News of a committee commissioned by President Marx, the Committee on Academic Priorities (CAP), has begun circulating, and before long CAP will begin meeting. The overarching aim of CAP is to give Amherst institutional direction in the years to come. Issues such as class size, socioeconomic diversity and faculty diversity have been mentioned as possible targets for CAP, and there will certainly be others as the committee's agenda develops. Today, however, we would like to address the composition of CAP and the way in which it should interact with the rest of the College community.

President Marx charged AAS President Ryan Park with selecting one person from the student body to serve on the committee. Instead of picking someone himself, Park made the responsible decision to bring the issue to the AAS. They asked him to go back and request that an additional student be added to the committee. We commend President Marx for responding to this request, and would like to see this as the beginning of a very positive and respectful dialogue between students, faculty, staff and the administration throughout this entire process. Through the appointment of these two students, the administration has sent a message-they want us to be involved. This is what we have been asking for, so let's appreciate that the administration wants to work with us and not ignore the responsibility that this entails.

It is important that the committee communicates with the community at large in order to encourage feedback and participation. We applaud President Marx's campus wide e-mail announcing the committee, and encourage the committee to stay in touch with the community through e-mail updates and by holding open meetings whenever possible. Community dialogue is crucial to making this a successful process, and this dialogue should be initiated from the very first stages.

Finally, we encourage the committee to take into account what it has learned at open meetings, community-wide feedback and surveys in order to make informed decisions. The College has recently hired a new director of institutional research; we should take advantage of this as well. Only through a combination of informal discussion and more structured research will this committee of 12 people get an idea of exactly what we want Amherst to be, and how to guide it towards this goal.