By Rachel Konieczny
News Editor
In 2015, 16 percent of incoming freshmen failed to meet the admissions requirement, according to the Faculty Senate’s review of admissions criteria.
The 1992 freshmen admissions policy mandates that incoming freshmen must achieve a minimum SAT score of 850 (math and verbal) and 80 percent GPA or be in the top 40 percent of class rank.
George Lapennas, Ph.D., former biology professor and a former member of the Faculty Senate, informed the Faculty Senate of the university’s failure to adhere to the admissions policy in 2006 and again on April 1 at the Faculty Senate meeting. Lapennas said the policy is not published on the university’s catalog, website or in the governing documents of the university.
“If the university has policies and the university has a website called the governing documents of St. Bonaventure University, it’s the university that has responsibility for having the right stuff there and it’s not done,” Lapennas said. “The university adopted a new admissions policy in 1992, and it never put it anywhere.”
Prior to 1992, a committee comprised of three faculty members and two admissions department employees reviewed undergraduate applications, according to Lapennas. The committee had an automatic reject decision that denied admission to any student that did not meet SAT and GPA standards and an automatic accept decision for students that met admissions standards. Lapennas said many applications fell in the range between and admissions administration often accepted students regardless of if they met admissions requirements.
Barry Gan, Ph.D., philosophy professor and Faculty Senate chair, said he first learned that the Faculty Senate might not be following the admissions policy last fall. Gan said he recognized the policy is not accessible.
“There are many policies regarding the university that aren’t published,” Gan said. “Why they’re not, I don’t know. Who’s responsible for publishing them? I don’t know.”
Lapennas said while he does not have an opinion on the admissions policy, he thinks the university should be governed by policies.
“If you have a policy, you should follow it,” Lapennas said. “If you don’t like it, somebody should change it. But until you’ve changed it, you’ve got what you had and you ought to follow it.”
Gan said he asked Christopher Stanley, theology professor and chair of the constitution committee of the Faculty Senate, to review the last 15 years of Senate minutes to see what the Senate has approved and what is actually implemented. Stanley said this review was separate from the admissions policy.
“The percentage of students not meeting the criteria had declined to 1 percent and of those, 15 percent met at least one of the criteria,” Stanley said.
Gan said the admissions policy is not the only policy not currently being followed.
“This is only one of many things that the Senate needs to look at that the Senate has passed judgment on with the approval of the president that may or may not be getting implemented,” Gan said. “One of the things that doesn’t seem to happen around here is the follow-through on whether policies that are approved do in fact get implemented.”
Gan cited the current faculty hiring policy, which requires that advertisements be placed in minority journals to hire a larger number of minority faculty members. Gan said he is “pretty sure” that hiring advertisements are not regularly posted in minority journals.
Gan, who will be stepping down as chair of the Faculty Senate after this year, said he doesn’t see the urgency of addressing the policy when the university hasn’t been following it for 24 years.
“The last thing the Senate wants to do is hurt university enrollment,” Gan said.
koniecrc14@bonaventure.edu
