Tension filled the Governance Chambers this afternoon as Robert Frank, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, spoke to the Faculty Senate about the new LER program, Kent Core, which was passed Dec. 7, 2009.

Frank said the discontent was mainly because of a misunderstanding in terminology between the proposal passed by Faculty Senate and the proposal passed by the Board of Trustees. He plans to solve the issue very soon.

“We will talk to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and make sure that we’re all using terms the same way,” Frank said. “I need to hear more about what they are saying to make sure that I understand what the issues are.”

Senator-at-large Linda Williams, an associate professor of philosophy, said Faculty Senate members were very upset because of language in the resolution that the Board of Trustees passed.

“The wording and the background information that was disseminated to the Board of Trustees is felt, by a lot of people in the Senate, to give the implication that the original proposal is what was passed by Faculty Senate,” Williams said. “There was language in there that we specifically did not want in the proposal.

“It was not very representative of the proposal that Faculty Senate actually passed.”

— Suzi Starheim