Maroon

              loyola maroon Vol. XLVII Loyola University, New Orleans, La., 70118, Friday, February 19,1971 No. 17 Petitions filed in Blouin case The Tom Blouin case appears to be moving toward some type of final resolution since petitions were filed this week asking the University Rank and Tenure Committee to hold open hearings on the case. Blouin, a popular English instructor, was fired by the university last year, ostensibly because he lacked a Ph.D. However, a faculty committee that investigated the case this past summer raised questions about whether Blouin may have been fired in violation of academic freedom and tenure requirements. The University Rank and Tenure Committee (URTC), which was just elected two weeks ago, will now hear the case. Hearings may begin in mid-March, according to the Rev. Forrest Ingram, S.J.v academic counsel for Blouin. URTC procedures allow 20 days between the filing of petitions and the beginning of hearings, he said. The delay allows URTC members to study the petition and the university administration time to prepare its case. There are many complications that have entered into the Blouin case during its development in the past two years. Blouin was first given notice that he would be terminated for the academic year 1969-70 in October, 1968. The Board of Directors had passed along its wish that he be fired several months earlier, during the spring semester. 1968. However, following considerable protest from the faculty of the Department of English, the then-academic vice president, the Rev. Thomas H. Clancy, S.J., gave Blouin a contract for 1969-70 but told him it would be his last unless he obtained his Ph.D. However, according to the English department statements were made during the course of 1969 which indicated Blouin would be allowed to remain at Loyola, that his lack of a Ph.D. would be overlooked in view of his teachine ability. Then in February, 1970, when Blouin was not offered a contract for 1970-71, the chairman of the English department, Dr. John Corrington, asked that the case be heard by the rank and tenure committee of the University Senate, the faculty's representative body. The rank and tenure committee had actually been instructed to hear the Blouin case a year earlier, when the first dispute about Blouin arose between the administration and the English department. However, when administrative approval of its procedures for hearing the case was delayed and Blouin was offered the contract for 1969-70, committee action on the issue laid dormant. Before the committee could begin again to hear the case last semester, the then-president of the university, the Very Rev. Homer R. Jolley, S.J., removed jurisdiction, saying he felt it would be needless for the committee to hold hearings when it seemed fairly probable that the Directors would still order Blouin's termination. Shortly after the case was removed from the committee, the Directors once again considered the Blouin case and once again ordered that he be terminated. A tew weeks later, the American Association of University Professors announced it was sending a consultant to Loyola to advise both sides on AAUP procedures. The AAUP is a powerful national organization which outlines procedures for governing universities, respecting academic freedom, hiring and firing professors and so on. Its chief weapon against universities which violate its procedures is censure, which discourages professors looking for jobs from coming to the institution. The AAUP urged that a faculty committee be allowed to hear the Blouin case; the senate rank and tenure committee was finally allowed to hear it and then ruled unanimously that: 1.) Blouin is a tenured member of the Loyola faculty; 2.) There is insufficient cause for Blouin's termination; 3.) Blouin has the ability to continue as a faculty member at Loyola. The URTC is being asked to rule on three questions which Father Ingram said are interconnected: 1) Academic Freedom—the faculty committee that investigated the case during the summer said Blouin had established a prima facie case that his academic freedom had been violated. The committee raised the question of whether Blouin had been terminated because he lacked a Ph.D. or ttecause he had allegedly expressed anti-Catholic sentiments in class. 2) Tenure-the same faculty committee asserted that Blouin had obtained tenure at Loyola. Tenured members of the faculty can only be fired following a hearing that establishes a just cause for termination. The administration maintains that Blouin does not have tenure. 3) The overruling of departmental and faculty recommendations that Blouin be retained- the faculty of the English department strongly recommended that Blouin be retained by the university but was overruled by the Board of Directors. According to the procedures of the American Association of University Professors, such actions by a univeristy Board of Directors should only occur in rare instances where there are compelling reasons. Otherwise, faculty recommendations are to be followed. Dr. Lowry seeks broader senate By LEATRICE STEVENSON Maroon News Editor Dr. Jon W. Lowry, assistant professor of philosophy, is preparing to introduce a motion in the University Senate designed to incorporate students into the senate a'nd ultimately decide whether the senate will represent the entire university or just the faculty. The motion Dr. Lowry will introduce follows senate action last semester passing a motion to create a committee to revise the senate's constitution. The motion providing for student membership in the senate was added as a proviso to the constitutional committee motion. However, according to Lowry, the committee has never met and consequently no action has been taken on student membership in the senate. This semester Dr. Lowry is prepared to reintroduce the same motion in order to "force the issue out into the open and see the senate decide on whether it will be a university body or just represent the faculty," he saiCL The motion provides for nine full-time students to be elected as voting members of the University Senate by the Student Government Association. At least four of the student members would be from the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as one each from the College of Business Administration and the School of Law. One student would represent the university at large. The student representatives would serve on the senate for one academic year. In the event that the motion fails, steps may be taken, said Dr. Lowry, to turn the senate into a body representing the faculty exclusively. Currently administrators, including the president, the provost and college deans are ex-officio senate members. Lowry said that on the basis of people he has talked to, he believes that the chances for the passage of the motion are good. The motion, he said, will probably be tabled or forwarded to the constitutional committee. Action on the motion will probably not be taken before March. Freshman Sweetheart—Miss Terri Davis, a dental hygiene major from Fort Lauderdale Fla., has been chosen freshman sweetheart in balloting by the freshman class. Miss Davis was crowned at the sweetheart dance last Friday. SGA adopts new code The Student Government Association (SGA) voted Tuesday to change the order of SGA elections as a part of a new election code, which after two hours of debate the SGA passed only in part. The major change was a stipulation that SGA officers and college presidents will be elected at the same time and college representatives will be elected in a separate later election. Previously, the SGA presidents and vice presidents were elected separately and the college presidents and representatives were elected together. Under the old system of electing SGA members a student had to choose between running for president of his college's representation of running as a representative. According to A&S representative Kathy Walsh, the old system eliminated by closing presidential candidates from participation in the SGA and deprived student government of valuable leadership. The law school will be exempt from this change because of a timing conflict with Student Bar Association elections. SGA elections for law school representatives will be conducted in the same way they were in the past, with the races for law president and law representatives held at the same time. Bob Rayhawk, chairman of the SGA elections committee, said that he expects the new code to be in operation for the upcoming elections. Presidential elections in the colleges will be held March 8 and 9. Sign-up dates for candidates are Feb. 25 and 26. Rayhawk said that the old code, which is part of the SGA by-laws, had been written "piece by piece" and was recently rewritten in order to put it in a "logical order." Senate staffs two committees The University Senate spent the bulk of its meeting last week electing fellow faculty members to university committees. On the agenda for next week, however, is a motion to allow students to be members of the senate. Faculty members elected by the senate to the Committee on Disruptive Demonstrations are the Rev. John C. Modschiedler, Clarence East, and Dr. Sandra Rosenthal. This tripartite committee composed of administrators, faculty, and students will examine the present definition of disruptive demonstrations. The Rev. James Carter S.J., Provost of the University, said at the senate meeting that after the committee and the administration come to an agreement over what constitutes a disruptive demonstration, the committee will disolve. Francis D. Gravois, William L. Crowe and Thomas H. Sponsler were elected as faculty representatives to a joint SGA-Senate committee, which will design a plan for implementing the plans of last year's Conference on Academic Goals. (See Committee role clarified. Letter to the editor, page 2.) A motion by Dr. Jon Lowry to allow student representation on the University Senate will be considered at the senate's next meeting. The motion to amend Article IV, Section A of the' senate's constitution calls for the Student Government Association to elect nine full-time students who have been at Loyola for at least one full academic year. Of those students elected there would be one who would represent the entire student body. Such an amendment would provide for four students from the College of Arts and Sciences, one from the College ot Business Administration and one from the law school. Miss Riley, senate chairman, read the senate a letter from SGA president Dooky Chase. In his letter Chase informed the the senate that the SGA had approved a resolution asking the faculty to endorse its request to the administration for student representation on the University Rank and Tenure Committee (URTC). Discussion of the letter, however, was cut short by the senate's adjournment. The URTC members elected recently to the newly-formed committee are all tenured faculty members. NOR head to resign; cites lack of time By 808 MARSHALL Maroon Staff Reporter The Rev. Joseph Tetlow, S.J., Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, announced that he will step down as editor of the New Orleans Review (NOR), Loyola's literary publication. In making the announcement Father Tetlow said that "due to my responsibilities as dean, I have found that I do not have enough time to do the publication justice." Father Tetlow was appointed editor while acting as temporary dean. He will remain in his position as editor until the NOR editorial board appoints a new editor. The appointment of Father Tetlow's successor will make the publication's third editor in its short but stormy four year history. Originally conceived as a product of the New Orleans Consortium the NOR was first published in the fall of 1969, with Miller Williams, a Loyola English professor as the first editor. However, soon after the first publication the other members of the Consortium, St. Mary's Dominican College and Xavier University, revealed that they had not intended to help pay for the cost of publication and the NOR was officially a Loyola publication. Williams remained as editor of the magazine until its fourth edition in the fall of 1969. Then, amid criticism from the editorial board for accepting certain manuscripts for publication, Williams resigned. Father Tetlow, at the time an assitant professor of history, was appointed interim editor by the editorial board. On accepting the position at that time he stepped right into the controversy left by Miller Williams which revolved around the editorial board's apparent power of censorship. After several weens the controversy reached a peak when Father Tetlow was quoted in a national literary publication, "The Newsletter," as saying that "censorship is a literary device." The critisim slowly subsided and in the spring of last year Father Tetlow, while acting dean of A&S was appointed to the editor's post by the editorial board of the NOR "we have a very good working team, now" said Father Tetlow, "I am very confident that the present editors can carry on the fine job they are doing. I enjoyed working on the publication enormously, but now that I am permanent dean, I just don't have the time." FATHER JOSEPH TETLOW, S.J. Provost claims salaries advancing In the midst of a nationwide fiscal squeeze, Loyola is being forced to retrench its finances in the field of faculty salaries. However, Loyola is in a better position than most colleges, according to the Rev. James C. Carter, S.J., University Provost. Citing an example of how alarming the situation is, Father Carter said that a typical college which was solidly in the black in 1968 is now four times as much in the red as it was in the black at that time. Throughout the nation, he said, many colleges are finding themselves unable to give any raises to their faculty, and some are even having to fire'a good number of their teachers. Though Loyola is in relatively better position than most other private colleges. Father Carter said that it was not exempt from certain necessary cutbacks. This year's retrenching was especially evident in the area of faculty pay raises. Father Carter said that faculty members received a 7.5 per cent overall increase in salaries this year, which is two-thirds of the 10 per cent raise they received last year. Father Carter said that the rechanneling of salary raises would affect the colleges as a whole and the individual teachers within each college. In the past, the faculty members of the College of Arts and Sciences usually received a bigger pay raise than the members of smaller colleges on campus. In an attempt to resolve this imbalance, Father Carter said that this year the A&S faculty took a larger cut in their pay raise than did the faculty of other colleges, particularly those of the colleges of Business Administration and Music. In addition, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) ratings, the top men on the totem pole, professors, are proportionally better paid than instructors, the low men on the scale. Father Carter said that to equalize the pay raise scale, this year's faculty members at the top received lower raises and those at the bottom received higher raises than those slated for them. As a result of this double rechannehng, the top men in A&S will receive a double cut in their salary raise, first because they are in A&S and the second because they are the top men on the scale. The following is an indication of how the Loyola pay scale shapes up to the rest of the private colleges across the nation. The figures are taken from the 1970-71 AAUP rating scale in which one is the highest number attainable and nine is the lowest. Loyola's faculty ratings fall between the following: Instructors - 7&8 Assistant Professors-6&7 Associate Professors-7&8 Professors-5 &6 Father Carter said that Loyola will continue to try to hit an average of seven or eight a year. As evidence that Loyola is improving even though the university's AAUP ratings are below average, Father Carter maintains that these AAUP ratings will have to be revised. When the ratings are revised, the amount that now designates a rating of seven or eight, will then represent a higher number on the scale. Thus, while Loyola's ratings appear to be at a standstill, they are actually improving. Because of the tight financial squeeze that the colleges are now faced with, it has become next to impossible for all universities to keep up with the presently ideal ratings of the AAUP. Father Carter said he believes the AAUP ratings should be made more realistic taking in accounct the financial situation across the nation. "Either the AAUP will revise their ratings or people won't pay any attention to them," he said. The university, however, is not really worried about their position on the AAUP scale, because, said Father Carter, even with their relatively low rating recuitment of faculty was not affected over the Christmas holidays. This can be attributed to the fact that because of the tight economic squeeze that our nation is now facing, there are an excess of people who are unemployed. Father Carter said that prospective faculty aren't as concerned about salary raises as they are with what the university offers them individually.