A concern about the Athletic Board’s size arose on the University Council’s part when the engineering college was being approved, said Jim Giles, executive secretary of the UC.

Giles said when the engineering college was added last year, the Athletic Board automatically received two additional voting members because each college has two faculty representatives on the board. That addition resulted in concern about the board’s size, Giles said.

Giles said that in May, 1986, the board also brought possible changes in its bylaws to the council. As a result, Giles said the council referred to its Committee B the need to look into a reduction of the board, the changes in the board’s bylaws and also the board’s duties.

Committee B has not made a report to the council because NIU President John LaTourette set up the internal review committee, headed by chairman James Mellard, of the athletic department, Giles said. The board is one area of the department being included in the review.

Lou Jean Moyer, chairman of the board’s ad hoc committee on policy and structures, said last week she talked to Committee B members in September. She said she asked the members not to make a recommendation until the ad hoc committee came up with a proposal to reduce the board’s size.

Board chairman Curt Norton ordered the ad hoc committee to study how other Division I universities’ boards were structured and then make a recommendation. Moyer said board members’ apparent lukewarm reaction at the April 1 board meeting to the ad hoc committee’s proposal to reduce board membership from 33 to 20 means the board probably will recommend no change in composition being made.

Giles said any recommendation to the council from the board on its structure would come through Committee B. But he said any recommendations from the Mellard committee would not have to go through Committee B because the internal review was ordered by LaTourette and not the council. He said the council probably would request seeing whatever changes in the board the internal review committee suggests.

“The council tends to not want any major changes on the campus to occur without seeing them,” Giles said. “Constitutionally, the Mellard committee should make its suggestion to the council.”

Giles said concern about the board’s size was related to concerns about how effective the board could be in carrying out its responsibilities. He also said he could not understand board members’ objections to reduction.

“More often than not, small committees work better. I would want to keep at least one (faculty member) from all colleges. There doesn’t need to be more. If you cut the faculty, you have to cut the other areas (students, boosters, for example) to keep with the NCAA regulations,” Giles said.