Two notable things happened at Thursday’s College Council meeting:

The previously named Sullivan Rule* was rehashed almost 6 months after College Council passed the resolution. The Rule states that faculty shall post syllabi and book lists of their upcoming classes online.  During the meeting, students made the same arguments, professors raised the same objections, and the resolution was placed in the “business” section of next College Council’s agenda. Although I’m happy that the spirit of the resolution is closer to enforcement, it does not reflect well on the efficacy of College Council as a policy-making body that it will have taken at least 7 calendar months for a simple resolution to take effect.  The text of the original resolution is copied below.

IT Director Mark Ingalls was the most helpful person in the room, informing the Council that IT is technologically prepared to input the information onto the portal, and that future first-year students will be given their Pitzer College email addresses and user names in advance of Welcome Week.  This will be a huge anxiety reliever for the Class of 2014 and beyond: thus far first-year students have had to wait until physically arriving on campus in late August in order to gain network access. With the new early-bird policy students will much sooner be able to begin choosing their courses, view Sakai documents, and connect with each other.

The Sullivan Rule* [blogger's emphasis supplied]:

"Faculty are to post on the internet a more detailed tentative course outline for classes they are to teach two weeks before pre-registration begins for the semester in which the class will be taught. The resources are meant to give students a greater understanding of the class prior to registration. The resources will be made available for students of Pitzer College on a suitable online source, such as Sakai, or My Campus Portal. Faculty will submit, at a minimum, the Course Proposal Form they filled to register the class. Faculty are encouraged to submit past syllabi and any other information that will facilitate students' understanding of the course. Helpful details would include the structure of the course (lecture vs. seminar), remarks about the professor's teaching style, and anticipated grading structure (how many tests, papers or both). In any case, it shall be made clear that these are tentative only and subject to change. Faculty will not be held responsible for any changes to the aforementioned documents, and students must understand that elements of the course are subject to change at any time. Faculty are encouraged to post a finalized list of book purchases two weeks before classes start. These lists can be posted online as described above, or may be emailed to the Pitzer email address of students registered for the course. This will allow students ample time to purchase them at discounted rates online, or borrow from the library if necessary. This will help alleviate students' financial burden and allow them to be prepared for class on time".

*Introduced briefly here, scroll down.