Faculty Senate Meeting
Minutes
November 12, 2001
Attendees: P. Marshman, Tracy Marshall, Lee Poehls, Aniruddh Hathi, Jean Turner, Susie Watkins, Roy Rost, Mike Torres, Deborah Neumann, Brandon Thomas, Steve Betros, George Reamy, Martin Knudsen, Terry Ehrhardt, David Junek, Ronald Neuman, Ruth Gray, Dale Bullock, Ed Price, Debi Cisneros, Tinker Clift, Theresa Holmberg, Bob Larsen
Guests: Ken Scheler, Tom Dean, Esmerelda Hudson, Dennis Meyers and Dr. Larry Grulick
Ed Price introduced the guest speaker, Susan Meyers.
Susan Meyers gave a little background on her 20 years at TSTC. She was a student, married to Dennis Meyers (DC of Automotive and now a Cluster Director), and was a CNS Instructor. She opened it up to questions that the faculty may like to ask her.
Ed said that he had a concern of how the faculty was treated pertaining to the incident with CNS.
Susan informed the senate that she had spoken to Dr. Ellis, HR, John Spradling, Mark and Ken but has yet to speak to Debi Cisneros and would like the chance to speak to her, she has sent e-mails to that affect and had not gotten any answer. Debi responded that she had not received any e-mail. Susan said she would send those to her ASAP. Susan made a point that she has been working with Mark Spivey and they have gotten close and wish she had known him before this incident occurred. She spoke to him before coming to the meeting in the parking lot and was informed that he would not attend the meeting tonight because he did not want to jeopardize the relationship that they had achieved or be put in the middle of the situation. Mark gave her is phone number and said that if the senate would like him to be there then he would come on their request. There was no response from the senate. Susan began with a little background of what happened, can discuss some things but not everything because of it being investigated. Friday afternoon received an e-mail of an infraction of the network. Our network has unique names and IP’s and it was called to the attention of Tom Dean and John Spradling. They were shown the copy of the e-mail; Susan, John and Tom went to check on the machines that the IP addresses were showing to be Ken Scheler’s machine and Debi Cisneros’ machine (which was in the process of being rebuilt). Susan said that Debi had loaded the OS (operating system) and not loaded the security patches and that could cause problems when machine are put on the network without patches being loaded. Tom and John told Susan that it must be IP spoofing. Susan explained what IP spoofing was, where it can look like it is one of TSTC IP addresses but it is actually coming from another computer. At 11:10pm that evening they had no control of the servers and 1 router. The way they found out was they could not do their nightly backups of the servers, so no backups were done. Susan explored and found more problems. Why segment # of instructors in CNS and NST was being flooded. Lights on routers, blinking (meaning that it is transmitting), lit up (meaning that it is flooded) which the router lights were lit up! Who is segment # 27? What is going on? Susan attached a sniffer to see what was happening, unplugged and then plugged in again and it was flooded once again. Susan called campus security to let them know that she and 2 (1 student,1 staff) would be going up to the 2nd floor and possibly the 3rd. Susan said that there were three machines that were showing, Debi Cisneros, Mark Spivey, Debbie Christian and Ken Scheler. Susan stated that Debi’s machine was “smoking” and that this was the machine that was causing the problem. At that point Debi told the senate and Susan that the OS had been loaded but that is all and that the computer was off when she left. Susan immediately said that my computer was on and the she had documentation and that it was being investigated. Debi asked Tom Dean if he could verify that when he, John and Susan went in to check the computer that it was in fact turned off. Tom said that it was off when they went in the office and that it was clearly being rebuilt. Susan restated that it was “on” when they entered the office and that I had 3 CD’s laying in front of my computer.
Q.
Esmerelda: I have 4 questions, as a
faculty member how do we or I) feel confident that we won't have students past,
current or future, in our offices when we are not present? How do we know that
the integrity of our hard drives isn't compromised when investigations like the
one conducted on other instructors hard drives take place on our own? As a
faculty member can I be reassured that I will not be treated or feel as though I
am treated like a "criminal" or offender if a similar incident takes
place that may compromise my equipment when I have no fault in the matter.
In other words will I be treated like a professional and given the benefit of
the doubt of innocent until proven guilty? Are there any measures being
considered that may keep unduly disruption of student/faculty services, if
necessary as only an absolutely ultimate last resort?
A. Trust student involved, has great credentials, walked up to Mark’s desk, put his hands up and told me that he could not do this since he was a student. He didn’t touch or look at anything. I felt comfortable with him I the office. Student will no longer be in offices. There are no policies or procedures but the Dean’s have the wheels in motion to get these done. I do not do things the same as Lynn Francis. Did call campus security, but I have the authority as long as I feel it is necessary.
Q. Esmerelda: Shouldn’t you let the department chair know about the problem or contact the faculty member before you go into the offices?
A. Tried to contact Ron Sanders, did not know that he was out, went to John Spradling and Tom Dean. I now have Dr. Grulick’s number so that I can contact him if necessary.
Q. Tom: There is a penal code 19, 30 ,31 that states the correct way of getting computer information.
A. Dr. Ellis and Chancellor said that I have the authority since the computers on this campus are state property of TSTC.
Q. Thank you for showing up. Why are the ones that were so outspoken not here now?
A. Ken Scheler stated that Ron Sanders was at Comdex this week.
Susan stated that the network was back up at 8:25 am that day and was only down for 25 minutes. She also stated that she personally went into the hall and apologized to the students waiting to register.
Q. Tom: So the network was taken down at what time?
A. Disconnected segment 27 on Saturday 2:15am up Monday 8:25 am.
Q. Tinker: So let me make sure that I understand. If one of your employees is a student they will not be allowed to touch a computer without an faculty member present?
A. New implementation.
Q. Terry: My concern would be that late at night, you going upstairs and not knowing what you may find the safety personnel would not know what was happening.
A. We have a radio that is in direct contact with security. Only 1 person that we knew of was in the building. Not uncommon for people to work late. If I am in the building late I call security and let them know we are there and approximately when we will be leaving.
Susan gave the phone number for faculty to call for requests, comments or suggestions.
Help Desk # 3375
Would like to get department chairs pro-active. What are their needs (software, hardware, etc.)
Q. Terry: What is projection for staff?
A. Committee for consulting firm (Susan, George Reamy, Debi Cisneros…) we have had one meeting and discussed doing a survey from the consulting firm and I am hopeful that they will see that we do need more staff.
Q. Debi: I have not heard of any of these meetings. I talked to George and he said that there is another one on the 27th this month.
A. We missed you in the 1st meeting. I will send you the e-mails that I have gotten from Dr. Ellis.
Ed thanked Susan for coming and turned it over to Dr. Grulick to discuss the Dean of Instruction Meeting.
Dr. Grulick: all the deans met to discuss the Colleague 16 implementation. Want a way to put our faculty loads to fit the new Coll16. Coll16 we are unable to get or manage reports. Need a management tool for College. Our faculty loads are far beyond any of the other campuses. Limited $ amounts of overload to faculty. Our system puts $ in an overload account. How we do ours over other campuses is different. Will be some changes on faculty load. Ed was in the meeting. Regular meetings with Richard and Ed work together as a team.
Ed said that Student Evaluations will be submitted in the Dean of Instruction meeting on Tuesday so that he will have some answers and a copy by next faculty senate meeting.
New Business?
Q. Rank, when are we supposed to hear something?
A. They said 11/15 but don’t hold your breath!
Motion to adjourn
Seconded