The following transcript was printed because of recent controversy surrounding articles published in the April 2 edition of The Reflector.
To read a more complete version of the sections of this transcript, visit The Reflector’s Web site.
The Reflector is not publishing transcripts to other candidates’ interviews because no other interview has been questioned. To hear a tape of any candidate’s interview, contact Wilson Boyd at 325-7905.
The following is excerpted from an interview conducted Wednesday, March 24, for an article published Friday, March 26. The interview was conducted by editor in chief Wilson Boyd. News editor Pam McTeer was also in the room.
McCullum: … Maybe the Number 1 thing I’m running on this year is the drop policy that we have.
Each year a president comes in and says “OK, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this, it’s going to be Bulldog Bash, we’re going to do academic forgiveness.”
My thing is going to be to extend the drop policy. Right now, we’re one of three schools in the SEC that has this drop policy that gives you only two weeks to drop your class. What I want to do is not move it all the way up to, like, the end of the semester or anything. We used to have a superdrop policy on this campus back in the early ’90s where each student was allowed two superdrops before they’re gone from this university. And that means that you can go up to the last day and decide you want to drop your class.
Well, I’m not even asking for that. I want to work with Dr. Lee and, um, the new vice president of student affairs, (Provost) Dr. Rabideau to make sure that we can do something. The students are paying to go to class here, they’re paying to go and sit in these classes and get their grades and I think we should treat them as an adult, so I want to extend that policy from two weeks.
We can make it go to four weeks, five weeks. But I think two weeks and then they give that “W,” that’s kind of stiff on you, so hopefully at the end of my administration everybody can say,”Well, you know what? He said he wanted to do this policy. He did it. And he also connected all of us as one. We’re pretty satisfied with what he did.”
Reflector: Correct me if I’m wrong, though. You ran on that platform last year. Is that correct?
McCullum: That’s right. I ran on that platform last year.
Reflector: Why wasn’t it accomplished this year?
McCullum: It wasn’t accomplished this year because as I said earlier (in the interview) that the president is the main policy person. All I can do this year is get a piece of legislation sent through the (SA) Senate. It has gone through the Senate. Now the next step is to go from the Senate up the administration. All I need to do is come in and take it up to my adminstrators.
Reflector: Well, did, uh, (SA President Josh) Blades veto it this year?
McCullum: There’s not a vetoing process. What it is, you have your academic forgiveness policy. Academic forgiveness kind of outweighed, definitely, an add/drop policy, so that went through first. It’s just, I mean, someone has to take the initiative to take it up and follow it on through.
Reflector: Hang on. I’m a little confused here. You say the legislation regarding the drop policy-did it or did it not go through the Senate?
McCullum: It has gone through the Senate.
Reflector: It was passed by the Senate?
McCullum: It has been passed by the Senate.
Reflector: And from there, what did Josh Blades do with it?
McCullum: From there, it goes to the… well, you see, our legislation goes to Claire Hardin, the secretary, and Josh. From there, it’s just distributed a lot ways. Several pieces of our legislation this year did not go anywhere. I mean, we don’t what happened. I mean, from there it’s supposed to go to Claire and Josh and they’re supposed to go about the steps of making sure it goes wherever it’s supposed to go. As far as the add/drop policy…
Reflector: Josh and Claire have to sign off on it. Josh has veto power…
McCullum: Nothing was vetoed this year. I can assure you of that. But it’s signed off after it’s sent to the different department. Now, the add/drop policy was sent off to, I guess, the dean’s council, which is Dr. Rabideau and all them. But as I said, when it goes to the different departments, they have to decide what’s more important-academic forgiveness was what was the main topic for this time.
The next excerpt is from an interview conducted Thursday, April 1, for articles published Friday, April 2. The interview was conducted by editor in chief Wilson Boyd. Reflector reporter Dustin Barnes, who covers the SA for this newspaper, was also in the room.
Reflector: Juan, the drop policy has become a big issue in the campaign. A lot of candidates have come out favoring it. This has been your campaign point for two years now. Can you talk about, again, what you did to address this during Senate last year?
McCullum: First I started to do research on it. I went back to find out how much information, the school had, if we’d ever had a drop policy or if it had always been two weeks. I found that we used to have a superdrop policy and that every student on campus was allowed two superdrops, which means you could go all the way to the last day of class and drop that class. You’re allowed that twice throughout your college career. This was like in the 1990s. That’s how I came up with my idea of wanting to do it.
This year I called around to different schools in the SEC to find out if they allowed their university to have this time frame of two weeks or one week or whatever. If you remember, we used to have more than one week to add and then it was extended. From that, I got with someone from the executive and judicial committees of the Senate and we worked out a plan for trying to implement it. From there, I went to the Dean’s Council because I sit on the Dean’s Council as VP. I wanted to get a poll from them as to how they feel on it. That’s when I was told the add policy, it won’t change because the teachers won’t be in favor of that because it would allow the student to keep picking up and picking up. In two weeks, that won’t happen. They told me that extending the drop time, that could be a good thing because, like I said, a lot of teachers don’t get adjusted for the first week.
I did the research, got a piece of legislation, sent it through. I think it got misinterpreted or Josh took it the wrong way or whatever because I went to him and talked to him about it. I wasn’t saying, like, he overthrew my whole decision of doing an add/drop policy. I was saying that we had academic forgiveness and we had, you know, Fall Break and all that going through at the same time. If we sent a lot of big bills, big resolutions through at the same time, they would probably all get sent back and tell us “OK, you guys need to revise or revamp and send them back through again.”
(Answer truncated. It deals with fall break and academic forgiveness.)
Reflector: You say that a bill authorizing an add/drop policy was passed by the Senate?
McCullum: A resolution.
Reflector: A resolution. When was that passed?
McCullum: It was in the fall semester. It wasn’t in the spring semester. It was sometime in the fall.
Reflector: OK. I ask you that because I went back and read every resolution passed that the SA has passed this year and nothing ever mentioned an add/drop policy.
McCullum: There was definitely an add/drop policy and I would go back and look again. I can’t produce it, but there was definitely one passed.
Reflector: Well, I wish you, uh, would go back and provide me with a copy of it because I went back through every bill and I also talked to SA Secretary Claire Hardin. She said it was never passed. Several senators have gone on record saying that the, uh, the bill was never introduced in the Senate, that it was never talked about and that it was never passed.
McCullum: I know for a fact, personally, it was. Like I said, I had someone else to help me on it. (unintelligible) I know definitely that we did get that passed.
(truncated)
Reflector: Several members of exec (the SA executive board, consisting of all elected executive officers and chiefs of staff and the executive assistants) have raised the issue of your attendance on the exec…
McCullum: Cabinet.
Reflector: Cabinet, whatever. Did you miss many meetings?
McCullum: I would say I attended 50 percent and then I missed 50 percent. Last semester, I did not have a class on Monday nights. This semester I have a class that goes from 6 to 9:30 and I let everyone know that. Cabinet meets every Monday night at 9 and they’re out by 10. Sometimes I was in my class until 10, so it was impossible for me to do it. And I missed class sometimes to do it. Financial management, it meets once a week and that’s it. You know, four times a month. And primarily my job is not to work or to be at a meeting for Cabinet. My job is to make sure that every Tuesday when we have a Senate meeting at 7, I’m rolling out, I’m there, I’m ready to go. And when it came down to it, I did it. My grandfather died back in January. I came away from my family on that Tuesday to be here to run my Senate meeting because I didn’t need anyone to run it for me. I wanted to be here.
As far as Cabinet is concerned, every time they had a meeting, I asked them to put minutes on my desk or something like that. I’m a student before anything else, Wilson. And I will go to class.
Reflector: You say that your attendance is not a problem, you attended during the fall semester …
McCullum: Right, right.
Reflector: What would you estimate the percentage of meetings that you attended?
McCullum: I attended the meetings that we had. If we had to be there, I went.
(truncated)
Reflector: There was no other way, you say that class was the only one offered?
McCullum: Oh yeah.
Reflector: Which class is it?
McCullum: Financial management.
Reflector: Do you have…
McCullum: Chuck Beauchamp. Financial management. Monday nights.
Reflector: To retread just a little bit, regarding the issue of the legislation, the add/drop policy being passed this year, will you provide The Reflector with a copy of that?
McCullum: Oh yeah. Claire keeps all pieces of the legislation and they should all be e-mailed to me. I try to keep every piece. I will definitely make sure I go to that office today and find that piece of legislation and bring it over here.
Editor’s note: McCullum has not given a copy of the add/drop policy legislation to The Reflector.
SA Secretary Claire Hardin and Sen. Jennifer Hermitz both told The Reflector that legislation regarding an add/drop policy was never passed by the Senate, or even addressed.
Hardin and Chief of Staff Kate McIntosh also said that McCullum had only been to one Cabinet meeting the entire year.
According to MSU’s master schedule, the financial management class mentioned by McCullum has two sections. The Monday night section runs from 6 p.m. until 7:50 p.m. with a lab from 8 p.m. to 8:50 p.m. The other section currently has 154 seats available and is held in McCool 125 from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m on Tuesdays and Thursdays.