LSU Constituency Brief Debrief

              Today is Mother’s Day in Mexico.  I called my mom, who was staying at her “adoptive” daughter’s house.  She went there last night to go to Prayer meeting in Deer Valley.  I was in California at the constituency meeting for La Sierra University.  It was a long day.

               The trip began with a two hour delay in Phoenix.  It was probably related to a bomb scare at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix.  One incoming and one outgoing aircraft had bomb scares on Wednesday evening (both false).  In any case it made a one hour trip to California two hours longer than expected.  Ironically, the trip was extended almost three hours on the return flight from California due to a weather-related three hour delay in Ontario.  Apparently the news indicated there was severely inclement weather in the greater Phoenix area.  My calls to Arizona only drew surprise. The people I spoke to claimed there was no such weather crisis in their neighborhood.  Go figure Arizona’s compartmentalized weather patterns!

               The meetings went well.  Most of the day was swallowed up with sundry departmental reports.  These were interesting, although the report related to the process of addressing the creation-evolution discussion drew the highest level of interest.  LSU has taken some specific steps to address the concerns of the constituency.  One point that was subtly introduced was that there was no corresponding data available from other Adventist universities similar to the data collected through student and faculty surveys regarding student perceptions regarding the spiritual climate of the school and the impact of the school on the spiritual maturity of the student.  It gave the gathering something to consider.

             
              Constitution and By-laws discussion led to some spirited discussion about transparency and “checks and balances” between administration and constituency.  It was fruitful to the degree that it informed the committee of the concerns of the membership represented by those gathered.  I was never overtly contentious, but the discussion at times spiraled to the degree that I wondered how the meeting would be brought back to order—the net result was a meeting that spilled over the allotted time and pressed us to arrive at the airport in time to wait three hours for our flight! (235)