Students address trustees following Thursday protest

After protests erupted Thursday, the IU Board of Trustees convened Friday morning for the second day of meetings with few interruptions.

“If we identified (people) as being part of the disturbance from yesterday, we didn’t permit them to go in today,” IU Police Department Captain Thomas Lee said.

Students from Coal Free IU staged a quiet demonstration in the Indiana Memorial Union Frangipani Room, in which members sat in the front row of the visitor seating area holding signs with images of coal-related issues.

Representatives from the Hudson and Holland Scholars Program also attended after an unsuccessful attempt to speak with trustees Thursday.

In the academic affairs and university polices committee report, trustees discussed the New Directions in Teaching and Learning initiative with Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel, Executive Vice President for University Regional Affairs, Planning and Policy John Applegate and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis Chancellor Charles Bantz.

Trustees said it was important to cut costs for students, especially when higher education institutions such as University of Phoenix can offer degree completion for students at a lower cost. The group discussed how to balance cutting the costs education with maintaining a high-quality research program within the University.

“We need to understand what happens to the research mission of campuses when you have a model that is squeezing away all the places in which you generate the resources to support research,” Robel said.

Robel also spoke about the possibility of applying the model of the eText initiative to general education requirements as an instrument for cost reduction.

During a brief recess, Trustee Patrick Shoulders addressed the representatives from Coal Free IU.

“I want to salute the Beyond Coal (Coal Free IU) people for bringing their message forward,” he said. “To get that message across depends upon mutual respect.”

Shoulders invited the students to the front of the room to speak with the trustees.

The representatives from Hudson and Holland also met with Trustees Mary Ellen Bishop and Cora Griffin.

President of Coal Free IU Megan Anderson said the storyboard demonstration told the story of coal use and included an image of the coal mine from which IU gets its coal and an image of a pregnant woman to signify the threat of mercury, found in coal, to healthy pregnancies. The final image in the presentation showed the solar panels at the IMU, which Anderson said was the way they wanted to end their story.

“We have some serious issues that we need to confront . . . but we have a beautiful opportunity to move to a clean energy future,” she said.

Anderson said the group was pleased with the trustees’ response, and they left a letter and an information packet for them.

“We think they do have our best interest in mind,” she said. “They were positive about letting us speak and the experience was great on both sides.”

During the second half of the meeting, the introduction of IU Student Association’s new president, Kyle Straub, was briefly interrupted when IU police officers escorted a man out of the Frangipani room. A few moments later, another man was escorted from the room.

Lee said the men were identified as participants in Thursday’s protest, and officers escorted them out of the room when they began disrobing.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the trustees agreed to engage in an ongoing discussion about student debt and will study methods of debt management and minimization.