Dartmouth's Board of Trustees lacks students, but other universities allow some student participation within their equivalent bodies and a few even let students sit on boards.
The level of involvement varies from school to school. Students sit on Cornell University's board of trustees, Stanford University's students can vote on recommendations made to their board, and others, such as Harvard University, are like Dartmouth -- with no student votes on the actual boards.
Whose voices are heard?
Student representation on the boards of trustees may differ from school to school, but the motive for it remains the same -- an avenue for students voices to be heard.
A few schools afford students full positions on their boards.
For instance, Cornell's board of trustees include two students who serve two-year terms with full voting privileges.
Cornell Student Trustee Julie Chon said the development of the position of a student trustee stemmed from student activism -- including a few outbreaks of violence -- on campus in 1969. The first student trustees were elected to the board in 1971.
The student trustees are seen in a "different light," but not as inferior to the other trustees, she said.
On the opposite side of the nation, the University of California system parallels that of Cornell.
The student member on the board of regents for the University of California system, Jess Bravin serves a term of one year.
Established in 1974 in response to student protests, the position of the student regent makes California's college system much more accountable to the students, Bravin said.
He said the public also benefits from having a student trustee. In November, the board of regents illegally held a private meeting about the university's finances, Bravin said.
Bravin objected and as a result the board had to publish copies of the meeting's transcript, which led to the discovery of some accounting problems.
Although Bravin is a 31-year old law student at Berkeley, he said most of the past regents have been undergraduates.
He said some of the regents treat him with the "proper level of decorum" while others are hostile and insulting toward student regents.
Many lack a student vote
California universities' students can directly participate with their boards of trustees, but many other undergraduates have much less influence.
For instance, at Stanford, two students sit on each of the five committees that make recommendations to its board of trustees. They can vote on making recommendations, but students cannot sit on the board nor vote on actually enacting anything.
Dartmouth's students have less influence than those at Stanford. Several committees advise and inform Dartmouth's Board of Trustees and four of these feature student members, but none of the students may vote.
David Walthall '98, a student representative on the Committee on Student Affairs, said faculty and administrator members listen to students and respect their opinions, but the student members do not have the power to vote on any official recommendations.
Jonathon Huston, a member on one of Stanford's committees, said although students are allowed to sit on these kinds of advisory committees, they really have to speak up for themselves.
Dartmouth is in much the same boat as Harvard and Yale.
Lamelle Rawlins, president of the undergraduate council at Harvard, said Harvard has students on subcommittees of the overseers, the equivalent of trustees. The students do not have any voting privileges.
Rawlins said resolutions are supposed to be discussed in these subcommittees before a vote by the overseers. But she said the process has not always worked and sometimes student opinions are bypassed.
Leah Dean, a reporter for the Yale Daily News, said student representation on the "corporation," which is similar the Dartmouth's Board of Trustees, is a topic of discussion on Yale University's campus.
She said there has been an effort for a number of years to get a student representative with voting privileges on the corporation.
The student council has not been very effective in reaching this goal and most students have given up, she said.
Forum pushes for student trustees
Because of the unusual position of a student trustee, Bravin thought it would be beneficial to meet with other student trustees from around the country. He helped plan the National Forum of Student Trustees, an event held last Oct. 25.
David Longanecker, assistant secretary of the office of Postsecondary Education and President Bill Clinton's chief advisor regarding college education, delivered the keynote address.
Voicing his support for student trustees, Vice President Al Gore wrote the introduction to the program of the conference, in which he wrote, "Student trustees bring to the table not only the perspectives of the campus today... [they] play a vital role in the governance of America's colleges and universities."
Representing several institutions -- mostly public universities -- 30 student trustees attended the conference, Bravin said.
In the forum, the students expressed the need to establish a permanent and nation-wide organization to aid student trustees.
"We think student membership should be the norm," Bravin said. "It should be a requirement to be respected in educational circles."
Cornell's Chon said she is trying to start an effort to get more student involvement on the boards of other schools and she hopes to add that to the agenda for the next meeting of the Ivy Council in March. The Ivy Council is a group of students from each undergraduate representative body of the eight Ivy League schools.
