Working groups debate report's thoroughness

As the Commission on Strengthening the Community awaits the University's response to its preliminary report, members of the Commission's four working groups discussed the plan's formulation with mixed feelings. The four working groups -- faculty-student-staff interaction, judicial policy, communication and student life -- spent months interviewing University community members and conducting a telephone survey to complete and confirm their research. Earlier this month, they reported their findings to the entire Commission, which combined them into its preliminary report. One undergraduate student and one graduate student participated on each committee, along with several other faculty and staff members. School of Arts and Sciences graduate student Karen Schiff, a member of the student-faculty-staff interaction committee, said Monday night that she is concerned because the report does not specifically address graduate students' concerns. "Everyone was looking at undergraduate education and residential situations with undergrad dorms," she said. "No one was looking at grad housing or other graduate concerns." According to Schiff, issues of insurance, taxes, library hours and teaching assistant guidelines were not directly or fully addressed in the report. "TA guidelines?have to do with faculty-student interaction -- my group -- and we didn't really talk about it," Schiff said. She added that the process in preparing the report was "slow" and "bureaucratic." "The effects of it will come really slowly, but that's just the way it is," she said. "It makes me a little sad to see people who really want things to be better being frustrated by [the bureaucracy]." Schiff said consultation with the University community had positive and negative aspects to it. "To the Commission's credit, they had people go to all different groups to get every perspective and tried to combine the top-down and bottom-up approaches," she said. Schiff added, though, that she was upset that the telephone survey did not initially include students from the Medical or Veterinary Schools. Donna Samuel, the manager of the Executive Master of Science in Engineering Program, also participated on the faculty-students-staff interaction committee. She described her experiences as "very positive." "It was a worthwhile effort," she said. "I think the report had good suggestions in it which the University community can benefit from." Samuel said she hopes to be involved in the next steps of the process, as well. "I hope it will be an ongoing process so the important issues will be continually discussed," she said. "I hope I will be really involved in that process." College sophomore Michael Nadel, the undergraduate representative on the communication committee, elaborated on the issue of student involvement in the Commission. "The Commission report would have been more legitimate if there was more student involvement," he said. "No one has ever given a good reason as to why there was only one student on the main committee." Despite this concern, Nadel said his committee's contributions were very positive. "On the whole I was very happy with the way my work-group worked," he said. "A lot of good ideas came from our work-group such as the idea of random freshman housing?the compromise of putting off freshman rush to second semester or sophomore year?. [and] accepting the University Council's idea to have the 24-hour bookstore/coffeehouse." Nadel added that the communication working group wants the entire University community to have easy access to the report. "I want it printed up in a more accessible format than just in the Almanac so that all students and faculty can debate the issue," he said. "How can you have that kind of debate if it's only published in the Almanac?" Ancil George, director of the Rosengarten Reserve Room and a member of the communication working group voiced some concern about the attendance of his committee's members. "Some people weren't able to attend all the meetings," he said. "I even missed a couple of meetings which I wish I could have attended. "It would have been better to have the input of everybody all the time," George added. On the whole, though, George said he was generally "impressed" with the group. College junior Beth Hirschfelder, the undergraduate representative on the judicial policy working group, said she hopes the report will destigmatize the judicial system. "We made recommendations regarding policies and procedures and the Code on Academic Integrity," she said. "We wanted to make the system more user-friendly and I hope that some of the recommendations will take the stigma off of the judicial system." Hirschfelder said she considered working with the Commission an "enjoyable" learning experience. "It's always interesting to get a different perspective on things that are ongoing on throughout the University and how other people perceive the events," she said. "Things [came] to light that aren't necessarily positive, but we tried to remedy those things so it made the experience even that much more positive," Hirschfelder added. The student members of the working groups will not be involved in the development of the final report, Schiff said.