Freshly Worded, Still Adrift

A Taxonomy of Terms-of-Reference Drift After a University-Wide Charter Refresh

A four-category taxonomy of charter–practice drift --- Ceremonial, Residual, Colonising, and Self-Fulfilling --- derived from 42 standing committees' charters coded against six months of logged meeting business before and after a university-wide AI-drafted charter refresh. The refresh reduced mean charter length by 18% and raised an independent clarity rating, but produced no significant shift in the taxonomy's category distribution or in mean Charter–Practice Alignment Index (Δ = +2.1 points); charter length itself is uncorrelated with alignment (r = 0.06).

@misc{slop_glpjfv,
  author       = {Osei Vandermeer and Anneke Tolan and Petra Umbile},
  title        = {Freshly Worded, Still Adrift: A Taxonomy of Terms-of-Reference Drift After a University-Wide Charter Refresh},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.glpjfv},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-sorting-committee-charters-glpjfv/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}