 "Photo: N/A")
LIVE—College Center MPR
Discussion with President Catharine Bond Hill: "We have a very special guest tonight," joked Jimmy Kelly. "The other President of Vassar College." Hill immediately invited questions from the Council.
Read the full article on Hill's visit to Council.
The first question, from Terrace Apartments, asked why English alumnae/i have not been very understanding of the reductions. They are "living in some alternate universe that I frankly don't really understand," said Hill, who continued to explain the specific scheduling situation of the Department and the difficulties being faced by other departments and programs across campus. "The English Department went immediately to the Facebook group about silencing writers. And that's too bad, because it hurts Vassar in the wider world. It's unfortunate, because if a perspective student sees that Web page, they may decide to go to Wesleyan or someplace else." Hill believes that "individual departments must work together with us for everyone's benefit."
Class of 2011 asked about the efforts going toward restructuring administrative offices. According to Hill, the faculty and administration have grown more rapidly in the past decade than the general staff. "As we go to find places to get the budget under control, we're thinking that it's going to be equal percentage cuts on both sides [of faculty and administration]." She noted that Chris Roellke was trying to be very open, though "sometimes, it's hard to hold open discussions about restructuring while you have people sitting in those jobs."
Strong House asked about financial aid. "I'm hopeful that [next year's class] fit into our financial aid budget. I hope that the class comes in at a reasonable level this May. We just don't know yet," she said. "If 80, 90 percent of the class needed financial aid, we wouldn't—that wouldn't be sustainable."
The Council discussed the problem of communication, disseminating correct information. "The best thing to do with a rumor is to ask," said Hill. "If there's a rumor that's bothering you, just ask."
VP for Student Life, however, felt that it was difficult to find correct committee chairs in order to ask direct questions. "I think we as a College could do a better job of distributing minutes and who the chairs are," he said. But Hill felt that this would "not be the best use of people's time," especially given the sheet number of commttee meetings. She indicated that it might be a burden on staff to create detailed minutes of each meeting.
Main House asked Hill about doing more house meetings this semester, which she agreed to talk to the Dean of the College about.
President Hill's portion of the meeting ended at 7:45 p.m.
VP for Student Life: FAST brings faculty, administrators, and students into the Mug. April 1, 4:30 p.m.
President: Brewer Bash ‘09. "It will be an awesome few days of Brewer Spirit in the days leading up to Founder's Day," said Kelly. "It's a wonderful sign that we can still have wonderful times at Vassar, despite the economy."
CIRC Committee Report: Vassar is not directly invested in very many companies, mostly hedge funds and broad-range funds.
Student Athlete Advisory Committee: Committee works to give voice to student athletes.
Change to VSA Bylaws Regarding Organization Certification: The amendments will change the fund to which new organizations have access, which will be the newly created New Organizations fund, the process by which an organization gets certified, and the privileges of VSA organizations.
VP for Finance: The rationale for changing the funding for new organizations is that the way funds are set is based on the number of organizations that already exist.
These amendments will be voted upon next week.
Note: Comments are paraphrasing of the discussion, except for text in quotation marks, which are verbatim quotes. Only summaries of the discussion by members of the VSA Council are included. Note that financial allocations are not included here, although this information is available under meeting minutes at vsa.vassar.edu.
2 comments