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Penn rethinks governance
At the University of Pennsylvania, a group of alumni has proposed a way to bridge the gap between Penn students and Penn trustees. Concerned that students and recent graduates have no real say in key university decisions, the group has outlined a procedure for ensuring that current and recent Penn students have some say in who is elected to be a Penn trustee. According to The Daily Pennsylvanian,
The proposal seeks to create two new positions on the Penn Alumni Board of Directors and is designed to balance the makeup of the board -- which currently has few recent graduates serving.The proposal would give both a current student and a recent Penn graduate the opportunity to play a larger role in determining who is elected to serve on the University Board of Trustees -- the most important governing body of the University.
Set to be voted on in mid-May, the proposal would add the president of the Penn Alumni Student Society and a recent Penn graduate -- appointed by the president of the Penn Alumni -- to the group that recommends the 14 alumni trustees.
Penn Alumni President Paul Williams -- who said he was hopeful that these changes will go through -- said that with approximately 10,000 undergraduates but more than 250,000 living Penn alumni, these two new positions will help balance the constituencies that the board represents.
"The composition of the Penn Alumni Board has been specifically described as trying to get a real balance of representation of the component parts of the alumni community," the 1967 Wharton graduate said.
At the moment, the only means by which students can communicate their concerns directly to the trustees is by serving as liaisons on university committees. Student liaisons have no voting privileges, and are excluded from executive sessions, so their role is minimal and their potential impact negligible. By contrast, each year Princeton elects a senior to serve as a trustee; at any given moment, there are four Young Alumni Trustees who enjoy the same rights, responsibilities, and privileges as the rest of Princeton's trustees.
The DP is all for greater student involvement with the trustees, arguing in a staff editorial that while the proposed new arrangement is intriguing, it is not enough:
Trustees should be listening to the concerns of students, and many are undoubtedly eager to hear what undergraduates have to say, but there is not currently a sufficient line of communication between the two parties.As it stands now, a handful of students picked by the Nominations and Elections Committee get to sit in and offer some input to six trustee committees. While this may be valuable to an extent, it is not enough. These members do not have unfettered access to trustee meetings and have no formal vote -- much like delegates to the U.S. Congress.
What Penn ought to do is create a handful of full-fledged trustee positions for current upperclassmen. Juniors, for example, could be elected to two-year terms. Not only would this create more interest among students since they would have actual power at trustee meetings, but it would also foster a more collegial relationship between students and trustees.
These are timely issues that promise provocative debate. It will be interesting to chart how Penn responds.
Posted by acta online on April 06, 2005 at April 6, 2005 07:33 AM