University Times

Newly elected University Senate president Nathan Hershey hopes to recruit Pitt law students as volunteer legal advisers to the Senate.

Historically, Senate leaders occasionally have sought and received free legal advice from Pitt law professors. But recent issues — last year's debate over details of an early retirement incentive plan for tenured faculty; current negotiations between Pitt and UPMC Health System that could affect job duties and incomes of medical professors — convinced some Senate members that they need access to professional legal counsel from outside the University, to help protect faculty interests.

Hershey told Faculty Assembly July 7 that he's discussed with law professors the idea of employing one or two students per semester as unpaid clerks or consultants to the Senate (not academic interns, he noted), and that law faculty encouraged the idea.

"I don't know whether this is going to work, whether any law students are going to indicate interest in it," Hershey confided. But such work, he said, could provide students with a resume credit and experience that might help them land jobs at law firms with universities as clients.

Anthropology professor Leonard Plotnicov called Hershey's proposal "excellent" but said the Senate should make it clear that student advisers would be no substitute for professional outside counsel.

Nicholas Bircher, of the medical school, added: "I would underscore the point that sometimes you'll need a lot more help than a law student can reasonably be expected to provide." Bircher serves on the medical faculty committee that is monitoring the highly complex Pitt-UPMC negotiations. See story on page 1.

Senate secretary Douglas Metzler said University lawyers will always (and understandably) give the administration's interests priority over those of individual faculty members. Should the Senate need legal advice from outside professionals, Pitt should pay the bill, he argued.

"If the University administration takes the role of the Senate half as seriously as they ought to, they should provide the resources this organization needs to do what it needs to do," Metzler said.

But economics professor Jack Ochs opposed adopting a policy that would tend to identify administrators as "the University," with faculty seen as individuals separate from the administration or from Pitt.

"When faculty as a group think they're not getting the support they deserve, when they believe the University administration is not representing their interests, that calls for a vote of no confidence in the administration, not for independent legal counsel," Ochs said.

In the absence of general Assembly opposition to recruiting law students as Senate advisers, Hershey said he would pursue the idea.

— Bruce Steele