The current outline of the expansion proposal would have the ACC divide into two permanent divisions that would remain firm for all sports. The News and Observer reported this week that ACC sources said the alignment would divide the four North Carolina schools, with Duke and UNC in one division and N.C. State and Wake Forest in the other. Other reports indicated that ACC officials were revisiting that proposal because of the concerns raised about it.

In raising these issues, Keohane put Duke alongside the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its chancellor James Moeser in raising serious concerns about the expansion effort. According to ACC bylaws, expansion requires the votes of seven of the nine conference schools. Support for expansion from the University of Virginia is also unclear since the governor and other political leaders in that state have voiced strong concerns about the potential impact on Virginia Tech, a Big East member.

Proponents of ACC expansion say it will keep the conference strong financially for many years, and failure to expand could cost it millions of dollars in lost revenue, particularly from football. Proponents note that the changing structure of the football bowl system benefits the strongest conferences, so adding three national football powers from the Big East would keep the ACC among football's elite.

Earlier, Duke's Executive Committee of the Academic Council (ECAC) raised many of the same issues as did Keohane when it called for a vote on ACC expansion to be postponed until faculty members at the ACC schools had a chance to voice their opinion.

Academic Council Chair Dr. Nancy Allen said faculty members feared the expansion talks were proceeding without consideration of the academic consequences for both the institutions and student-athletes. In addition, Allen said, faculty members felt they were left out of the discussions in violation of normal university governing procedures.

"The Duke faculty is particularly concerned about the process that has led to the proposed expansion of the ACC -- a process in which faculty input was severely limited due to constraints imposed by the business model employed by the ACC," the ECAC statement said. "We question whether a full array of legitimate educational concerns was considered and whether there is any compelling motivation for expansion. Having been denied access to much of the pertinent data and having had no opportunity to study the expansion issue, we cannot endorse the proposal to expand the ACC."

Allen noted that Professor Kathleen Smith, the faculty representative from Duke to the ACC, knew of the expansion talks in advance but was prohibited from sharing that information by a gag order. ACC officials said the gag order was necessary to prevent sensitive discussions from becoming public too early.

"The idea of placing gag orders on faculty members on important issues is not the way we want to operate," Allen said.

The resolution was shared with the chairs of the faculty council at the other ACC schools, Allen said.

"The entire process wasn't done with proper faculty consultation," she said. "I have some hope that we can slow this down to allow faculty to have a voice in the matter, but even if we don't, we want to ensure that a process is put in place so that the next time these kinds of matters arise, faculty get to be heard early on in the discussions."

Allen, like Keohane, also noted there were issues of collegiality involved. Her father went to Virginia Tech, and she said she would "feel badly if this goes forward and ends up hurting peer institutions."