Open Letter to Doug
Bennet
By Bay Love, Axzyr DeLeon, Ana Weibgen, Tito Soto-Carrion, Ana Portilla and
Marta Martinez
Dear President Bennet,
We are writing to address your response to Zach Goldstein that, “Because the
agreed-upon rules of the forum were broken, the administration does not plan to
send any joint communication” to alumni. First of all, the agreement to send a
joint communication was never dependent in any way on the success or failure of
yesterday’s forum. The terms to which you and the 250 or so students who
assembled in your office agreed were that a joint communication to alumni would
be sent if the wording of such a communication could be agreed upon. I quote the
statement you made in the e-mail you sent to the entire Wesleyan campus: “The
students and the administration are committed to sending a joint report about
the current situation to the alumni by Wednesday, December 15, if the text can
be mutually agreed upon.” To insist now that you have the right to go back on
that statement merely because the forum did not go entirely as you had expected
is simply in bad faith.
Second, while we are the first to acknowledge that the last thirty minutes of
the forum were somewhat chaotic, we object to your assertion that we broke the
“agreed-upon rules” of the forum. A group of students met at noon on the day of
the forum to discuss its format, and we mutually agreed upon guidelines that
were later accepted by members of the administration with whom several students
conferred before the forum. One of the terms on which all agreed was that you
would be given a chance to “respond.” Unfortunately for all concerned, the exact
nature of this response was left unspecified, which resulted in differing
interpretations and disorder. The understanding of many of the students involved
was that you would be given an opportunity to give brief, specific responses to
each of the issues and demands voiced by members of the community during the
forum—to respond, in other words, to each of the demands as they were read off
of the list. We had then planned to allow you to respond however you wished
after we read our request for the proposal you agreed to present this community
on January 19th. We did not give you advance notice of the fact that we would be
making this request - a fact that may have resulted in your mistaken impression
that we were not going to allow you to speak at all - because we wanted our
question to be asked and answered in the presence of the entire Wesleyan
community, not behind closed doors. Nonetheless, you were promised, and were
given, an opportunity to respond, and to insist that you were “silenced” or that
we broke the rules of engagement is wrong.
We have also received notice that Dean Patton intends to “work with the elected
student leadership to structure the January meeting.” However, yesterday’s forum
was a result of the fact that many members of this community do not feel that
existing avenues for change - including the WSA - are adequate. It is
unacceptable that you would bypass the voices of the hundreds of students and
community members who showed up at the forum yesterday and worked so hard to
bring it about in favor of yet another closed-door negotiation with the WSA.
Regards,
Bay Love, Axzyr DeLeon, Ana Weibgen, Tito Soto-Carrion, Ana Portilla and Marta
Martinez
Love and Weibgen are members of the Class of 2005. Portilla, Soto-Carrion and De
Leon are members of the Class of 2007.
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