Chaotic forum leads to large attendance, larger frustration

By Elizabeth Ody

News Editor



A snowballing of student frustration with the Administration came to a head this week as over 800 students, faculty and staff showed up to an open meeting in Crowell Concert Hall on Wednesday. While students’ specific concerns ranged from the future of WESU to student of color issues to financial aid, the unifying theme of the forum was that the Administration consistently fails to listen to student concerns in decision-making, and fails to make itself transparently accountable to students.

Administrators agreed to hold Wednesday’s forum in response to Tuesday’s protest and a letter from students given to President Doug Bennet on Tuesday.

Six administrators and six student volunteers sat onstage, while three student moderators controlled microphones on stage and at either side of the audience. Marcia Bromberg, Vice President for Finance and Administration, President Bennet, Peter Patton, Interim Dean of the College, Judith Brown, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Nancy Meislahn, Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, and Michael Benn, Interim Director of Affirmative Action sat on stage.

Early in the day on Wednesday, Dean of Student Services Mike Whaley and Dean of Campus Programs Richard Culliton met with Fielding Hon ’07, Liz Andrews ’05 and Marta Martinez ’05, representatives of protesting students, to discuss the format of the forum.

According to Whaley, the students presented the Deans with a document outlining the way students had agreed the meeting ought to be run, and then answered Whaley and Culliton’s questions.

“They said ‘this is how it’s going to run.’ We didn’t necessarily agree with the terms, but we went along with them anyway,” Whaley said.

According to Alix Strunk ’05, about 70 students met in the campus center at 11p.m. the night before, for at least two and a half hours, to come up with the terms of the forum as a group. While generating administrative response was also important, their main goal in outlining the forum, according to Strunk, was to create a space for all student voices to be heard by administrators.

“We were hoping the Administration could start to respond and set a date by which time they would respond,” Strunk said.

Racheal Maldonado ’05 opened the meeting by reading the agreed upon rules that students would have five minutes to explain the events leading up to the forum, and then Bennet would have five minutes to respond. There would then be 25 minutes of open mic time, during which students, faculty, staff and community members would be allowed to line up at a microphone to wait to speak. Bennet would then be able to respond to the concerns that were raised. Maldonado added that when the audience agreed with what was being said they should stand and face the stage, and when they disagreed they should stand and turn their backs to the stage.

Students spoke on a wide variety of topics during the open-mic section. A few of the concerns included mandatory diversity training for students, faculty and staff, the elimination of off-campus housing, better support systems for students of color and queer students, financial transparency, diversity, WESU, the RIDE and an increase in student workers’ wages and health insurance.

At the end of the open-mic section students unfurled two long banners of issues, with “yes” and “no” boxes next to each issue.

“We’re not going to respond on a yes or no basis to these issues. This is supposed to be a dialogue,” said Bennet.

Throughout the rest of the meeting several struggles ensued over who was in possession of the microphone and over what form administrators’ responses were allowed to take.

Patton briefly responded to concerns about the RIDE, the Queer Resource Center’s funding, gender-neutral housing and Wesleyan-community relations. Bromberg spoke briefly on financial aid, the University budget, off-campus housing and community relations.

At the end of the meeting Bennet agreed with students that the Administration would develop a response by Jan.19, the beginning of spring semester, and that within the next three days he would schedule another forum close to Jan. 19.

After the forum, however, Bennet announced that he was no longer willing to write a joint email with students to send to alumni, which was one of the original stipulations of Bennet’s agreement with protestors on Tuesday.

“Because the agreed upon rules of the forum were broken the Administration does not plan on sending any joint communication,” said Justin Harmon, Director of University Communications.

According to Harmon, rules of the forum broke down when certain students took the microphone away from Bennet during his response time, and insisted that he respond on a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ basis.

According to an anonymous student, who claimed to be present at the student meeting in which the forum rules were drafted, the only things that students did not tell the Administration about beforehand were that students would use a list of concerns and that they would ask Bennet for a proposal at the end of the forum.

On the document of forum rules, the last part of the event is listed as “Bennet’s response conclusion.” The anonymous student asserted that since no format of Bennet’s response was agreed to beforehand, students attempting to control the format of his responses does not count as a breach of understanding.

Harmon felt the forum was chaotic, poorly organized and did not result in any better understanding of students’ concerns.

“It seemed to make students feel better because it gave them a chance to vent, but it didn’t give us much that was useful so that we could actually give them what they said they wanted from us, which is a response,” Harmon said.

Many students felt similarly frustrated by the lack of results produced by the event.

“This was designed to be [Bennet’s] space to explain to us how those issues were going to be addressed or at least give a brief synopsis of how he would do that, but he refused to even go down the list,” said Ben Lake ’06.

“We didn’t have an opportunity to offer any substantive comments because we were being told, ‘answer us on our terms, which means yes or no,’” Harmon said.