In the midst of much debate, the Campus Community Committee of Student Senate and some faculty members of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences met Tuesday night to discuss a proposed resolution regarding the controversy surrounding the Pope Foundation.

The original resolution called for an open town hall meeting and for Student Government to offer an apology to the Pope Foundation on behalf of the faculty members who it believed insulted the foundation. Members of the University Affairs Committee discussed the bill and decided to strike out the apology clause. The Senate forwarded the bill to the Campus Community Committee.

Two students, apart from the sponsors of the bill, the committee members and some CHASS faculty members also attended the meeting.

Melissa Schumacher, a senior in electrical engineering and philosophy, said she attended the meeting because she felt strongly about the subject.

According to Schumacher, the first bill the committee brought into the meeting was inconsistent because “if you do not have enough information [to decide whether to accept money from the foundation], how can you make judgments?”

The faculty members at the meeting said they wanted to hear why the students were prompting the bill. They said they felt that parts of the bill were derogatory and should be removed, such as the intent “to explain gratuitously malicious commentary by University personnel.”

According to Cat Warren, associate professor and previous director of Women and Gender studies who attended the meeting, said she has been involved with the Pope Foundation since 2004 and objects to “the constant attacks on individual faculty” and “programs the Pope Foundation perceives as progressive.”

Greg Doucette, a student senator and a junior in computer science, was one of the bill’s sponsors and main advocate at the meeting.

According to Doucette, the reason for the bill was to get the faculty members to talk and if they had been up front with the students from the beginning, he would not have written it.

“Honestly, the silence from the administration really ticked me off,” he said. “At the end of the day, all of them are government officials. To stonewall the media was astounding to me. For all the talk of the ‘chilling effect’ this resolution has allegedly had, you’ll notice there’s been far more talk about the issue in the newspaper and elsewhere since then.”

Warren said when the faculty members tried to debate the issue, the backlash was unbearable at times and she even stepped down as the WGS director.

“When the faculty expressed their thoughts about this, the result was a full-fledged attack,” she said.

If the University accepts money from the foundation, Warren said, the foundation will pressure the University to cut programs the foundation sees as weak, such as WGS and Africana studies.

According to Warren, the Pope Foundation released research results, which were skewed, about the Women and Gender studies program and CHASS’s budget. Because she tried to correct the information at a Pope Foundation conference, she said the foundation condemned her and the faculty members who shared her views.

“The Pope Foundation is openly hostile to the kinds of programs Dr. Warren supports,” John Charles, English instructor and attendee of the meeting, said.

According to Charles, he agreed with Warren’s suspicions that no money is ever neutral, and the foundation will try to control the CHASS curricula if the college accepts money from it.

Warren said the remarks some of the faculty made, which the resolution mentioned, were taken out of context and were “short clips” of what the faculty members did say and were “drastic-sounding.”

“But, I actually stand by the factual part of that,” she said.

Scott Lassiter, freshman in political science, said he didn’t agree taking money from the foundation would have an effect on the curriculum.

“I understand the faculty’s concerns, but I don’t see how anything the Pope Foundation says affects what is taught at the University,” he said.

Lassiter was one of the sponsors of the bill and a committee member, who like Doucette, wanted to promote discussion.

“The [town hall meeting] debate is for everyone else who doesn’t know about what’s going on,” Doucette said.

Warren said she would not oppose the bill if it was only calling for a town hall meeting, but the wording of the bill was unacceptable to her.

“This resolution has had a chilling effect,” she said.

Doucette disagreed.

He said this is a topic the faculty members should have discussed with students, and he saw letters of outrage the faculty members submitted to different publications, but he doesn’t see the same type of anger for a tuition rise.

“It’s profoundly idiotic,” Doucette said.

According to Doucette, he does not like Art Pope, president of the foundation, any more than the faculty members do, especially because he said Pope was the reason Doucette was kicked out of the Republican Party for being “too liberal.”

“My trying to defend him should be saying something,” Doucette said.

After the faculty members left the meeting, members of the committee and the bill’s sponsors discussed changes they wanted to make to the bill before they introduced it to the Senate, including some of the wording and the complete removal of the apology clauses.

“I feel if I were a member of the faculty, I would look more favorably upon the bill now that any language of apology has been taken out,” Matt Haggard, senior in marketing and law and justice and chair of the committee, said.

Haggard said he believed the objective was to get the bill out to the Senate and that the committee fulfilled that objective.

Harrison Gilbert, a senior in political science and vice chair of the committee, said he was just as disappointed with the original bill as the sponsors were with the remarks about the Pope Foundation.

“The language of the bill was just as much an attack on the faculty as the resolution accused the faculty of being on the Pope Foundation,” Gilbert said.

Although Gilbert said he was impressed by the way his committee members handled themselves, he said he was embarrassed by the way Doucette addressed the faculty.

Gilbert said he is glad the committee made changes to the bill.

“If the bill was to go to the Senate floor, I would feel more comfortable in its revised form than the original,” he said.