Friday is the last day faculty and staff can share their opinion about a universal meeting time at Eastern.

The Council on University Planning and Budget subcommittee has distributed the survey to faculty and staff.

Jennifer Sipes, the special assistant to the vice president for student affairs and a member of the subcommittee for a universal meeting time, said the whole process began in the 2011-2012 academic school year as an initiative from President Bill Perry.

“Back during the 2010-2011 academic year, President Perry created the Committee to Study Shared Governance,” Sipes said. “In the spring of 2011, they gave their report and provided some actions that could enhance shared governance.”

The committee made seven recommendations to Perry, including reconfiguring the Faculty Senate, creating a website for university governance and creating a universal meeting time.

In a memo to Perry, the committee said they would like the university to institute a universal meeting time where all university employees and students would be free, to the fullest extent possible, from any scheduled non-emergency responsibility.

In a response to the memo, Perry delegated research of the project to the CUPB.

“We are one of the few governing groups on campus that has all areas of campus represented,” Sipes said. “We have representatives from all aspects of campus — students, faculty and staff.”

“We decided we want to gather more information before doing anything,” Sipes said. “We want to see if people feel this would be something feasible and desirable here.”

Sipes said one of the difficulties of working on a project like this is that so much is unknown about what a universal meeting time would be like on campus.

“That’s part of the question: what meetings and events would take place during this time and at what frequency?” Sipes said. “These are all questions being asked, and there is no one definite answer.”

Sipes said a universal meeting time is something that is being done at some other universities, but they are all smaller than Eastern.

“We’re trying to figure out if this is something we can do here,” Sipes said.

The survey is currently only available to faculty and staff, but Sipes said depending on the response, they may open it up to students.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or alwywialowski@eiu.edu.