Students recently came together in a rally with a message for the decision-makers here at Ball State University. That message was loud and clear. We want our voices heard. We want to be represented fairly at our university. We care about who the next president is here at BSU. The rally was a success in that our voices were heard. Acting President Beverley Pitts came out to listen to the thoughts and concerns of the students.
Despite the rally for fair student representation on the presidential search committee, despite the petition by the Student Government Association to add another student to the search committee, despite several motions passed by University Senate having to do with the search committee, the Board of Trustees has continued to ignore the will of the university community.
Now, I realize that members of the Board of Trustees are volunteers. They are not paid to make the decisions here at Ball State. I commend them for volunteering their time and effort. But wouldn't their time and effort be better spent making decisions that please the university community, instead of making them mad?
I would hope that they realize they made a mistake by not including faculty and students in the process of finding our next president. Wouldn't it have been a much more pleasant process if you had compiled the search committee democratically from the start? Can an angry University Senate, angry faculty and angry students be worth handpicking committee members as opposed to letting constituencies choose their own representatives?
They took a huge risk by not including the faculty and students in this process. The outcome may be a president that the faculty and students do not stand behind. That would be a waste of time and money. What makes more sense? Including the faculty and students in the decision of who our next president will be and having a great president for 20 years, or excluding faculty and students and have a president we do not stand behind, who is therefore ineffective and lasts only 4 years. This might not be the case but it is certainly the risk they took. And I don't really appreciate risks being taken with my education.
They might use the excuse that it is too late, that they are too far along in the search process to add more members, but when is it too late too hear more opinions? Is it also too late for students or faculty to give input such as what kind of qualities we would like to see in our next president? Did that period of time end with the "open forum" we had where faculty and students could address their concerns to the wall?
It is never too late to seek more opinion. It is never too late to admit that you were wrong and correct yourselves. You know what the university community wants. We have gone through every available measure to have our voices heard. We have gone through the governance system, through SGA and University Senate. We have used our rights guaranteed to us in the Constitution, including our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and the right to petition. Faculty and students have done everything in our capability to tell the Board of Trustees what we want and need. And they continue to ignore us.
I appreciate that you volunteer your time and effort to be on the Board of Trustees, but I, as well as many other students and faculty, also volunteer time and effort to make BSU an even better place than it already is. Please consider the needs of students and faculty here at BSU. Please honor the simple request of fair representation on the search committee. And please, work with us, not against us, to make BSU the best it can be.
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