As the second Faculty Senate meeting of the year began on Wednesday, Senate President Sue Willis held up a copy of Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune.

“As you can see,” she said, “things are not getting better.”

Willis was referring to the front-page headline of “State’s budget gap growing” and urged everyone to attend the President’s State of the University Address at 3 p.m. today at the Holmes Student Center’s Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

“There has been many things that he has been holding out on because he wants to say them tomorrow,” Willis said.

Highlights from the meeting stemmed from Patricia Henry’s report of the IBHE meeting on Oct. 1. Henry, NIU’s representative to the Faculty Advisory Council, said that IBHE Director Daniel LaVista pointed out some major factors impacting persistence and degree completion of higher education students.

These factors include diverse backgrounds, students working part-time jobs, students having families and those students who may not be seeking a degree.

“The question here is who is getting a degree?” Henry asked.

Willis explained that the monetary assistance program is a tuition-funded grant from states for both public and private universities. Part of the issue is that it is based on financial need. With private tuitions being more expensive, those students receive more money, which hurts lower-income students at public universities.

Henry also reported on the IBHE study of the salaries and fringe benefits at Illinois colleges and universities. The report showed that while some ground was gained during the last year, progress was jeopardized by the present budget crisis.

According to the report, in fiscal year 2002, the average salary for all ranks of faculty at public universities was $66,000, an increase of 11.5 percent over fiscal year 2000. At NIU, the average salary in fiscal year 2002 was $59,600 for all ranks.

Willis reported on the fundraising efforts of the NIU Foundation during the BOT meeting on Sept. 19 .

“Even with the present economic situation,” Willis said, “the foundation exceeded its fundraising goal by more than half a million dollars, which is good.”

Willis also reported on the yearly Council of Illinois University Senates meeting on Sept. 23.

“In order to lobby with state legislatures,” WIllis said, “we decided we need a unified voice for all public universities in the state, which is not there. At certain opportune moments, we can speak for the presidents of universities, especially when they feel constrained because of certain political matters, and [NIU President John] Peters agreed.”

New business of the afternoon was passing the evaluation criteria for the president, which Willis hopes to get started now so it could be finished by spring 2003.

Such points would be defining the mission of the university, including achieving the goals of the university, working with faculty to make shared governance work, long-range strategic planning, selecting staff and delegating responsibility.

Another new concern regarded revitalizing a committee that was started “approximately three years ago concerning sweatshop labor,” Willis said. “We want to ensure that nothing produced with the NIU logo is produced in a sweatshop.”

SA President Kevin Miller brought the concern of using social security numbers in the place of Z-ID numbers.

“I personally had to put mine on a test form just recently,” Miller said. “Please consider this and relate it back to your faculty. Faculty are not allowed to ask for your social security numbers.”

Willis said she believed that as of today, Z-ID numbers were supposed to be used instead.

This sparked faculty concerns over why faculty should have to give out their social security numbers and students don’t.

Ombudsman Tim Griffin pointed out that faculty who were concerned with giving out their social security numbers at the library could ask for a dummy one instead to secure their privacy.

“I don’t have time to pursue issues for everyone,” Miller said.