Student leverage addressed at second open forum

About 30 students met with Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel and Dean of Students Harold “Pete” Goldsmith Monday evening for the second open forum meeting in the Indiana Memorial Union Persimmon Room.

Assistant Dean of Students Steve Veldkamp, who organized and moderated the meeting, said the two-part open forum meeting arose out of Robel’s and Goldsmith’s desire to listen to student concerns after various student groups voiced grievances at the Board of Trustees meeting April 12 and 13.

The first open forum meeting took place Friday afternoon at the same location.

At the trustees meeting, Veldkamp presented the opportunity to meet with administrators to protesters, as well as other students.

John Brown from the Board of Aeons and members of Union Board, the Residence Halls Association, the IU Student Association,and the Graduate and Professional Student Organization also attended the open forum, as did students unaffiliated with any formal student group.

Students tossed issues back and forth for the first half hour, wrestling with how to best bring about change within the University.

Grievances against the structure of the Board of Trustees and tuition hikes were aired, and the discussion focused mainly on how students can apply the leverage necessary to generate change.

In response, next year’s IUSA administration has arranged monthly “town hall” meetings to begin next fall, newly elected IUSA Vice President of Administration Pat  Courtney said.

“The University does move at a slow pace, but I think by having students that are persistent in certain issues, we can speed that pace up,” Courtney said. “Having these town hall meetings will get more reassurance on what is most important to the students. Our term is only a year long, so finding out quickly what impacts students the most will lead to more effective policy changes.”

Veldkamp said there are no plans to continue open forum meetings into the next academic year. The IUSA town hall meetings will serve a similar function, he said, unless he receives notification that students want more open forum meetings.

Courtney said that for now, student input from a suggestion box will be used to generate monthly agendas for the town hall meetings. Each meeting will have a theme, such as the rising cost of higher education.

“People who want to voice their opinions about that can come, and we’ll try to lay out some type of structure — ‘How can we move forward? How can we actually influence policies? Which administrators do we need to talk to?’” Courtney said. “We think that’s the most effective way to move forward, but we don’t want any student opinions to be left to themselves.”

Some students expressed concerns within the open forum that such a structure of communication won’t facilitate large policy changes.

However, Veldkamp said the reason a student trustee now sits on the Board of Trustees is because of an IUSA initiative from the mid-1970s that began with students dissatisfied with representation within the Board of Trustees. The position of student trustee is now written into state code, Veldkamp said, because of student activism on the Bloomington campus and other university campuses across Indiana.

Student Laura Douglas suggested a comprehensive guide so students with grievances can know how to go about directing their concerns.

Goldsmith said a former graduate student created a compendium of University committees so students could easily identify which sectors they need to address.

“We’re trying to locate that, update it and make it generally available,” Goldsmith said.

Also discussed was the possibility of forming a student committee to review the University budget to ensure transparency and act as a watchdog in regards to allocation of University funds. Goldsmith acknowledged the feasibility of such a committee, as the budget is available for public use.