For the second time in less than a year, the Baylor faculty senate has delivered a vote of no-confidence in president Robert Sloan, and the administration.

There are two different camps withing the Baylor faculty, those who see this vote as being representative of the entire faculty, and those who don't.

Just as there are diverging opinions among students on Baylor's campus, there are equally as diverging opinions of faculty -- especially when it comes to Baylor's leadership.

The Faculty Senate, Tuesday delivered a second vote of no confidence in the governance of Baylor.

The first no confidence vote came back in September after a turbulent summer for the university.

Douglas Henry says, "I think it has been demonstrated amply over the last year that we have a faculty that's divided about the future of the university."

The Baylor Faculty Senate is democratically elected by the faculty, but despite that, Baylor professor Douglas Henry believes it doesn't speak for everybody.

In part, he says, because they routinely engage in meetings that aren't in the public forum.

"Unlike faculty senates in alot of places, they hold private meetings. They don't generally publish their agendas in advance. There's not opportunity for the rest of us to sit in on the meetings or participate in the deliberations," says Henry.

Joe Cox is the chair of the faculty senate. He says the body has operated the same way for the past twenty years, and it's worked just fine. Just like other organizations, like the Board of Regents, and Council of Deans, the faculty senate goes into executive session to discuss key issues.

And if that's not enough, Cox says, the faculty senate is democratically elected.

"We're are the elected representative body. Last year when they did the election in March of 2003 that produced this class of senators, or at least a third of this class of senators, over half the faculty voted this last year we had a sixty-two percent. It would be hard to find a university in America that has a higher vote percentage that what we have at Baylor University," says Cox.

The faculty senate went one step further than they did last September. By a vote of 32 to 1, senators want the Board of Regents of approve a faculty referendum if Sloan is still president this fall. That means the faculty would vote on on Sloan's leadership.

Cox says the idea was simply that the faculty senate was being broad brushed, as a non-representative body. A vote, he says, would clear up any confusion.

"Have somebody have a referendum. And the question was do you want Robert Sloan to be president of Baylor University? Yes or no? Let's see if we're not representative or we are representative," says Cox.

Henry says, "I think this latest vote simply confirms what we found last fall. That there are some among our numbers that are not happy about the direction of the university. But it remains the case that many of us are really excited about it and have been looking forward to a return of civility and good will and hard work."

The faculty senate has no actual authority over Sloan's employment, but they will forward its recommendation to the 36 member Board of Regents -- which opens two days of meetings next week.