AT a school where student self-governance is encouraged, where academic dialogue thrives and where history continues to be re-written, it comes as no surprise that the voting status of the student member of the Board of Visitors regularly is debated among students and faculty alike. Though I do not claim great legislative knowledge or particular University administrative expertise, I do have 10 months of experience working closely with the Board and with a wide variety of student groups. I feel that this experience gives merit to my opinion on this issue. In the last year, each conversation, each committee meeting and each full Board session has convinced me that granting the student member voting status is neither appropriate nor necessary.
What the student member ultimately needs most, and what I have so thankfully found, is a voice. And this voice can be stronger than any vote.
According to "The Manual of the Board of Visitors," this governing body is "composed of sixteen members, appointed by the Governor, subject by the Senate and the House of Delegates of Virginia, for terms of four years." Within this appointment, each member serves as an educational policymaker, as a vehicle for upholding University traditions, as a visionary, as a financial advisor, as a faculty employer, as a student supporter and as an heir to the Jeffersonian ideals that our school was founded upon. The Board members are tied intimately to the University, and the creation of a non-voting student position came as an effort to strengthen these links to current students.
In 1983, the General Assembly gave the Commonwealth's public universities the opportunity to select a student member to serve on their Boards, and the University responded immediately. In recent years, the General Assembly has made the student position a mandate for every state school, but the voting status has not changed - and for good reason.
As the student member of the Board, I am not a policymaker. I am not a higher education administrator. I have never hired University employees, professors or deans. I have neither managed my own business nor a large teaching hospital. I have not seen the ebb and flow of desegregation, co-education and political change. I have no alumni status, no postgraduate involvement, no job experience to speak of. No governor would appoint me. I am not yet qualified to decide University policy or determine faculty hiring. Therefore, state law forbids me from voting on such matters, as it should. But the same governing body that is qualified to make these decisions also invites me to join their discussion.
"You have the opportunity to be the most influential member on this Board," the rector told me before my first meeting last spring. I struggled to believe him. As an anxious undergraduate, feeling the unfamiliarity of the Rotunda board room around me, the pressure of the microphone before me, and the false adulthood of my starched suit, I searched for my role on the Board. It soon found me.
During my first Student Affairs Committee meeting, one Board member called out across the long table, "Sasha, give us the real story on this one." I answered the question on athletics candidly, before I had a chance to hear the microphone's echo or shy away from the reporter's pen. Before I knew it, I was called upon again: "What do the students feel about this?" And then later, "What can we do to respond?"
The Board members spoke to me as a peer, with eagerness and anticipation, seeking advice more than a vote. They wanted the full range of student opinion, not one decisive comment. I felt the pressure lift as I was encouraged to step out of my perspective and instead had the opportunity to portray the diverse concerns of the entire student body. I found my role at that meeting; I was to be a voice.
In the last ten months, this voice has grown and changed. It grows through late night Lawn room brainstorm sessions with the Student Council President, through honor educator programs around Grounds, and through University forums like "Reflections on Complexions" where I must listen closely so I can better convey issues to the Board. My non-voting status demands that my voice is not the "yes" or "no" of a single student, but rather the questions and concerns of an entire university.
This voice comes with responsibility. It demands that I work harder to gain the knowledge to eventually influence the decisions of the Board. And I am glad to have new student member Tim Lovelace entering the position with as much enthusiasm as I leave it.
University students expect to be heard. The Board of Visitors is eager to listen. The student member serves them both with a voice, not a vote.
(Sasha Wilson is the current student member of the Board of Visitors. She is a fifth-year Education student)
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