Student Council representatives unanimously passed a non-binding resolution during a virtual meeting June 14 that aims to affirm the voice of students in the search for a new University president. The resolution requests that five students be included on the search committee, and that the Board of Visitors provides key updates to the student body throughout the search process.
Specifically, the resolution states that the Board will conduct surveys of students and staff to keep their interests in mind when looking for the next president and that Student Council president and chair of the representative body will have bi-monthly meetings with Acting President Jennifer Wagner Davis or the interim president to “ensure communication” throughout the transition process.
In an email to the University community, Board Rector Rachel Sheridan said that a search process will include students, among other stakeholders, and that the Board will continue to keep the community informed regarding when this search process begins.
The resolution was cosponsored by Brian Ng, third-year College representative, Imane Akhanous, chair of the representative body and fourth-year College representative, third-year Data Science representative Kayla Kim, and Ian Travis, chair of community concerns and third-year College representative.
Travis said the bill was drafted because he felt that as elected leaders, Student Council was obligated to represent the student body in response to former University President Jim Ryan’s resignation.
“Our job is to represent students to the best of our ability,” Travis said. “We should do it very methodically and not very performatively.”
Travis also noted he did not want to write a resolution that condemned the Board, as he said he felt this was both performative and also dangerous. The Faculty Senate adopted a vote of no confidence in the Board during a meeting held June 11 for failing to keep the University and its president protected from “outside interference,” and Travis said he did not want to follow suit.
“The Faculty Senate is burning bridges with the Board of Visitors. You don’t bite the hand that gives you food,” Travis said. “If you want to have a good working relationship with the school supervisors, you [have to] work with them.”
One of the clauses in the resolution calls for five University students to be a part of the search team for a new University president. While both Travis and Clay Dickerson, Student Council president and fourth-year College student, said they are not yet sure how those students will be selected, they agreed that those students should be representative of the University student body with diverse perspectives.
Dickerson said he does not want even the majority of those five students to be from Student Council and that the goal is for those students to broadly represent the University from various schools, including graduate schools.
“A lot of our views are already public, so I think it’d be nice if [the five students weren’t] just [from] Student Council,” Dickerson said. “It’s less so about who these people are and what they’re from, and more so [that I want the students] to be truly representative and for the structure to be such that they can speak their mind openly, freely and honestly.”
Additionally in the resolution is a request that the rector and vice-rector of the Board meet with the Student Council president and chair of the representative body by Oct. 1 to discuss the timeline plan and provide updates on the search for a University president. This same clause calls for the search committee to provide key updates throughout their process, while allowing for community input.
Travis said this was written into the resolution so the Board is required to keep students in the loop as they search for a new president, but that the Oct. 1 deadline was intentional with that still being months away.
“Sometimes in these processes, you don’t hear anything until someone’s announced,” Travis said. “They can ignore [the deadline], obviously, but it gives us something to feel like, ‘okay, we’re giving you plenty of time … We can have some update into whatever’s happening.’”
Given that the Board can ignore the requests in this resolution, Travis and Dickerson both said that Student Council will be working hard to remain in direct communication with the Board throughout the search process.
Travis noted his belief in Student Council to be a part of this process and his hope that the Board will listen. He said all Student Council representatives care so genuinely about bringing this resolution to life.
“This is probably one of the more significant Student Council legislations,” Travis said. “We got 22 [representatives] on a zoom call in the middle of the summer … we pulled this together completely out of nowhere because of all of the Student Council members who actually care about the student body.”
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