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New Charter Committee Bereft of Legitimacy

Submitted by Andrew Bannon-Guasp on Tuesday, 22 November 20112 Comments

By Andrew Bannon-Guasp

Trinity’s new Charter Committee, which has not yet convened, has already lost a lot of legitimacy in the eyes of some students. It is to be a twelve member committee, with five faculty members, five trustees and wait for it…two students. These two will be voting and a third will be non-voting but will have speaking rights.

For readers who did not read the Trustees’ message of the October 24^th, 2011, the Charter Committee is charged to “consider and recommend longer-term opportunities and undertakings that will enable a fulfilling student life for all Trinity students and that will further strengthen community values at the College.” These priorities require a deep understanding of student issues that only two students cannot possible convey. I do not question the appointed students’ ability to participate effectively, but the range of experiences represented by the student body is too broad for any two students to represent adequately.

There’s no way around it: this is disrespectful. How dare the College only allocate 1/6 of the committee’s voting seats to students? According to Trinity’s website[1] there are 2,144 full-time undergraduates and 104 graduate students for a total of 2,248 students, not including the part-time IDP students. The same page says that there is a 10:1 student-faculty ratio, which would indicate 224.8 (225) faculty members. There are thirty-six trustees[2]. So let’s do some math:

2248

225

+ 36

2509

The three groups represent 2,509 people. 89.6% of that number is represented by students; 9% faculty; 1.4% trustees. However, students make up only 16.667% of the committee (excluding the non-voting member); faculty and trustees both represent 41.667%.

If we were to keep the same 12 member committee but adopt a proportional method of distribution, the students would get over 10 of the 12 seats; the faculty a little bit more than one seat and the trustees would get a little under one-fifth of a seat.

I am not trying to say that having five trustees and five faculty members is a bad idea; on the contrary, I think it’s great that faculty and board members are getting together to work through the College’s problems. However, students should have an equal say on the committee. To only give students 16.667% of the committee seats is outrageous when we make up almost 90% of the College community. Students should have a robust opportunity to participate in College governance. This allocation of seats on this committee is fundamentally unfair.

My solution: the College should invite three more students to join the committee with full voting rights.

[1] http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/Pages/CollegeFacts.aspx

[2] http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/college/Pages/Trustees.aspx

Andrew Terhune
Rather than characterizing the ratios of students to faculty and trustees as disrespectful, I would choose “practical”. The challenges the Charter Committee is to address are long term. Most students’ perspectives go out until approximately the May when they are getting their degrees. The trustees and faculty, due to the nature of their positions, will take the longer term view necessary to address this issues. The students, even though there are but two of them, can still be effective.
As to whether two students can represent the views of the student body adequately, the same argument could be made about 5 students as the author recommends, or about 435 representatives in Congress. Absent direct democracy of the type still practiced in some small New England towns, representative democracy is the best we can do. A charter committee of 2509 wouldn’t get much done.
Andrew Terhune ’78

R Andrew Bannon-Guasp
Dear Mr. Terhune,
First of all, thank you for reading my article. I take your points well, especially about direct democracy.
Five students, you point out, still could not represent that entirety of the student body, and I agree. However, I still maintain that students should have an equal say on the committee. I do not feel that five students could capture everyone’s opinion (that’s impossible for such a committee) but could represent a lot more. Five is better than two and I would still argue that having three more students is appropriate.
As the issue relates to long-term issues vs. short-term perspectives of students, you raise another good point. I think that the eight terms that students enroll at Trinity are a significant period of time (even if they don’t qualify as “long-term” in the grand scheme of the College) and students can offer valuable input about what needs to change now and valuable suggestions for the long-term even if their tenure on the committee ends before then. They can also provide input on how the Committee’s recommendations-if implemented-are working. If a first-year had been appointed, and the Board acted in the Fall of 2012, when the CC is scheduled to give its report, that student could provide feedback for his/her sophomore, junior and senior years as to whether or not the recommendations were working.
Thanks again for reading.
Respectfully,
R. Andrew Bannon-Guasp