UPDATE: Early this morning, the College announced it would release the Initiative steering committee recommendation report Monday morning.
Last night, The College finally announced details of how it plans to conduct that release and subsequent discussions.
According to Dean of the College James Larimore, the steering committee's widely anticipated report will consist of approximately 40 pages with an introductory section that discusses the committee's view of the strengths and weaknesses of campus life before it moves into specific recommendations and proposals.
After the veil is lifted from the Initiative, Larimore said he expects public scrutiny will follow, spawning conversations, discussions and recommendations that the Board of Trustees will consider during the Spring term.
Larimore said the release of the report is a "transition point" in the now nearly year-long Initiative process, with broad principles for reform moving to concrete and detailed recommendations to spark discussion.
This term will be "a window of time for students to make their voices heard" and to provide input and propose ideas and alternatives which a newly-created task force will collect and summarize before the information reaches College President James Wright and the Board of Trustees by the end of this term.
"Winter will be a stage of fundamental importance to the College, and it will be an opportunity to critique the work of the committee and propose other ideas that might hold more merit," Larimore said.
A coordinated response
Last night Larimore outlined the sequence of events that will occur starting at approximately 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. on the morning the report is released. All students, including those off-campus and alumni for whom e-mail addresses are known by the College, will be informed of the release through a BlitzMail message.
Hard copies of the document will be simultaneously circulated in the Collis Center, the Hopkins Center, Thayer Dining Hall, the Rockefeller Center and some administrative offices.
Brief summaries of the report will be mailed to students' Hinman Boxes, detailing where on campus they can look at the hard copies. The Internet, too, will provide access to the report, with the text of the document being posted online.
From 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on the night of the report's release, discussion groups around campus will convene at various locations, including Greek houses, academic buildings and residence halls, Special Assistant to the Dean of the College Mary Liscinsky said last night.
Based on previous student suggestions for random discussion groups, students will ideally congregate according to birthdays, although it remains important for students to be comfortable in their settings, Larimore said.
Three facilitators -- an administrator, a faculty member and a student -- will be present at each meeting to collect responses. Following the conclusion of the discussion groups, a community gathering will occur in Collis.
Some copies of the report will be mailed to students overseas in Foreign Study Programs so they can view and perhaps have facilitated discussions with their faculty advisor.
Providing simultaneous access to the final report was an important consideration, Larimore said, to avoid what many community members saw as an uncoordinated release of information last February when the Initiative was first announced.
A new task force
The release of the report marks a transition point in the Student Life Initiative.
"Once the report is delivered, the [steering] committee will be thanked and excused, and the document will become community property," Larimore said.
While members of the steering committee may be accessible to clarify statements in the report, Larimore said the group has already devoted a substantial time to the Initiative, and that some members are looking forward to moving on with their lives.
Instead, a 12-member task force jointly-chaired by Larimore, Student Assembly President Dean Krishna '01 and graduate student Andy Mengshol will take on the responsibility for clarifying questions, collecting input streaming in from students and mapping out an agenda for the group.
The student chairs were selected because of their involvement on the Assembly and Graduate Student Council, Larimore said.
The new task force's central mission is to produce a descriptive, unedited and objective summary of student opinions, prompting Larimore to say their final product could be of "encyclopedic" proportions.
"[The task force] will act as a vehicle to encourage involvement and collect input from students and student organizations and be a conduit for [passing on] information to the president and the Board," Larimore said borrowing terminology used by then-Acting Dean of the College Dan Nelson to describe the first Task Force last winter.
Of the six remaining students to serve on the task force, three will be selected by the Assembly and the remaining three will be chosen by Larimore upon receiving nominations. Three additional administrators involved in student life will round out the group.
In its first meeting of the term last night, the Assembly announced that its Membership and Internal Affairs Committee will be fully responsible for selecting the three students for the task force.
After the February 1999 announcement of the Initiative, the Assembly was responsible for the selection of two student representatives to serve on the steering committee last spring.
The Assembly chose to hold a rapidly conducted campus-wide election for the selection of one candidate and allowed MIAC to appoint the second.
This time, however, the Assembly will not be holding an election. MIAC will chose all three of the Assembly-appointed candidates.
Student-administration contact
Preparations also have been initiated to fulfill student requests for greater student interaction with administrators in regards to the Initiative.
Weekly "fireside chats" will provide face-to-face contact with Wright and Larimore, and sometimes a Trustee.
Trustee Peter Fahey '68 will attend the first fireside chat on the night of Tuesday, January 11, Liscinsky said.
While the Top of the Hop will be the site of the first fireside chat, Larimore said subsequent events will be aimed for Monday nights in Collis Commonground.
In the spirit of opportunities to discuss the reports in random group settings, several administrators have offered their homes for dinner to host small discussion groups, Larimore said.
Wright, College Provost Susan Prager, Larimore, Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman and Associate Dean of the College Dan Nelson are such examples. "We are hoping these will be vibrant conversations about the report," Larimore said.
One group hoping to play a significant role in the upcoming discussions will be the Assembly, which will focus on the Initiative in an intensive way throughout the term.
The steering committee is formally known as the Committee on the Student Life Initiative.
