Whereas some forms of distance education may require higher costs for users (students) because of costs like cable fees, telecommunication linkages and charges, investments and/or rentals of appropriate technological equipment and/or products, and
Whereas these increased costs may in fact prohibit access of some students to the services and/or courses they have a right to, and
Whereas the Board of Governors and the legislature have declared their commitment to equal access as well as to the necessity for increasing both access and the success rates of underrepresented students, and
Whereas each college has been mandated to complete a Student Equity Plan to demonstrate its intention to address the goals of increasing access and success of underrepresented students,
Resolved that the Academic Senate direct the President to direct the representatives on the distance learning taskforce to seek the following requirements:
1. That each new course proposal a college develops under the new Distance Education Regulations be required to describe how the proposal will positively impact the colleges' adopted Student Equity Plan as well as to identify how the college intends to collect and report data for the Chancellor's 1999 report to the Board of Governors on the evaluation of distance learning, and
2. That each college develop as part of its proposal provisions on how the college will accommodate students who can demonstrate that they will be denied access to services and/or courses which are offered exclusively by Distance Learning.