At present, the Student Life Committee meets with AAS designated student representatives at three of the four Board of Trustees meetings that take place during a given year. While there is undoubtedly room for debate on whether or not the currently allotted amount of time (essentially, three hours per year) for these discussions is adequate to their importance, it is certainly unacceptable that they be cut by at least an hour. This, however, is what would happen if the Board moves half of its meetings away from Amherst without making accommodations for additional conversations between the Student Life Committee and the representatives of the College’s student community. At present, no such accommodations have so far been made.
To prevent a situation from arising that, as Senator Chase Tannenbaum ’09 warned, would “severely compromise the student body’s ability to implement its priorities,” we would suggest certain relatively easy ways in which the trustees can continue meeting satisfactorily with students while not undermining their fundraising efforts among the alumni.
One option worth considering is to lengthen the meetings of the Student Life Committee when the Board comes to Amherst from one to two hours, giving student representatives the opportunity for more comprehensive, if less frequent, discussions with the trustees. Another, perhaps even better one would be to have a few additional meetings per year of the Student Life Committee at the College, at least while the full Board of Trustees meetings continue to travel. Indeed, this might be something the Board should consider implementing permanently, on the principle that the more face time students get with members of the College’s most important deliberative body, the better.
Even if the members of the Student Life Committee would rather not commit to longer or additional meetings at Amherst, there are other options that, if followed, would have much the same effect. Certainly, student representatives and the Committee on Student Life could communicate by conference call or videoconferencing, regardless of where the Board was having its meeting. The Board might also want to consider providing student representatives with transport to and accommodations at the sites of the off-campus meetings. Not only would the Student Life Committee be able to meet with students as normal, alumni would also get the benefit of hearing the perspectives of current Amherst students, which might benefit the capital campaign and strengthen student-alumni ties.
We do not impute any sinister motives onto the Board of Trustees for the fact that a solution to this problem has not yet materialized. We believe that the trustees in general, and the Student Life Committee in particular, value their meetings with representatives of the student body. We are confident that a practical way forward will be found, and hope that the amount of time spent by students meeting with the Student Life Committee can even be increased in the coming years. However, we think that the current absence of such an arrangement is feeding a perception among students and student leaders that the trustees are detached from student problems. Thus, we urge the Board of Trustees to work with the AAS to ensure that the views of Amherst students are adequately articulated to the trustees over the next couple of years, and to do so quickly.