[Alumni-chat] Re: Alumni-chat Digest, Vol 11, Issue 3

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/9/2008 4:22:50 P.M. Central Standard Time,  
alexandrakesman at gmail.com writes:

I would  personally like to stand up for those students that are under the
radar and  who will make differences in this world and will sit on
significantly more  important BoT's of the future.

It was mentioned earlier, but I would  like to elaborate. A current 4th year
student currently sits (an is the  youngest member in their history) on the
Board of Trustees of the Unitarian  Universalists.

Now, tell me you don't think that is  amazing!?!?

I rest my case.

Alex



Alex, I think you need to look at Boards of many organizations, in many  
fields, and ask whether they are normally populated by people who run under the  
radar?  
 
As part of the effort to create a student seat on the Board of Regents of  
the University of Minnesota -- which we accomplished in the early 1970's. I  
really can't think of a more meaningless cause that I ever got engaged  with.  It 
is still a seat, and I suppose will remain so for years, but it  is 
unfortunately without much value.  
 
Why? -- First, the role of students is to be students.  The time  demands for 
Trustees and/or Regents is huge, and students should be spending  that time 
enjoying and profiting from that opportunity for freedom from  responsibility 
for all but their own intellectual development.   Trustees/Regents spend their 
time developing support and raising money for  institutions (at least they 
should), and looking at institutional planning in  large picture frameworks.  
They are expected to be able to think and plan  in terms of decades of effort 
toward goals, largely because they have done that  themselves in whatever niche 
of various systems they emerged from as  leaders.  In Minnesota, University 
Regents have to represent the  Congressional Districts.  (we have eight).  The 
Charter provides for  Regents who represent Agriculture, Natural Science, Labor, 
Medicine, Humanities,  Commerce and Trade.  The University is older than the 
state, is, like Ohio  State, a Land Grant institution, and thus is subject to 
many relevant  laws.  But in the end, the Trustees/Regents are not really 
"management" --  rather they are the advocates for growth and development that 
requires  resources, and they are sufficiently influential so as to acquire those 
 resources, and oversee how they are used.  I simply do not believe Students  
have much of a role here.  Where Antioch has gone wrong over the years is  
not in having no Trustees seat for Students, rather is is about  communications. 
 You know, when the President can't talk to the Trustees,  and I suspect the 
Faculty cannot either, I rather doubt if the students even  know who they are, 
or have ever met them.  
 
So Second, rather than putting a student on the board of Trustees, why not  
reverse the idea, and look at the whole reorganization that is likely to happen 
 as needing a Trustee to be a non-voting but attending member of Comcil, and  
another on Adcil.  If that were set up, I suspect you would get good  
communication between Students and Trustees, without having to take someone who  
should be progressing toward a BS or AB Degree away from what is their primary  
objective.  Students, after all may be depending on grants and loans for  that 
BS or AB, but in Theory a Trustee should be able to pay their own  way.  
 
Third -- most Trustees are expected to serve at least one term, and perhaps  
several.  It is just as important that older Trustees be  honorably rolled off 
as it is to carefully bring in new blood that can  carry on, yet improve 
things.  The Student/Regent/Trustee thing imagines  that things are done short 
term -- that is in one or, at most,  two  years.  That is not how a BoT or a 
Regents Board works.  Many things  take a decade or a generation to accomplish, 
and that is not where you put short  term students.  



**************Start the year off right.  Easy ways to stay in shape.     
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489