic Affairs may decide to have two summer sessions instead of three due to financial aid problems: perhaps one long summer session and a shorter one at the beginning of summer. All these decisions need to be made by April.
• The committee had also been discussing the feasibility of changing the academic calendar so that the fall semester would end at Thanksgiving, but they were asked to table that issue.
• Additionally, the committee has been asked to table the scheduling idea of the four-day work week with the Friday flex day, i.e. the hour-and-fifteen-minute MW and TR schedule, with no classes Fridays.
• Moffett concurred that the brakes have been put on this proposal for now.

9. Faculty Ombudsman Report: Ombudsman Wilfred Reilly reported on the following issues:

• Reilly’s scheduled meeting with University President Brown was postponed.
• The T&P letters are indeed late, and faculty have been asking him about this.
• He has been asked whether a vote on the new Intelligence Institute is on the Board of Regents agenda. Dr. Swagata Banerjee has developed a Memorandum of Understanding with a Chinese university. President Brown does want to proceed with this initiative.

10. Other Business:

• A Senator asked about the Faculty Handbook: how binding are the Handbook policies on grievances, disciplinary actions and firing?
• Moffett replied that Legal Counsel had mentioned in a Handbook revision meeting that the Handbook is not binding. But whenever there is a published policy or handbook manual at an organization, the assumption is that it's binding.
• A member of Curriculum Committee stated that recent incidents involving a faculty member being released indicate that the policy in the Handbook is not being followed. So the committee asked the General Counsel about the issue.
• Moffett suggested inviting the General Counsel to the next Senate meeting to discuss this issue with faculty.
• A Senator asked, if the Faculty Handbook is not binding, where is the policy document that is binding? If we have no document to follow, they can do whatever we want. We might as well forget about collegial governance and academic freedom. What is the point of having Senate discussions about cases when policies and procedures in the Handbook are not followed if the Handbook is not binding?
• Gibson stated that PCC wishes to clarify faculty rankings and rules that apply to each rank, because faculty are sometimes faced with incidents where the Handbook guidelines cannot be applied. She added, why have a Handbook if the guidelines that do not apply across the board?
• Moffett replied that he will invite a representative from the General Counsel’s office to the next meeting to address this issue.
• Gibson noted that other institutions have a set of policies online that faculty can link to and that everyone can easily locate.