Our view: While the town hall meetings are over, students can still submit input on the presidential search using online tools provided by administrators.
The presidential search is nearly halfway completed, but the dust has already settled after the town hall meetings held by two representatives of Academic Search.
It may have been our last and only opportunity to provide input in person to members of the search firm, but university administrators have set up a page dedicated to the presidential search on the university website. We applaud this effort of the administrators to open up a dialogue with constituents and we encourage everyone in the campus and community to take advantage of this effort.
We especially encourage students to fill out the online survey because the student town hall meeting was by far the least represented with only 18 students in attendance, including six members of Kappa Alpha and 11 mass communication students. It goes without saying that the student body was not accurately represented at the meeting.
Comparing that to the faculty town hall meeting which had about 70 attendants or the staff meeting which had about 60, it’s easy to see that the students have a lot of catching up to do.
Emily Clements • Sep 17, 2014 at 12:24 AM
I am a very involved student on campus and I agree that the town hall meeting was not represented by the student body. Why was I not there? Because I was in class. If they want more students to attend, they need to plan the meetings at a better time. It annoys me that there are so many events during the day that I can’t attend because I have a packed schedule. I realize that there is no way to plan something where everyone can attend, but I encourage the administration to try and schedule meetings that accommodate more people.