Developments

Updates

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: If you have a ballot you will be able to vote on campus tomorrow (Thursday). Bring your ballot to room 1115 between 1 and 3pm to vote. Jesú and Adriana will be sitting with it from 1 to 2pm just outside the room, and then it will move inside room 1115 from 2 to 3 and be available for voting during the meeting. If you do not have a ballot and will not be able to get to the office before Saturday, stop by the box and let them know so that they can track down what happened and what needs to happen. If you have a ballot and don’t want to vote on campus, remember that it must arrive to the union office before noon on Saturday to be counted.

For anyone who couldn’t attend yesterday’s meeting, the most urgent aspect of the conversation revolved around the reduced time frame of the vote, the number of voting members who have not yet received ballots, and various ideas about how to address and (hopefully) resolve those conjoined problems.

Without getting into the details of support and criticism and who said what (per chapter leadership request and what I took to be chapter consensus) the merits, or lack thereof, of some of the major parts of the proposal were also discussed insofar as that was possible without clarification from the negotiating team, and there was brief discussion about Thursday and how to have the most effective meeting with Perry.

Regarding the last point, Hector volunteered to compile a list of questions from membership (if you’d like to send him yours, you can send them to: hr.reyes13@gmail.com), while also encouraging us to come to Thursday’s meeting with our own. Perry will be at our sanctioned union meeting at HWC on Thursday from 2 to 4:30 pm in room 1115.

Perry was at Malcolm X yesterday morning and at Daley, I believe, in the afternoon. I’m not sure where he is going today. I’m also unsure about how those meetings went, though some people heard some things.

After the meeting and in regard to the lede, last night Jesú sent a request to Perry for an extension at the behest of the membership–owing to the ballot questions and holiday weekend, to which Perry responded that “that full members, who have not received their ballots, should go in person to the office. He said they had resolved the problem [regarding in person ballot requests].”

The union office is located on Kinzie, just north of the Merchandise Mart, close to The Shamrock Club, a few doors west of Wells.

People who have received ballots can 1) mail them in (but they must arrive to the union office by 12pm Saturday–not postmarked…arrived!) or 2) drop them off at the union office or 3) bring them to the college on Thursday where voting will be open from 1 to 3 pm somewhere (tba–soon). just outside of or in room 1115.

Anyone who wants to vote, but has not received a ballot and cannot get to the office to do so and can’t figure out another way to make it happen should go to the voting box anyway. Adriana and Jesú will be keeping a list of people who wanted to vote but couldn’t. Doing so may also clarify whether the persons are full members or fair-share (non-signed up members who lack voting rights). Also, we need a couple of volunteers to work the ballot box from 2 to 3pm, as well. Please contact Jesú if you are available.

If there are changes or updates, I invite any of my fellow editors to make changes to this post as necessary and as information develops.

A Couple on Transfer Credit

Michael Heathfield mentioned a few weeks ago at our Assessment Committee meeting that the Federal Department of Education had come out with some new regulations related to a new definition of “Credit Hour.” I went looking and found this description, which, it seems, won’t affect us (or require any changes) to our current definition.

(At the meeting, we had a discussion about what our definition was–turns out, according to ICCB’s Administrative Rules (see page 41), that a credit hour is equal to 45 hours of learning, and it is assumed that two hours of learning outside of class is required for every hour of learning inside of class (i.e., 15 hours of contact time is equal to 45 hours of learning, which is equal to one credit hour).) The new regulations require that educational institutions that receive Federal Financial Aid have a clock to credit hour definition and that the definition require a minimum of 37.5 clock hours per credit hour and that the definition be approved by somebody, so we’re good on all of that.

More interesting is this little tug of war going on in New York about the general education curriculum and proposed changes aimed at easing the transferability of credits (in order to facilitate completion). The consistent moves toward simplification and standardization are troubling, aren’t they? May the gods forbid that anything be slightly complicated…