The Faculty Senate debated Monday about what the appropriate policy should be if faculty members abandon their positions, another aspect of the continuously contested faculty handbook.

The issue is just one of many that the senate has been debating since early in the year to attempt to publish an updated version of the handbook to fit under the semester calendar.

“Abandonment is something that was essentially invented by the university about 14 years ago because there were two faculty members who simply disappeared from the university,” said Gerald Herman, associate professor for the history department.

The senators debated about what the appropriate length of time would be before a position was considered abandoned. The current policy states that after two weeks without contact, a contract is terminated, but they considered changing it to four.

“Four weeks without any communication could certainly be conceived as real abandonment,” said Associate Biology Professor Charles H. Ellis.

However, Physics Professor Robert Lowndes said that, “If somebody’s gone and they have teaching obligations … two weeks is generous. Unless you are in a coma and you can’t notify anybody, two weeks seems quite reasonable.”

The handbook was last published during the 1999/2000 academic year when the Senate decided that a university-wide taskforce should conduct a review.

“We are going through it section by section and we will eventually have another handbook,” Herman said.

In addition to the handbook, the Senators have only six more weeks to deal with the rest of the issues brought before them, including the final aspects of semester conversion.

The Senate Agenda Committee, chaired by Lowndes, has the task of deciding which issues must be dealt with before the end of the year.

“We’re dealing with the faculty handbook which is a … huge task,” Lowndes said. “I don’t think we’re going to get it completely done this year.”

With the summer teaching issue set, the senate will deal with other individual issues pertaining to campus.

The Provost’s office is promoting a university-wide standard QPA for all undergraduate students, as opposed to the individual college standards currently applicable.

In the upcoming weeks, the Senate will be hearing a report from the Institutional Management Practices Committee on the status of the information systems at the university.

“The senate knows it’s being flooded,” Herman said, “but its trying very hard to keep its nose above water.”