Fagin, Lazerson anxious to review Commission plan

Hope to implement proposals soon As the Commission on Strengthening the Community prepares to finalize its preliminary report during a retreat this weekend, Interim President Claire Fagin and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson said yesterday they are anxious to hear what the Commission has to say. Both Lazerson and Fagin said they do not know the Commission's findings and have not seen a draft of the preliminary report which has been distributed to members of the Commission's four working groups – student life, judicial policy, faculty-student relations and communication. But Fagin said she respected and trusted the Commission members and would wait to hear what they have to say during Wednesday's University Council meeting, when Commission Chairperson and University Board of Trustees Vice Chairperson Gloria Chisum is expected to present some of the report's details. Formed by Fagin and former University President Sheldon Hackney in the wake of last spring's 'water buffalo' incident and Daily Pennsylvanian confiscation, the Commission is a 17-member committee made up of University Trustees, faculty, staff and students. It is charged with discovering ways of promoting a community "in which all members may learn from and be enriched by their similarities, and their differences, and in which the free exchange of ideas may flourish." "The Commission was my idea from day one," Fagin said. "I talked to [Hackney] and told him I thought we should appoint a blue-ribbon panel to strengthen the community and he said he was thinking the exact same thing." Fagin and Lazerson predicted that the Commission's recommendations will be able to be classified into different categories, based on how they will be implemented. Some recommendations can probably be implemented immediately by "administrative edict" or simple administrative discussions, Lazerson said. These might include recommendations concerning inter-staff relations. Other recommendations will need more discussion by the community through either the offices of the provost or the vice provost for University Life, Fagin said. She said the time frame for implementing these suggestions would be longer, adding that some might not be adopted. Still, other Commission recommendations and findings may go to committees whose work has been on hold awaiting the report. These would include the Committee on Pluralism and the Committee for Judicial Reform, which is currently being formed. Finally, some recommendations may duplicate or parallel work already in progress by various University offices and committees. The issue of undergraduate housing, for instance, is already being discussed by the VPUL's office, Fagin said. To dispel doubts that the Commission's suggestions will be ignored or delayed indefinitely by controversy and committee discussion, Fagin said she will be appointing someone from her office sometime next week to coordinate implementation of the ideas. While acknowledging the Commission's report may create a great deal of controversy on campus, Fagin said she was "very excited" about what it may say. Lazerson said he wanted to urge people to look not only at the Commission's recommendations, but at the findings on which the recommendations are based as well. The Commission's findings will be "mirrors over our whole experience" at the University, he added. "Never has such a group talked to so many people and so many groups about what life on campus is like," Lazerson said. "It's not just the recommendations that matter. You don't know a book if you just read the last chapter." While Fagin wants to begin implementing as many of the report's recommendations as are feasible before her term ends in June, Lazerson is more cautious. "I don't put too much emphasis on the time line series of stuff," he said. "Some of what the Commission may do we are already doing or we are already moving to do." The Commission's retreat is being held at Sugarloaf, a secluded University-owned compound in affluent Chestnut Hill, located in the extreme northwest of Philadelphia. Here the members will combine the working group reports and their preliminary draft into a final preliminary report.