‘Dialogue’ requires
honesty
By Connie Higgins-Beer
You all got the email from Doug Bennet on Tuesday, Dec. 7. And you may have
heard that students stayed at South College for four and a half hours until
Bennet agreed to hold the forum on Wednesday (not Monday the 13, as he proposed)
and mention the fact that the forum was the result of an action by over 250
students (which he did not want to include).
Another issue of contention was the question of who should receive the email.
Understandably, students at South College wanted it to be sent to alumni. Why
not? Shouldn’t we keep alumni informed about important events at Wesleyan?
Bennet and students finally reached an agreement: “The students and the
administration are committed to sending a joint report about the current
situation to the alumni by Wednesday, Dec. 15, if the text can be mutually
agreed upon.”
What you may not know is that on Thursday, Dec. 9, students sent an email to
Bennet asking to meet to draft this joint report, as per the agreement, and
suggesting some specific times. This was the response:
Dear [student who sent the email],
Thanks for following up. Because the agreed-upon rules of the forum were broken,
the administration does not plan to send any joint communication. I have asked
Dean Patton to work with the elected student leadership to structure the January
meeting. DB
So, no joint report to the alumni. No joint communication between students and
the (top level) administration.
Never mind that there were no “agreed-upon” rules, but rather a variety of
understandings as to how the forum would run. (As this was an open forum for
student concerns, it would have been impossible to get all the students to agree
to certain rules.)
Never mind that Bennet and the entire administration had as much time as anybody
else to speak during the open mic, and could express their opinions in the
meantime by standing up and/or turning around like everybody else in the room
was doing. (Note that none of the administrators on stage stood up in agreement
for any of the student concerns, even though this was a widely utilized
expression of opinion at the forum.)
Never mind that the agreement to send an e-mail to the alumni had NOTHING to do
with “agreed-upon” rules or anything that happened at the forum (see email
text), but was rather in response to negotiations in South College.
If this is how seriously Bennet and the senior administrators are going to take
their promises, then I think—though I hope not — that we might have problems
with the ensuing “dialogue.”
Higgins-Beer is a member of the Class of 2006.
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