From a quiet beginning, this year has turned out to be a very eventful year for PEG Board.

At the onset, as the 2002-2003 Co-Chairs, we set ourselves to the tasks of (1) regularly attending the weekly University Senate Executive Committee meetings (Anne and Elaine); (2) regularly attending the weekly Arts & Sciences Senate Executive Committee meetings (Elaine); regularly attending the University Senate (Anne and Elaine) and Arts & Sciences Senate (Elaine) monthly meetings; proposing amendments to the ByLaws to ensure that all of the PEG Board constituencies have representation on the University Senate and academic unit senates; updating our election process to utilize electronic technology; and creating a website to increase our visibility on the campus and to serve as a governance resource for Stony Brook professional employees.

We are pleased to say that between us, we attended all University Senate Exec Comm meetings and Senate meetings, and Elaine additionally was able to attend all the Arts & Sciences Senate Exec Comm meetings.

Early in the year we started working on revisions to the ByLaws; at the same time, we created a website and requested a web address on the sunysb.edu server. This request led to questions as to the status of PEG Board as an independent governance organization which resulted in our sidetracking from the ByLaws to create a Constitution, to be adopted by PEG Board and approved by the University Senate. Apparently, although PEG Board has been in existence on the Stony Brook campus for more than two decades, a constitution was never adopted. As a result, on April 4, 2003, PEG Board adopted a Constitution which was ratified by the University Senate on April 7, 2003. This was followed by proposed Amended Bylaws, which were submitted to the membership along with election ballots. The Amended ByLaws were adopted on May 30, 2003, to take effect immediately.

In examining our election procedures, we talked with the University Senate Exec Comm to get their perspective. The University Senate Exec Comm decided to hold their elections electronically, with ballots being cast by faculty through logging into their Notes accounts. There were security issues raised, but the Exec Comm felt that they had been adequately addressed. We chose a more conservative mechanism in order to see whether the Senate would successfully hold anonymous elections. Therefore, we chose to email the Call for Nominations to the constituency, with nominations being returned by Campus Mail to Laurie Theobalt, Secretary of the University Senate office. Likewise, we emailed the ballots and proposed Amended ByLaws with ballots being returned by Campus Mail to Laurie Theobalt.

While the University Senate did successfully hold elections electronically, it turned out that the security issues had not been adequately addressed. Subsequent discussions with Rich Reeder, CIO, indicate that he has an alternate method planned for next year's elections which will maintain the security of anonymous balloting. If this is so, we hope PEG Board will follow the University Senate's lead and hold fully electronic elections.

While in the process of holding our elections - after Nominations were received but immediately before ballots were sent out - the Arts & Sciences Senate amended their definition of professional employees in their ByLaws, resulting in the complete disenfranchisement of non-academic West Campus professionals. As a result, a number of nominees for senate seats were removed from the ballot. We met with members of the A&S Exec Comm, who agreed that the definition change happened at a late hour when many people did not fully understand the impact of the change of wording. As a result, they have agreed to revisit the issue in the fall, and hopefully some of the damage will be undone.

Another election issue that arose was that the PEG Board election committee was not notified that there would be two vacancies on the SUNY-wide Senate, and therefore our Call for Nominations did not include these seats. The University Senate Call for Nominations was not sent to professional employees, only faculty. As a result, the initial election process for SUNY-wide Senators was invalidated, and a new Call for Nominations mailed to all faculty and professional employees simultaneously, with the result that two professional employees were nominated in addition to the faculty nominees. As of this date, the results have not been announced.

All of these elections difficulties forcefully demonstrated that there are serious discrepancies between the governance documents of the SUNY Senate, the University Senate, the Arts & Sciences Senate and the PEG Board. As a result, a Governance Working Group has been constituted by the University Senate Exec Comm for the purpose of examining those discrepancies and recommending revisions to the Stony Brook governance bodies to resolve them. Of particular import to PEG Board are the issues of representation for non-academic professional employees (e.g., Environmental Health & Science; DoIT, etc.) and election procedures that insure that professional employees are solicited for nominations simultaneously with faculty, when appropriate (e.g., SUNY-wide Senate). PEG Board has three representatives on this Governance Working Group, which will begin meeting the second week in June, and will meet through the summer.

Finally, with regard to the PEG Board website: When we initially encountered difficulties in obtaining a web address on the sunysb.edu server, UHMC agreed to host our website on its galactica server at www.uhmc.sunysb.edu/pegboard. This was put up in February, 2003. In May, after many months of negotiations, and the creation, adoption and ratification of a Constitution, we were finally given space on the sunysb.edu server, with a web address of: www.sunysb.edu/pegboard. This website will be up and running shortly, and will be linked to campus directories, governance organizations, the Faculty Staff Digest, etc.

Respectfully submitted
Elaine Kaplan, West Campus Co-Chair
Anne Grey Savitt, East Campus Co-Chair