Students form college council

The University of Toledo Arts and Sciences Student Council — the student-run wing of the university's largest college -- met for their first preliminary meeting last week to discuss their discontent with the restructuring plans proposed by the Committee on Strategic Organization over the summer.

The meeting took place in the Student Union Building, where faculty and students shared their thoughts on the plans and methods for organizing CAS students to have a say in the reorganization plans that will be decided upon in September.

Discontent over the administration's decision to have the committee meet in June, when few students are at the university, was palpable in the room. Many of the students in attendance said with three new colleges run by new deans, the bureaucracy of the CAS will be too much for students to navigate.

The council's founder Ken Evans, a senior double majoring in political science and geography, urged the members to encourage their peers within the CAS to keep a close watch on the group's Facebook page and to sign their online petition to push back the date for implementing the CSO's restructuring plan.

"I'm open to hearing the merits of the proposal," Evans said. "If there is a better way to run our university, if there is a better way to get information to students, then I want to know it."

Evans said he does not see the problems the CSO's proposal seems to be addressing, especially the notion that there is a lack of interdepartmental collaboration.

He said there are plenty of faculty members already involved in cross-subject collaboration.

"As a major in both political science and geography, I am the embodiment of departmental collaboration," Evans said. "Education, fundamentally, is not a product."

Linda Rouillard, professor of French and chair of the Arts and Sciences Council, said by implementing Jacobs' plan, students at UT will be met with higher tuition costs and more bureaucracy in their departments, which will give their degrees less value if the CSO's plan is implemented.

"How can we, in good conscience, hire deans at the executive level while there are employees of this university that don't have health benefits – at an institution that merged with a hospital," Rouillard said during the meeting.

A concern that many people at the meeting had was the way the names of degrees from the "School of the Human Condition" and "School of Global Health and Wellness" would be perceived by employers.

David Nemeth, professor of geography and planning, said going through the CSO's model would be implementing a private model at a public university.

Nemeth said this model is only allowing more students in to "sell" more degrees, which will lower the quality and value of education at UT.

Justin Richmond, a 2010 alumnus and council member, offered the message of "radicalism works" to students in the council using the resignation of the former Dean of the CAS Yeuh-Ting Lee in 2008 after CAS faculty voted "no confidence" in him as an example.

"Lee was fired so fast that we had to use white-out to remove his name from our buttons," Richmond said, explaining how student-led protests can lead to changes in the administration. "Jacobs called our actions childish, but Lee resigned."

While enrolled at the UT, Richmond and other students organized over their dissatisfaction with the administration of CAS under Lee. Amongst other methods, he and other students sent emails, distributed pamphlets and protested at President Jacobs' Town Hall Meetings. After a year of criticized management techniques, a group of faculty members voted "no confidence" in Lee, and he was forced to step down.

Richmond said the student protest, similar to the one in 2008, may drive the administration to reconsider the restructuring of the CAS if enough students can be encouraged to get involved in the issues concerning their college.

Vice President of Student Affairs Kaye Patten Wallace, who is also a member of the CSO, said the proposal was "simply a discussion point."

"We welcome input from anybody at the university," Patten Wallace said.

The next meeting will be held on Sept. 9 at 7:00 p.m. Plans for the Sept. 9 meeting include drafting a charter to present to Jacobs. The formal response to the restructuring plan will be written by two ad hoc committees led by students. There are also plans to elect a formal leader for the Arts and Science Student Council.