Administration, Faculty, and Students

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the late posting--I had a busy day of class, debates, getting a run in Audubon park in to relieve some stress (I was blaring the new Arcade Fire), Greek Week Airband (I loved the AXO "Walk it Out" and the Rick James) and talking to freshmen. Phew. But I'm feeling energetic because I've been talking to a lot of different students on campus about my platform, and I've been getting very energetic feedback.

First things first--Here's a quick Maroon article about my candidacy. I thought the articles on the candidates were nice and generally positive, though I would have enjoyed a roundtable with all the candidates so that we could duke it out. There is also a podcast of the candidates up here. Bob, leading the way into 21st-century campaigning.

I'd like to write about one question that came up today at the debate, and that I thought would be interesting for everyone to read about (this isn't exact wording, but it's close):
"The Board of Trustees and Administration have recently begun devoting more of their attention to the faculty on academic issues. How can the President of SGA make sure that students gain back the focus of the Board and Administration?"

I'm going to post a pretty similar answer to how I answered the question today.
First, let me give you the context of this question: Pathways. Pathways cut off the relationship between faculty and administration, and for a period of time between students and administration. Because of the actuality and threats of no confidence votes, the Board and Administration have devoted more of their time on the major planning/academic committees to working with the faculty. SGA has gotten kicked out of Board of Trustees meetings multiple times this year so that they could discuss faculty issues--including me and fellow Academic representative Casey Trahan.
Now to the actual question at hand--"How can the President of SGA make sure that students gain back the focus of the Board and Administration?" The answer, unfortunately, is not as easy as "The SGA President needs to promote unity with the faculty." Unity sounds great in theory--we'll all be happy, friendly, and dancing with our Economics professors to a brass band in the Quad.
I'm all for dancing. Especially to brass music.
But unity is not the policy that best represents student interests. Instead, the SGA President must work through each issue on an individual basis in order to see where student interests line up with the interests of faculty or of administration, and then cultivate those relationships in order to get results for students. For example, on the issue of tuition increases--which faculty often advocate for, because they get raises--then SGA should disagree with faculty, in order to represent the student voice.
Effective representation of students means precisely that we do not always have unity. There will be disagreements. But in order to make those disagreements into positives for students, the President needs to be willing to negotiate out positive solutions, on issues from tuition increases to Common Curriculum reform to increased service learning.

That answer was a little hard to give in the debates. The reality of the faculty- administration- student relationships is much more subtle than a soundbite in a debate allows for. But I think the students in the room gained a sense of the reality of the situation.

I hope you did from by post--and if you didn't, or if you disagree, please say something! Send me an email, post on the blog, call me, throw rotten eggs at my window. Well, don't throw eggs. But I love sitting down with people and talking about this--so let's get into it.

Thanks all--see you tomorrow out at Third Friday with Green Abita! Yes.

p.s. new chris rose article dropped Tuesday, go out and donate.

Bob Payne