Voting Policy

 

When meeting to discuss a faculty appointment or promotion, the permanent officers or other authorized governing body of a school may invite to attend, with vote, other members of their faculty who hold a rank equal or superior to that of the position to be filled. However, regardless of rank, faculty with secondary appointments in a department or school may not vote on promotions or appointments to tenure. An exception to this is made for faculty holding secondary appointments in certain interdisciplinary departments and programs (see Section III.H and Section IV.H). Also, faculty on term appointments may not vote on reappointments to ranks equivalent to or above their own. 

 

In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and most professional schools, voting on all appointments and promotions for terms of more than one year must be conducted with secret ballots. This secret ballot requirement also applies to preliminary votes to decide among candidates. Informal, “straw” voting about an individual candidate is prohibited. For an appointment to be approved the candidate must receive affirmative votes from a majority of those present and eligible to vote. Absentee ballots may not be accepted, counted, or recorded. Should a discussion of a particular candidate extend beyond a single meeting, ballots may be accepted only from those members of the faculty present and eligible to vote at the final meeting. 

 

For purposes of the foregoing, in exigent circumstances and with prior permission of the relevant dean, a department, program, or school may treat as present a faculty member who participates in the discussion preceding a vote via two-way audiovisual technology enabling that faculty member to see and hear, and be seen and heard by, all other faculty members participating in the vote. A faculty member deemed present by such technological means may submit his or her ballot in a manner that keeps it secret, and a ballot so transmitted shall not be considered an absentee ballot.