Faculty Senate members expressed their dislike for how the Illinois Board of Higher Education suggested coping with the budget deficit during a meeting Wednesday at the Holmes Student Center’s Sky Room.

The IBHE wishes to revive the PQP (Priorities, Quality and Productivity) process that existed during the last budget crisis in order to help the current deficit.

“Cutting and cutting keeps happening,” said Patricia Henry, NIU representative to the Faculty Advisory Council to the IBHE. “It’s hard to find more things to cut.”

Members of the council argued that the PQP process should not come back.

The PQP process is designed to cut programs to save money, but some professors thought the programs that were cut benefitted the entire university.

Philosophy professor William Tolhurst strongly disagreed with the PQP process.

“It was short-sighted; it was conducted by people who didn’t understand how a university worked,” Tolhurst said.

Tolhurst said the process eliminated certain graduate programs, but that those programs also helped undergraduate students.

One program eliminated during the process was the department of library and information science.

“PQP is not the best strategy,” said Faculty Senate President Sue Willis. “I don’t think we should give them the idea we actually liked it.”

Henry said she would present the comments at the next IBHE meeting on Nov. 7 at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

The senate also voted to send a report from the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee to the University Council.

The report stated the need for a grievance procedure to resolve conflicts between students and faculty of the university.

A report showed that none of the departments surveyed had a formal policy for faculty misconduct against students.

“I think there are inherent dangers when there aren’t policies in place,” said Beth Miller, professor of family and child studies.