Accompanying the WSA’s annual Mid-Year Report is a reflection on communication. The report itself, in fact, underscores the importance of transparency.
It appears that the assembly has been doing its homework, addressing the two-fold communication that a student government body should address: inward, that is, making the student body’s interests and wants heard by the administration, and outward, keeping the student body informed of the assembly’s activity.
It is easy for the student body to overlook even the most ambitious WSA efforts at communication—from an expanded website, to all-campus e-mails, to a column in the Argus, to open meetings. The vast majority of students, much like the vast majority of citizens, find the details of policy less than thrilling.
Here is an illustrative example: after attending two meetings of the Board of Trustees last semester, the WSA drafted and published detailed reports of what took place at the table. The Mid-Year Report said that the documents have not been widely read.
Where we see the WSA’s strongest progress this year, therefore, is in inward communication. It has secured a voice at meetings of the Board of Trustees, strengthened its voice at faculty meetings, and collaborated with administration committees on projects ranging from selecting the University’s new food provider to brainstorming the preliminary plans for the new science center.
Additionally, the (cheap!) shuttle to New Haven has great potential, thanks in large part to the assembly’s efforts. And we will not have to fret over The New York Times leaving campus, at least for the next several years. Despite budget cuts, the WSA has successfully lobbied enough funds from private trustee donations to preserve the popular readership program.
But we have a pressing request to the WSA: push your communication outward.
The report makes mention of plans for WSA dorm tours, where representatives will explain their ideas and answer students’ questions. Why not extend the tours from question-and-answer sessions to regularly scheduled assembly meetings? Why not meet periodically in dorms’ common spaces rather than in PAC, where the weekly meeting is now held?
Also, this year’s report needs to define it’s terms much more explicitly. Who, exactly, are marginalized students for whom the WSA seeks to improve support? What campus resources and diversity programs do you find need expanding or improving for marginalized students? What determinations has the WSA made about the University’s Academic Review process? How and to what extent may its structural fairness, as the report notes, be questionable? What alterations and improvements would it require?
If you build it (your outward communication, not a baseball field), we will come. But you’ll have to bring it just a bit closer to us.
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