EDWARDSVILLE - A Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor who believes in the power of petitions signed by faculty members here will present his latest one - calling for separation of SIUE from SIUC -Thursday before the SIUE faculty senate committee.

"They may endorse it. They might adopt it with different language," SIUE philosophy professor Robert Ware said about the 50-member faculty senate committee, which will meet at 2:30 p.m. Thursday in the Mississippi-Illinois Room at Morris University Center.

Ware has been outspoken concerning the plagiarism cloud hovering over SIUC this fall term compounded early by allegations that SIU President Glenn Poshard used copy not his own and improper citations in his 1984 doctoral thesis.

The SIU Board of Trustees unanimously accepted a faculty review panel's recommendation last week that allows Poshard to make the necessary corrections on his thesis, publicly apologize for his mistakes and work to improve academic integrity at SIUC.

Poshard, a longtime SIU official and former Congressman, emerged from the review with his academic degrees from SIUC and his current university president status intact.

"This has come up as a result of Poshard. Many faculty members here are shocked at the board's action. We need to express in a powerful way that we're not going down with Glenn Poshard," said Ware, who had circulated a petition weeks earlier among SIUE faculty calling for an outside review panel to be assigned the case.

Ware said his outrage was centered directly on the Poshard plagiarism allegations, but as he spoke more and more with his colleagues, he found a growing sentiment that the campuses should separate themselves.

"SIUE is being held back by SIUC. We can't expand our degree programs. We can't expand our housing," Ware said.

SIU spokesman Dave Gross said the notion to separate the two universities is not new.

A bill introduced in the Illinois Legislature in 2004 by Rep. Tom Holbrook, D-Belleville, calling for a separation of the two universities did not gain much steam, Gross said.

Poshard has met with Holbrook since to address the representative's concerns and show that SIU as a single entity had greater lobbying power on the floors of the state House and Senate, Gross said.

"It's been put to bed more than two years ago. There's just not enough legislative interest. This is truly a case of the sum of its parts is greater than its whole," Gross said.

scott.fitzgerald@thesouthern.com

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