The Eng. Dept.

’s current by-laws state the following regarding the makeup of

Promotion Committees for individual promotion applicants:

Each evaluation committee will consist of three tenured members of the

English Department who are not being evaluated that year: one chosen by the
department chair, one chosen by the faculty member being evaluated, and the
third chosen by the other two.

I am asking the department to suspend these by-laws for this year and to work
on changing them for the future to call for a promotion committee of five or more people
each year. Scuttlebutt and conversations with past members of the JPC suggest that
the weight of the votes of a three-member promotion committee is not as persuasive to
that committee as would be the votes of a five-member committee.